March 28, 2011 End of March

Hey hey!

I'm jealous of your weather right now. Ours can't seem to make up its mind! Winter doesn't seem to want to give up on its icy grasp just yet. It looks all nice and sunny in the morning, and then 15 minutes after we leave our apartment, it gets windy and snows. :? I don't get it. We had sort of a blizzard this morning but I think it might be kinda partially sunny right now.

The exchange was really fun! It was kind of nice to see a little more of the town. I didn't eat anything much different in Tallinn because we just made our own food :) Sis. Hoggard, who was down with Sis. LeDuc in Pärnu during the exchange, was the one with all the money, haha. I'm the one who takes care of the finances (yay for mah bankin' skillz~!) but we just made spaghetti and ate lots of toast and cereal. There are 3 Russian sisters in Tallinn, so thankfully they have enough beds for me to get one too. Sis. Grineviciute (sp?) is on a mini-mission (young adult member from Lithuania) but now we helped her do some of her paperwork for a full-time mission! She'll be serving here in the Baltics, Russian-speaking since she can't go anywhere else since she needs her braces on for like 3 years, (yikes) but also yay! We'll see more of her in the future! The time she's spent on the mini-mission will count to her total service time. I arrivedTuesday night so we tried to give a birthday card to an inactive but she wasn't home. On Wednesday, I got to sit through a missionary coordination meeting all in Russian (the Elders were worried I was getting blasted with the language, ha ha. I wish I at least knew some grammar basics so I could have learned more from this but oh well :P ) lucky me, hehe. After that, we make a big lunch and played a few rounds of Skip-Bo and Phase 10 (imported for Sis.
Hoggard's b-day a few weeks back :) Went to the church for a meeting with a young member and set off the alarm because Sis. Tanner forgot the code, ha ha ha! That was fun. Aaaaaaand to end that night, we taught an old man who knew some Estonian so I taught the first bit of the Plan of Salvation, but then I let them do the rest of the talking. It was a good, but looooong lesson so I tried to stay awake by the end of it, he he. Thursday was just back to Pärnu and we also did our weekly planning that day. Oh yeah! The 24th marked Sis. LeDuc's anniversary on her mission. WOW.

Friday was neat since we had all of our district's investigators with baptismal dates in attendance! We were celebrating the 70th birthday of one of the members so there was a LOT of food (which we conveniently used the leftovers for the following day's RS birthday event :) We also were celebrating Elder Aardema's birthday. After game night, we did an impromptu lesson with our 2 investigators (Ain and Jüri) and 2 members about the Book of Mormon which went very well.

We've found out that President Dance is doing transfer calls this evening, so methinks that means a lot of changes in the mission...? Elder Aardema predicts we'll be here just one more transfer and then move when the new sisters arrive. I think so too, but we'll see~

I think those comments about Lithuania could be said for the Baltic states in general, actually. The poor folks just aren't very used to being open and friendly. They kept to themselves during the Soviet time and that's still an ongoing trait, I'd say. Pärnu might be a little more of an exception, perhaps because they're accustomed to lots of summer visitors. We've been lucky to meet a lot of nice people, but we've still met angry, or unpolite people. Saturday night we had 2 people yell at us telling us to "leave them be. Nobody wants to hear what we have to say" Sure it's a downer, but it fades over time. What hurts more is that they have absolutely no idea that
giving us just 10 minutes could eternally change their lives for the better. "No time" is often an excuse that we get. Do we really not have enough time in our lives to allow God to bless us?

I'm really excited for General Conference this weekend! I think we'll watch it all in Estonian first with the members and then get together to watch it in English later on. Last night I read some of the March Liahona before bed and I really liked it :) Thanks for all the love, support and words of comfort and cheer!!

Hugs and kisses!
Courtney

March 21, 2011 Orange Blossoms

Greetings, loved ones!

