Hi fam!
I hope you had a wonderful Easter! And Happy Birthday to Shauna too! Easter here was very beautiful. We made a huge dinner for 10 (missionaries and some members) and it was a lot of work!! Now I better appreciate all that you do Mom! We made a pork roast, corn, a bunny-shaped cake and the Elders brought mashed potatoes.
The weather is just perfect right now. We went with a potential investigator this morning to the forest 30km away and there were some bogs too. The ground was very soft and felt like we were walking on mattresses, ha ha! We climbed to the top of a watch tower and We walked across the highway towards the oceanside to get to her country home. She's preparing to sell it because it's just too much work to keep it up by herself now that she's old. It was so cute~ The house was built some 118 years ago, but she's only owned it for the last 17 years. She did a lot of renovating, but it still looks very reminiscent of the period. I felt like I was in some sort of house turned into a museum, except we could actually touch and explore things, ha ha. After that, we tried to check out the ocean nearby, we saw some swans (?) but there wasn't really a beach so as we wandered around in the brush, we were just tromping around in the marshes and therefore got our shoes, feet, and pants soaked, ha ha ha. Buuuuuut it was still fun :)
Apparently Estonians like to color their eggs with onion peels that they wrap around the egg and then boil it to give it a brownish-yellowish color. Another interesting activity they do is to go around tapping the boiled eggs together to see who's cracks first. It's kinda like rock-paper-scissor fights, but with eggs :) We had a good turn out of people at Game night and several investigators too! The children did a puppet show of the Good Samaritan which was really cute.
It turns out that we didn't have the exchange last week, but it will be Friday of this week. I'll be going up to Tallinn and Sis. LeDuc will be here with Sis. G. I think this is an indicator that I may be moving to Tallinn next transfer. There's a high possibility, but I suppose we should wait for the official word in two or so weeks. Our District Conference (like stake conference for all the members here) has been change from this weekend until the final weekend in May because Elder Schwitzer of the Seventy will be coming from Moscow. I'm kinda bummed because I was looking forward to see everyone, but we'll have to wait some more.
Now that Easter's over, that means that Mother's Day is coming soon and a phone call home too! Better get excited~ I've been reading several Ensign articles lately about Easter and from conferences past. Those have been very uplifting and inspiring be to continually improve.
I love you all sooooooo much!
Love,
Courtney
Monday, April 25, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
April 18, 2011 Happy Easter
Dear loved ones,
It's been a little bit of an up-and-down week 'round here. The weather is really pleasant now, "all you need's a light jacket!" Sort of like that, ha ha.
We tried to invite Lempi to be baptized when we were teaching her, but I don't think she really understood what we were getting at so she didn't quite give us a direct answer. At least we had a member there to help explain a little. Oh well, we'll have to try again this week. I'm not sure if sometimes Estonians really understand what 'authority' means. That's where we could use a little more member help to testify about that. Jüri doesn't seem ready to make the sacrifices to come to church, so he can't get baptized on April 30th like we'd planned. We told him we'd move it to May, but haven't set an exact date. We hope to teach him with some other members so they can share their experiences with the blessings of sacrifice. Ain is our other investigator with a baptismal date. He's kinda hit rock-bottom this week as some family problems have really been stressing him out and causing him to turn to drinking as a solution. Thankfully the Elders were able to come with us on Thursday to go visit him and do a little intervention. That made me feel a little safer. Ain is a nice man, but he's kinda huggy and even more so when he's emotional. Yesterday, we asked the branch president and his councilor to try giving him a call to check up on him and provide support. Ain did say that he wants to get baptized with his son on the same day. His daughter, age 17-18? was baptized a year and a half ago, but she's been inactive since I've been here. I didn't even know he had a son who's somewhere in his 20s. Ain gave the Elder his son's number. Who knows if he's really interested, but if so, we have a lot of work to do!
