Any Happy little thought

A smile always comes after reading her emails!  Gotta love her Pixie Dust!!

Hello!!! This week was business as usual. It's so weird that it's already Monday again! Time is flying by so fast and it won't even stop. So hot off the press for this week is that we went on Tuesday to visit this mom of a missionary in our branch. She's not a member of the church, but she's so wonderful and nice. We helped her work in her garden, they're really big into gardens here, and talked to her about prayer and she gave use some compote to drink, which is this really good stuff made out of boiled fruit and water and sugar and I love it, and then we left. I hope that we can continue to help her and teach her more so that she'll understand the gospel more and understand why her son is serving a mission. We had some really amazing lessons with inactives and actives this week and I am so happy about that. Our branch here in Tagonrog is really getting stronger and that makes me so happy times a million! On Saturday we did a service project, we made blankets for an orphanage with the relief society. so the last time we did a project with sewing no one could figure out how to get the sewing machine to work so I just sat down and threaded it and pushed the pedal and it started going just like normal, but because of that everyone in our branch thinks that I'm some kind of master sewer! So I got to sew the blankets and also help tie them. Tonight is Sister Kuhn's birthday, well I guess the whole day is her birthday, but tonight we are having a surprise family home evening for her. We invited our investigators and members and we are going to eat cake and ice cream and play games and of course do a spiritual thought... because we're missionaries! My life is beautiful right now. And I hope that yours is too, if it isn't I know how to make it better... Faith, trust and pixie dust. Believe me, it works everytime.  :)

Love,

Sister Leavitt

Rainy Days and Mondays always make me HAPPY!!

I totally agree with Scrum about Mondays make me HAPPY!  And just so you know Big Daddy had a total knee replacement on Monday, and I am just getting over a minor surgery.  We are all on the mend.  Have a great week. ~ Mamma K

I was just thinking about that Carpenters song and I  think they have it all wrong. I love Rainy days and Mondays. Yesterday was so rainy. We were out on the streets contacting and it just started to pour! So we hid out under some trees until it stopped and then we got back to work, but it was so fun! And don't tell, but I danced a little in the rain. I couldn't help myself. And today is Monday and I just think that I couldn't be happier, so hence, rainy days and Mondays always make me happy. Well, this week was so good! I got a new companion on Wednesday. Her name is Sister Palikova. She is 22 and she lives just outside of Rostov which is about an hour away from where we are serving. She is just serving a mini mission, which means that she will be serving for 6 weeks and then return home. Every once in a while members here serve mini missions when our numbers are odd. So she is wonderful and she loves cooking just as much as I do and she is teaching me how to make some new things. This week we made this curry chicken stuff. It was delicious. So in other news... We had a music night this week with our branch and it turned out to be a sucess. We, as missionaries, did most of the musical acts, but our members brought their friends and we ended up meeting some new people. Sister Kuhn and I sang "somewhere over the rainbow" for them and we also sang "come thou fount". We ended the night by singing "come thou fount" and then had one of the members bear her testimony and the spirit was so strong! I loved it! We also made them banana bread which is a very american thing. People here didn't really know what it was, but they all loved it and wanted the recipe. Oh, and one funny story, so on Tuesday we went to visit our investigator Elena and we told her about music night and she was so excited. We sang her our come thou fount song and she loved it so much that right then and there she started taking off her jewlery and giving it to us. We tried to stop her, but she wouldn't, so now I have a new pair of really cute earings! Well, that's about it. I love you all and wish you the best of luck on all of your endeavors this week. Remember that we are all sons and daughters of God and that he loves us, and then act accordingly.  :)

Love,

Sister Leavitt

P.S. To my mom and dad I just had to say that I hope you all heal well and quickly! I love you!!!!  

