I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane....

Her last email does not disappoint.  I wish I could have been a fly at the honey festival to see her dancing!  So she will be home next week and her mission chapter will end, but she is ready to start writing her next story!  Thanks for all the support and love over the past few years with our missionaries.  ~ Mamma K

"The time has come" the walrus said, "to speak of many things."  So this week was so crazy good!!! The honey festival was this week, so that was exciting. I don't know if I have ever told you, but Russians love love love their honey, really it's crazy. So this festival is just all of these booths with people selling honey of all varieties. I never even knew that so many existed before! So on Saturday we were walking through the honey festival because it was on our contacting route and there was live music and dancers, so of course we couldn't help ourselves and started to dance just a little too and then out of nowhere this news reporter comes over and asks to interview us and all I could say, out of pure surprise is, "uhhh, well we're missionaries and we're from America..." thinking he would change his mind about interviewing us, but he just says, "COOL! That's prefect, so we want to do the shot over here with... " And then I cut him off and told him that we couldn't really do that. He was a little disappointed, but soon found someone else to help him. It was so funny. So we just contacted through the festival, and then out of it and then a little while later we looped back and the elders just so happened to be there and they were watching a dance and the dancers were getting people from the crowd to dance with them and the elders really wanted to, so the just jumped right in there and danced with all these old Russian women. It was so funny. I love Russia and all of their crazy traditions and dances and holidays.

So now I must tell you about the highlight of our Saturday. (FYI: this was right before we went through the honey festival) So we were contacting, like I already said, and we stopped this woman and she actually stopped and was interested! That was the first miracle! Then we started to tell her about the book of Mormon and about Christ and she was still interested!! Then we asked her for her number, and she gave it to us!!! Then she accepted a Book of Mormon!!! It was so wonderful. It was a miracle that day because we had been teaching people on the streets, but none of our lessons were really going anywhere and no one has been really interested in a while, and so we were getting a little down about that, so to have someone actually be interested was just such a refreshing change and just made my heart so happy! So we are going to call her tonight and hopefully start meeting with her and I am so excited!!!

Also yesterday at Church we had two investigators there! One that we have been working with for a while and one that just became our investigator this week. The Lord truly blessed us this week and my heart is just so happy about that!!

Besides this our week was just work as normal, well with a few extra trips to the store to pick of a few items of interest, because, in case you have forgotten, I am coming home in one week!!!!!! So, that's pretty exciting. I'm really excited actually. I have loved my mission, and still love it in fact, but I am so excited to live my life. I feel like coming on a mission has changed me so much and I am so excited to use all of these things and lessons that I have learned in my life now. I am sad to leave these people and have to say goodbye, but the happy part of the story is that we will see each other again, if not in this life, then in the next one. I love these people and they will forever be in my heart. They are the reason that I have changed so much. They have taught me what it means to be a saint to be a true disciple of Christ. And I know that it is only through this church, this one and true living church of God that we receive the saving ordinances that we need to be able to return back to live in our Heavenly Father's presence. It's all so clear to me right now. And I love my mission, these people and my Savior for teaching me these things over the past year and a half.

Well, until I see you then.

Sister Leavitt

Grey skies are gonna clear up....So put on a HAPPY face!

Here is this weeks email.  Sister Leavitt has not lost her sense of humor, she keeps me laughing every week.  Enjoy, and next week will be her last email before she comes HOME!

Hey hey hey!!! Well the forecast for this part of the world is SNOW!!!! Okay, I don't actually know the forecast because we're not allowed to get on weather.com, but if this week is anything like last week, then it's Snow, snow, snow, SNOW! Well, I guess I should say that last week started out so wonderful! At the beginning of the week the temps were in the mid 40's!!! That was amazing, but then it just snowed all day Saturday and All day Sunday, so now it's just a winter wonderland here.

So here's the funny story for the week. We went to go see this babushka because it was her 83rd birthday and her family is a little bit... well rude to her (basically her daughter is just waiting for her to die so that they can have her apartment...). So we went over with the elders this week and brought her flowers and some fruit and she made us some food. So she brings out this drink for us, and it's just this typical Russian drink that we have everywhere called Kompote (which is just like homemade juice). So everyone tastes it, and she is not in the room by the way, and we all agree it is disgusting and perhaps a little fermented, except for one elder who thinks it is delicious and has already drank all of his cup. We all just laughed at him and told him it was fermented and that getting drunk on your mission is not allowed. It was so funny and perhaps a great example of why you should be careful about the food you eat when you're visiting people's homes in Russia. So anyways, follow up, the next morning when the elder woke up he said he had the most horrible headache of his life and was convinced that he was hung over, which made us laugh even more because all he had was a small cup of fermented Russian kompote, which shouldn't make anyone hung over. So that was our laugh this week.

In other news we have this investigator right now named Lyosha. He's super cool, just married a return missionary from our branch and now he is taking the missionary lessons. So things were going a little bit rough with him, but we prayed and planned and taught a lesson about prophets, and it was so cool because I don't know what changed but he was so much more accepting and actually full heartedly accepted the commitment to pray to know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and the Thomas S. Monson is his prophet right now. It was just a good lesson, and then they came to church together yesterday for the first time since I have been here, and it was just so good. It made me so happy about my life. So that's our miracle with him.