Sooooo, this week has been pretty spiffy! Sisters' Conference was a good boost of girl power or something like that :) It was nice to get acquainted and re-acquainted with all the sisters in the mission. Apparently Sis. LeDuc and I are kinda legendary now~ Some of the sisters kept remarking how they'd heard about all the trials sisters have been having in Estonia. It's confirmed now that we'll have 2 sisters coming in May, so only one more transfer until we have to train! Sounds kinda nerve-racking, but well, I'm sure it'll work out just fine.

We're doing exchanges with the Russian sisters this week, so we're excited for that. I'll be heading up to Tallinn tomorrow night to be with Sis. Tanner and Sis. G (don't want to butcher her last name. It's pronounced something like Grinyevechyutye :P) and Sis. LeDuc is coming back here with Sis. Hoggard. The exchange should last until about Thursday morning, so I'm happy about a lil' trip!

Speakin' of trips, today was AWESOME. An English student drove us to Kihnu, an island that's 40 km away from Pärnu. How'd we get there? WE DROVE ON THE ICE. ON THE OCEAN. OH YES. Kinda one-in-a-lifetime-y since he told us that some years there isn't enough ice to safely drive cars on it. The island only has 600-700 residents, but it has its own unique culture so we checked out the local museum there. We got some fun pictures, but you'll have to wait
a little longer to see those :P

Last week the Elders got a baptismal date for a man who actually lives on our side of town so they've handed him off to us. Funny thing was that on our way to go meet him at the church, a slightly drunk man actually started talking to us and so Sis. LeDuc's friendly greeting had him following us around like a lost puppy :P I called the Elders to tell them we were late and that we had a friend, and they said to go ahead and bring him. We took him to the church and he joined in on our lesson about the Word of Wisdom (go fig!) which was actually pretty good since the investigator was kinda teaching this man too. President Dance came to interview us on his way up to Tallinn on Saturday and he sorta chastised us for that, oops~ Another miracle that day was that a lady had randomly walked into the church that morning and happened to find the branch president there with the Elders. She lives in an apartment building nearby and thought she'd come check it out. She's a cute old lady and they invited her to come to game night, which she did and she was really good about participating too! Vilma didn't show for church like we thought she would though, so that was a little disappointing. I hope she didn't get sick.

Much love,
Courtney

March 14, 2011

Tšau ('ciao' or 'chau') Fam!

I love how you always tell me what you ate for Sunday dinner. It makes me hungry for some home cookin'!! I finally tried making my own Estonian-style pancakes yesterday. They turned out pretty well. I didn't have a recipe and I couldn't remember exactly what measurements Sis. Pruel had showed, so I just put what looked good inside there :P Estonian pancakes are more like crepes, just a little thicker and often fried with a little bit of oil.

Let's see, things that happened this week... Well, we had our apartment checked by the missionary couple who came down from Tallinn for the day. Boy, Sis. Perry checked like every nook and cranny in the kitchen, he he. I guess we still did very well (Sis. LeDuc is kind of a clean-freak :) even though she gave us a whole list of things to do :P We randomly paid a visit to the old lady who fed us lunch several weeks ago. With the help of Kerle (she had been teaching us Estonian right before the visit) we convinced her to come to game night. Not sure if she's ready to try our church out yet, but she lives right next to it, so there's really no excuse ;) Last night, we weren't sure where to go to start doing some knocking so we were just going to hop on the soonest bus. At our bus stop, we saw a lady in a neighboring building whom we'd knocked into but we haven't been able to meet with her since. She was sending off a visitor, who I also know quite well from English classes last fall! What a coincidence!! (or divine help!) Anyway, we had a nice long chat and then we followed her to walk to the seashore and then back. When we finally get to meet with her again, we'd like to teach her the plan of salvation, since her husband passed away 10 years ago and her mother has cancer.