Nylons

We all got to talk to Sister Leavitt on Mother's Day.  She looked amazing.  She has lost a little weight and just had a  "GLOW" about her.  It was the BEST gift she could ever have given just being able to SKYPE her and see her.  She said to tell everyone "Hello" and she loves you!  :)  ~Mamma K

So, yesterday I got to talk to my family for mother's day! That was so exciting! It made my heart so happy to talk to them and to hear about all that's going on a home and see our new secret hiding place in our house, just in case bad guys try to get us. But I wanted to tell you also about some things that happened this week. So Sister LeBaron was sick at the begining of this week, which was kind of a bummer, but our mission president called us and told us to find a member who could come sit with her so we could go out and work. So we called one of our members and she came and sat with her. It really did feel like we were getting a babysitter! It was fun! I felt so grown up. So while we were out working we met this guy from Germany named Frank. He didn't speak a lick of Russian, so we talked to him a little in English, which he didn't understand either, but it was still fun to talk with him and it reminded me of Thomas (wait I can't remember if that was really his name...). So we also got to teach this other lady who was from Russia. She turned out to be so amazing!!! She is a friend of one of our members and wanted help with learning english for a song that she has to sing for one of her exams in school. It was fun to help her, especially because at the end we got to teach her more about the gospel and what we believe and she was so interested in what we were telling her. So we're meeting with her again on... well tomorrow. :) I'm excited for that. When Sister LeBaron got better, that's when the real fun started... so I don't think I've ever told you, but in Russia they are crazy about staying warm and wearing nylons is part of that craziness. So last week our mission president's wife called us and told us that we couldn't take off our nylons yet and that she would tell us when it's warm enough to do so... I know, kind of weird. But whatever, so on Saturday we were wearing our nylons and we went to a member's house to teach and we got there and took off our shoes and Sister LeBaron's nylons had a huge hole in the heel because of her shoes. So our member, who is a little older, see's the whole and at the end of the lesson she starts taking out everything from her closet like she's looking for something. Turns out she is looking for this pair of new nylons that she doesn't need, but she can't find them, so she just gives Sister Lebaron her old nylons and tells her to go put them on because we are the "face of God" and we shouldn't have holes in our nylons. So Sister LeBaron goes to the bathroom to put them on and the member continues to look for her new nylons which she finds, and then just walks right into the bathroom while Sister Lebaron is changing to give them to her. It was so funny! I couldn't help from laughing out loud!  But Sister LeBaron's new nylons look really good. Well, that's all for this week! I love you all!

Sister Leavitt 

Would you be mine, Could you be mine, won't you be my neighbor!

Another "Happy" email from our Sister Leavitt to brighten up your week.  I can hardly wait for the next few days to fly by so we can talk to her on Mothers Day!  Have a great week, and keep smiling!

Why hello there neighbor. It's just another beautiful day in my neighborhood and I hope that this email reaches you in another beautiful day in your neighborhood. For how horrible winter is in Russia, spring sure does make up for it. The trees are blooming and the flowers are so wonderful. The weather has just been so splendous. And good weather means that more people are out on the streets. So how about I tell about one of the amazing people we met this week. So it all started when we were supposed to do Yoga, which we do every tuesday night, and apparently everybody but us knew that is was cancelled because no one else showed up. So instead of doing Yoga we contacted. We were walking down the street and we met this lady name ulga. She was so nice and she had sincere quetions about our church. She was with her young daughter and they were about to feed the pigeons, something just about every Russian loves doing I think they equate it to us feeding the ducks, anyways so she said to wait a minute so that she could go grab some grain stuff for her daughter to feed the birds.So we waited and when she came out of the store we continued to teach her. She's a wonderful mom and she wants her daughter to grow up with religion and values. At the end of our talking she asked us for our number first and we got her number too. She wasn't able to meet last week because she already had plans, including her daughters very first dance concert :), and so we are hoping and praying that things will work out for us to meet with her and her family this week. Well, there's your cool missionary story from me for the week. My companion got sick, so we spent the past two days inside doing nothing that interesting, so that's all. I love you all and I hope that you are doing marvelous. I just want you to know that the church is true, and if you don't know it... well pray and find out, and once you get your answer that it is true, then you'll understand why I love being a missionary so much!

Sister Leavitt