January 31, 2011

Glad to hear the birthdays went well! I'll have to make up for not sending any love your way and send a good amount of white Lion bars or something! We've been having some really beautiful, sunny days. It's reminded me a lot of home, even if I have to wear some more clothing
here :)

Here' the most exciting news of the week: AILI (our newest convert!) IS GETTIN' HITCHED TO THE BRANCH PRESIDENT ON FEBRUARY 19TH!!!! OMGOODNESS SO ESSITIN'!!!!!! We have a wedding to plan for now!!!! The Elders bumped into Ülo (branch president) on Monday night and he spilled the beans to them so they called us that night with the news. The following day, Aili called us herself to invite us over to help "shovel some snow" although there wasn't a whole lot to do. We knew what she wanted to tell us, so we tried to play dumb about it :D Oh this is going to be so good for the branch! They're in their 60's and they're both so cute together. We missionaries have actually been wondering how long it'd take since we could tell that they definitely had a relationship~

Last week's preparation day consisted of an intense, 3-4 hour game of Risk. It was my first time ever playing (technically I played a few times back in the day on the PS1 with Colby, but I was 10 or so, so that doesn't count :) I nearly won, but I got a little greedy capturing territories and so I spread myself thin, allowing Elder Barney to wipe me out the next turn after he got a load of
reinforcements! Ha ha ha! I miss some of those intense strategy games. I'd be down for playing it today too. We might do a little sledding after lunch with some of the young members and then head back to the church to play some games :D Tonight, we planned an FHE with the Russian mafia *ahem* the people at that store. Reisa/Raisa? (the Russian lady) was totally down for us coming over and said we could do it in the cafeteria behind the store. The shop they run is kinda
DI-style I think, so we're going to share scriptures on service and play some games. The Elders and Janeli are coming too, so it should be really fun.

Our American-style cookies we baked for English class were a total hit! Everybody wants the recipe, and we just thought they're pretty average :P We baked all the cookies because we had a special spiritual thought, combined with the Elders' class. Everyone had the chance to take a cookie. For each cookie, Elder Aardema had to pay price of 10 push ups. Some people started to deny taking one, but he still had to do the push ups. This is meant to represent the Savior's sacrifice for us. He still payed for our sins even if we don't accept and use the Atonement and enjoy its blessings. That night, we and the Elders got on a bus that took us about 20 minutes
outside of Pärnu to Uulu, where an investigator lives. We had a swell time! He's been wanting us to come visit him for quite some time. Ain wasn't able to get baptized before because he wasn't married to his "life partner" but now she's moved out so we're going to help him work towards baptism again. The only thing is that he really wants to get baptized in the river, so that means he might wait until June :/ We'll see about that... Since I'm the pianist in the branch, Ain is super amazed at my skills, lol. He has 2 accordions and he kept shoving different songs at me that he wanted me to try but I've never played one before, so I've got a lot of practicing to do! It was totally fun though.

We had a few new lessons from knocking a little bit earlier in the week. We tried calling one back last night, but she said maybe next week we could meet again. Yesterday, I was surprised to see a member from the Tallinn branch down here with a friend. Her friend lives out of Pärnu maybe 30 minutes by car, but she said she really liked our church (she doesn't like where she goes at the moment). It's just difficult for her to come in the winter, but thankfully there's maybe
1 1/2 months left of that. I think she technically lives on the Elders' side, but maybe they'll give her to us ;)

Well, that's all the interesting news for this week! Sister LeDuc has been a little under the weather the last couple of days, but she should be back to normal in a day or two, methinks. Thanks for all the love, hugs, and kisses!

Love,
Courtney