Since the first weekend of this month was conference, and because we didn't have time for testimonies last week, our branch president wanted to have testimony meeting yesterday. It was really great! I hope that this means the branch is on a rebound because things just seemed a little off during winter. Actually, on the way to church, I sat a across from a lady who was fumbling with some bags on her lap so I ask if it'd help if I hold on to it, to which she declined. Then she said "You must be a Mormon." I said that that's usually what people call us, but it's a different name. Then she said that she could tell I was a member because we're always so willing to help. I asked "so, you've talked to missionaries before?" "I'm a member" *gulp* "Ohhhh, ok!" She's been inactive for several years because she has bad health and somebody (I bet it was a missionary) told her that she doesn't love God since she won't come, or call a taxi to get to church or something like that. Ouch. Yeah. She's still bitter about that and so I said that I'd like to talk more with her later, but she said we'll see in the future. Oddly enough, I talked to the Elders about her and Elder Baird said he called her the night before, so obviously God wants us to get in contact with her :)
We maaaaaay be having exchanges this week...? I'm not sure. Sis.Wrigley was supposed to come down last week while her companions went to Lithuania for Sis. G's braces, but she was too sick so she stayed with the senior couple in Tallinn. So, perhaps we'll try again this week! Elder Elmer said he has some news for us, but won't say anything until tomorrow's district meeting :P BUT, I did get an e-mail from President Dance that includes the exchange report, so I think it's a go, for sure! (and if it's not, ha ha, oh well) Gotta run now!
Have a lovely Easter!
Love,
Courtney
It's been a little bit of an up-and-down week 'round here. The weather is really pleasant now, "all you need's a light jacket!" Sort of like that, ha ha.
We tried to invite Lempi to be baptized when we were teaching her, but I don't think she really understood what we were getting at so she didn't quite give us a direct answer. At least we had a member there to help explain a little. Oh well, we'll have to try again this week. I'm not sure if sometimes Estonians really understand what 'authority' means. That's where we could use a little more member help to testify about that. Jüri doesn't seem ready to make the sacrifices to come to church, so he can't get baptized on April 30th like we'd planned. We told him we'd move it to May, but haven't set an exact date. We hope to teach him with some other members so they can share their experiences with the blessings of sacrifice. Ain is our other investigator with a baptismal date. He's kinda hit rock-bottom this week as some family problems have really been stressing him out and causing him to turn to drinking as a solution. Thankfully the Elders were able to come with us on Thursday to go visit him and do a little intervention. That made me feel a little safer. Ain is a nice man, but he's kinda huggy and even more so when he's emotional. Yesterday, we asked the branch president and his councilor to try giving him a call to check up on him and provide support. Ain did say that he wants to get baptized with his son on the same day. His daughter, age 17-18? was baptized a year and a half ago, but she's been inactive since I've been here. I didn't even know he had a son who's somewhere in his 20s. Ain gave the Elder his son's number. Who knows if he's really interested, but if so, we have a lot of work to do!
Since the first weekend of this month was conference, and because we didn't have time for testimonies last week, our branch president wanted to have testimony meeting yesterday. It was really great! I hope that this means the branch is on a rebound because things just seemed a little off during winter. Actually, on the way to church, I sat a across from a lady who was fumbling with some bags on her lap so I ask if it'd help if I hold on to it, to which she declined. Then she said "You must be a Mormon." I said that that's usually what people call us, but it's a different name. Then she said that she could tell I was a member because we're always so willing to help. I asked "so, you've talked to missionaries before?" "I'm a member" *gulp* "Ohhhh, ok!" She's been inactive for several years because she has bad health and somebody (I bet it was a missionary) told her that she doesn't love God since she won't come, or call a taxi to get to church or something like that. Ouch. Yeah. She's still bitter about that and so I said that I'd like to talk more with her later, but she said we'll see in the future. Oddly enough, I talked to the Elders about her and Elder Baird said he called her the night before, so obviously God wants us to get in contact with her :)
We maaaaaay be having exchanges this week...? I'm not sure. Sis.Wrigley was supposed to come down last week while her companions went to Lithuania for Sis. G's braces, but she was too sick so she stayed with the senior couple in Tallinn. So, perhaps we'll try again this week! Elder Elmer said he has some news for us, but won't say anything until tomorrow's district meeting :P BUT, I did get an e-mail from President Dance that includes the exchange report, so I think it's a go, for sure! (and if it's not, ha ha, oh well) Gotta run now!
Have a lovely Easter!
Love,
Courtney
Monday, April 11, 2011
April 11, 2011
Hello!
