Hello family! (Email September 19, 2012)

I think I now understand why people say missions can be emotional roller coasters. Not in a bad way, but literally you can have a super great experience followed 10 minutes later to the reminder that you still don't speak Russian...So last Thursday was an awesome day. First Sis. Christensen and I had "coaching" where are teacher pulls us aside to see how we're doing, I call it counseling, either one. He reassured us we weren't behind in the language which was much needed. Then later, I was reading to Sister K just to practice pronunciation. Sister K (its really Kunetstova or something like that) is super Russian, like stereotypical blunt and forward, will tell you when you sound bad, etc. Anyway after I read to her for like 10 minutes she said "Sister Allison, I'm very impressed. Really, I'm very proud of you!" I almost started crying because I'm pretty sure she's never complimented me before haha. Then later our other teacher told us we were speaking exceptionally well and he was proud of our progress, etc. Awesome day right?!

So Friday we woke up feeling pumped to work hard. So we planned awesome lessons for our investigators and started translating stuff we wanted to say...And then Sister K came over and basically told us Russians don't talk like that so it doesn't translate like that so you should say this, etc. So we literally wasted 4 hours of the day and had to go back to square one which was depressing. Saturday was ok, we went into our lessons not as prepared as we like to but sometimes you just have to get through it. 

Sunday was awesome though! For Relief Society, we got to hear from Sheri Dew! She gave an awesome empowering talk about misperceptions people have about LDS women and how our message is so important Heavenly Father wouldn't have left it up to women he didn't trust, which is always good to hear. Then, we had a district meeting where our counselor in the branch presidency talked about how weeks 3-9 are when missionaries lose sight of what they are doing, so this is when the Lord and I find out what kind of missionary I will be!! Then another awesome talk about the importance of the Book of Mormon, and at night, we watched a talk by Elder Bednar about the "Character of Christ" and how He always turned out when the natural man turns in. Definitely makes you re-evaluate your priorities. 

As far as the language, its still really hard and slow, and honestly the longer I'm here, the more I realize Russian is more complicated than I thought! But the way they say it is that English is a lang. of exceptions and Russian is a lng. of memorizing. So if i can learn all the cases and all the irregular stuff than hopefully I'll at least have decent grammar by the time I leave. I'm starting to be able to understand the missionaries who have been here for 10 weeks though, which is exciting, but also I'm realizing how simple their sentences are so they are kidding when they say I'll arrive in Russia and not be able to understand anything. Also, Russian don't even pronouce half of the letters, apparently they are implied, so unless the syllable is accented, your guess is as good as mine. Basically, I'm gonna work as hard as I can here and then gear up for an adventure! But Sis. Christensen and I mapped out our language study plan, which is basically long term goals, weekly goals, and daily goals which I'm really excited about! While the language is super hard, we still have little victories! One of our investigators is Muslim and while he doesn't believe Christ is our Savior still, we taught him how to pray to Heavenly Father! Which at the end of the day, I can say to myself, so what if i wasted 4 hours translating sentences wrong, I still taught someone how to talk to their Father in Heaven!! The MTC is hard work, and mentally and emotionally exhausting but I love knowing that what I'm doing will help someone's life now and eternally!

I love you all!
Sister Allison