Also this week we went to this really good show where they sang and danced Russian style. Sister Tunney's dreams came true because she got to see a grown man do a toe touch, and I just loved my life the whole time we were watching it because I just love to watch good singing and dancing. So that's that, and it was a blast to have a "night on the town" well, it was only a two hour show, but it was still our night out for the transfer.

Okay, one last story. Since it was so snowy this week we went knocking last night. And just for reference on a list of things I love about missionary work, knocking would be placed in the bottom 3 right along with having to put up with drunk men and being squished between two stinky people on public transportation. Anyways, but we went knocking and it went actually pretty good at first and we actually taught a lesson and people were just being nice! It made me so happy and almost convinced me that I had the wrong idea about knocking. But then we got to this one building and it happened. This lady came out of her apartment and started yelling at us and telling us that she was going to call the police if we didn't get out and saying some not very nice things to us... and so we just got out of that building and went to the next and it was whatever. But then when we were waiting for a Tramvai to get home there was this little girl on a tram that was sticking her tongue out at me and then I started making faces at her and she thought it was funny and then as her tram pulled away we waved goodbye and then I was just so happy to be in Russia again because I had made a new friend. So the moral of this story is that we should be more child like and nicer to people who knock on our door trying to sell us stuff. Because that's what Jesus would do.

Well, I love you all and wish you the best of a week!

Until next time,

Sister Leavitt

It's a little bit Funny......

Oh I can totally see her having little mints on the pillows for her guest.  That's our Courtney!  Have a great week.  ~ Mamma K

Hey hey everybody!!!!  Well I can't believe that another Monday is
here. I feel like in on my mission Mondays have become my way of
judging how fast time is going and at the rate Mondays have been
flying by lately I feel like all of the other days are nonexistant.
But this week was so good! Well, it was mostly good. My companion was
pretty sick for all of it, so it involved a bunch of resting, but some
interesting things still managed to happen. So last Monday we had a
going away party for the senior couple that has been serving in this
area. They're getting transfered to Rostov, which is really strange
because senior couples don't usually get transfered, so it took us all
by surprised, but they are starting family strengthening classes, and
addiction recovery for our whole mission, so they will get to travel
to the whole mission and get these things going. I'm actually really
excited that they are because members and nonmembers alike can really
benifit from those two things. Anyways, so we had a going away party
at their house and we made really good Russian food and it was so much
fun.

Also this week was zone conference! So the zone that I am in right now
is HUGE!!! Not in the sense that it has a lot of missionaries, but in
the sense that the area we cover with our 6 companionships is really
big. Some of the elders have to take a 6 hour train ride just to get
to where we had conference, which, lucky for us, was at our branch.
Since everyone lives so far away they all came the night before zone
conferece. That was fun because we had english club that night so they
got to help us with that and Sister Tunney and I had a really fun
lesson planned because we wanted to teach them food and cooking words,
so we taught them how to make cookies. It was  a blast. Then in order
for everyone to have a place to sleep we had to let 6 elders stay in
our appartment and we had to go to the senior couple's appartment to
sleep. It was so much fun. We made our apartment like a hotel and put
chocolates on their pillows. Also Sister Tunney and I really enjoy
cooking, so we made them dinner so that they wouldn't eat all of our
other food :). Anyways, Sister Tunney and I also had a presentation at
zone conferece on the role of the spirit in conversion. We did a
really funny object lesson where we had Sister Potter go into this
room with an elder for two minutes and put makeup on the elder, the
funny part is that for the first one she had no light, for the second
one she had a flash light and for the third one she had all light,
then we just compared it to how the Holy Ghost should be the main
teacher when we are teaching and when we try to do the teaching
without him it usually doesn't work out very well.

We also got to go to this dancing class that the senior couple here
has been doing because we weren't able to meet with one of our new
members this week and she told us she would be there, so we just went
to talk to her, but it turned out to be so much fun I haven't really
danced in a while and I loved it. Granted we could only do the line
dances and the rest of the time we watched, but it was blast and ps,
our new member is doing so well and it's making me so happy. She is
the one who was baptized the week before I got here and she is just
starting to make so many friends in our branch and is really starting
to understand better. I am so proud of her. Yesterday at church she
didn't even sit by us, she sat by members and talked with them and made
friends!!! So that is wonderful.

Anyways life is good, time is flying and the work is going!!!

I love you all and I hope you have an excellent week.

Until next week,

Sister Leavitt

Walking up hill in the SNOW!

Only 4 more weeks, and they are going so fast.  Enjoy each one of her last emails.

Hello Everyone!!!!!! So here we go for this week. First of all it was still really cold this week! There was snow and ice and I was just so cold. But we are living through it and everyone is saying that the cold should be leaving soon. So I am definitly looking foward to that!

Last monday we had an amazing family night with this family in our branch. They have active members and inactive members and a few non-members. It went so well and the spirit was so strong. We taught them the plan of salvation and had them teach most of it and they active family members were great with that because they just bore their testimonies of the plan of salvation and it was amazing. We hope to reativate and support that family in the next little while. I met the branch president this weeek who turns out to be an ex member of a rock band and has such an amazing conversoin story. Also I found some soy milk!!!!

I met another one of the new members of the branch this week and she is doing so well! She will have been a member for a year this March and she is preparing to go to the temple!!!! She is so solid and always looking for ways to serve and help people and she is just so amazing. I am just so amazed constantly by the faith and determination of the members in Russia. I love them so much!!!

Well, I don't really have much to say this week. But I am so happy here and I love serving in this new area.

I love you all and wish you a good week.

Sister Leavitt