Quite a few of the lessons we had for this past week fell through, but we were able to still meet with some people. We have one investigator with a baptismal date, (his name is Ain :) but that's not until June because he wants to be baptized in the river :) We challenged him to read the Book of Mormon before his baptism, and he's right on schedule so far! He admits that a lot of it is confusing for him, but when we meet with him, we can explain that stuff. He wants me to try playing his accordion too. I'm hoping we can finally get down to his place this week since he lives out of town a bit and we have to take a special bus to get there.

Things are warming up gradually now~ yay! We're going sledding today, so I hope the hills are still good and that they haven't gotten too slushy yet. There are tons of puddles and slush on the sidewalks and paths so dodging them sometimes feels like we're in some Mario game, jumping from one platform to the other :P Sis. LeDuc and I are super pumped to go down to Riga tonight and have Sisters' Conference tomorrow! Yay for road trips! I'm just excited to really meet/see the other sisters throughout the mission. Our companionship feels a little...well..lonely sometimes? Ha ha ha! I mean, we are the only Estonian-speaking sisters in the whole wide world. No pressure, right?

Yes, we did hear about the damage in Japan. That's amazing that all the missionaries are well. Now they'll have their hands busy with work to do. I must say, we missionaries here in Estonia often pondered what sort of effect a natural disaster would have on the work here... buuuuut, besides maybe flooding of rivers from melts or rain, I don't think Estonia is at risk for a natural disaster. Well, unless if all the food stores closed for a week or so. Then we'd have a famine, :P Estonians go to the store like everyday to buy maybe 3-4 things, he he.

Gotta go eat some grub and hit the slopes now!

I love you so so so much,

Courtney

March 7, 2011

Hiya family!

WH-WH-WH-WHAT?! Kara Morris is going on a mission now too?!?! I didn't know that, but she'd be super!! Where's she going? I got a belated birthday package from Noel, Kristin and Heather on Friday. Inside was some Golden Grahams, water colors, letters, and a good assortment of candy, yay! It's good to hear about your recent exercise goals. Sis. LeDuc and I will probably make some of our own in a few weeks. Gotta work off that winter weight! We've made some no-bake cookies several times this week and they turned out pretty well, so now we gotta get those recipes for people too :)

Sis. Tanner, a Russian-speaker, came down from Tallinn from Wednesday afternoon until Friday afternoon. We had a really fun time, and we even ate at Steffani's twice while she was here. She was adopted from Russia when she was 10, and she goes back home to Utah at the end of this month. Her older sister (also adopted) served in the Baltics, Russian-speaking a few years ago too! At least we'll get to see Sis. Tanner one last time at Sisters' Conference next week in Riga before she leaves :) We learned a lot from her. It was fun to see her talk to a few of the members in Russian. It made our conversations pretty interesting, ha ha!

Goodness' sake, I can't even think of what else to write about this week. It was kind of like a huge blur :P Some of the stuff I want to write about will take too long, so I should get started on a hand-written letter some..time... I'm a little behind on my journal-writing this week because I've been so pooped out at the end of the day and just slink right into bed. Aaaaaaaannd now I'm running out of time to e-mail now too.

We're going to go meet some of the members for lunch :) Today, we're going back to play badminton, this time to challenge the Elders since they couldn't make it last week. Last week, I ripped my legendary red swishy pants while playing a type of around-the-world game xP Nooooo! It got caught on a small nail sticking out of the wall (it's a VERY old gym) and thank groodness there was a nice mesh layer to protect my leg from being competely exposed, ha ha! I didn't even notice what happened until a participant gasped :P I just busted up laughing!!

I think tonight, Sis. Pruel wants to teach us how to cook something (maybe Estonian pancakes?) tonight, so I'm excited for that. Women's Day is Tuesday this week in Estonia (I think...), so the branch is meeting up that night at the highest hill in Pärnu (really just some bunny hill, like at a ski resort, hehe :) to do some sledding and drink tea or hot chocolate or something. I'm excited for that! I just hope the icy slopes won't be too unkind to my rump :P

I love you so so so much!

Courtney