Yesterday was quite lovely. Ain came to church, and Lempi left her Lutheran church a little early to come make it to sacrament meeting :) Unfortunately, they didn't stay for the last session of conference, but one of the Elders' investigators did! (she was found through the open house 6 months ago. She starting to attend again now that work isn't so crazy :) Ain told us he wanted to give a bunch of brochures to a friend of his, so that's cool! President Dance paid a surprise visit to our sacrament meeting (we only found out on Friday), and he spoke and so did a young man, so we actually didn't have testimony meeting, hehe. The young man actually was serving a mission in Hungary and he was actually in the same MTC group as Leslie Jordan. I don't know really the details for him coming home a few weeks ago, but I know Pres. Dance assigned him to speak yesterday, so it was good to see he's doing all right. After church we think we might try renting bikes sometime when it warms up a little more. We had Zone Conference on Friday and I was surprised to see it looked like it had recently snowed as we rode into town. However, it looked like lots of snow had melted in Pärnu once we were back in our apartment. Zone Conference was excellent!! Elder Neuenschwander, an Emeritus member of the Seventy, and his wife, are now family history-ish missionaries in Moscow. They've been assigned to speak to the members here in the Baltics about keeping records and the importance of them, but they also joined our conference. After the conference, we rode into the old town part of Tallinn and enjoyed some pancakes at Kompressor. It was really good, and nice on the wallet too! I finally had a sneek peek of Old Town, but I wish I could have explored more. Oh well. That day'll come sometime :D
I still have to finish watching the last session of conference in English, but I've been really enjoying it so far. Hearing the prophet speak about temples has made me even more anxious to go. I hear the youth are having a conference in Helsinki, Finland so they can do a temple trip in July. I wish I could go!!!! I believe it was Elder Robbins (?) who talked about marking off children as 'Done' like some checklist. We all had a good chuckle at that! So, what would you say about that, family? I'm not quite there yet, huh? :P Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
We'll probably have to push back Jüri's baptismal date...*sigh* We had the branch president teach him with us once this week, but since Bro. Raid already has something against him, they were just kinda bickering, so it wasn't very effective to teach with a spirit of contention there :/ He's just lacking faith and trust that God will bless him if he just tries to live the commandments. We'll have to work on the basics, because he's going to need some more time to bring for the fruits meet for repentance and baptism. The good news for the mission is that we have 40 baptismal dates though!
You're right, that Boston trip was a long time ago! I could totally imagine Dad have a good laugh at Stacey's blunt response :P HAHAHAHAHA. I would've roared with laughter as too! I've seen a couple of beagles around town lately and so it's made me really miss our little silly Tilly~ Thanks for all the love, hugs, kisses, and support!
Much love,
Courtney
P.S. The contacts are great. Oh, and last week, Bro. Tšekmarjov made us amazing banana milkshakes. Oh boy, they were SOOOOO DELICIOUS. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, eh? :)
Yesterday was quite lovely. Ain came to church, and Lempi left her Lutheran church a little early to come make it to sacrament meeting :) Unfortunately, they didn't stay for the last session of conference, but one of the Elders' investigators did! (she was found through the open house 6 months ago. She starting to attend again now that work isn't so crazy :) Ain told us he wanted to give a bunch of brochures to a friend of his, so that's cool! President Dance paid a surprise visit to our sacrament meeting (we only found out on Friday), and he spoke and so did a young man, so we actually didn't have testimony meeting, hehe. The young man actually was serving a mission in Hungary and he was actually in the same MTC group as Leslie Jordan. I don't know really the details for him coming home a few weeks ago, but I know Pres. Dance assigned him to speak yesterday, so it was good to see he's doing all right. After church we think we might try renting bikes sometime when it warms up a little more. We had Zone Conference on Friday and I was surprised to see it looked like it had recently snowed as we rode into town. However, it looked like lots of snow had melted in Pärnu once we were back in our apartment. Zone Conference was excellent!! Elder Neuenschwander, an Emeritus member of the Seventy, and his wife, are now family history-ish missionaries in Moscow. They've been assigned to speak to the members here in the Baltics about keeping records and the importance of them, but they also joined our conference. After the conference, we rode into the old town part of Tallinn and enjoyed some pancakes at Kompressor. It was really good, and nice on the wallet too! I finally had a sneek peek of Old Town, but I wish I could have explored more. Oh well. That day'll come sometime :D
I still have to finish watching the last session of conference in English, but I've been really enjoying it so far. Hearing the prophet speak about temples has made me even more anxious to go. I hear the youth are having a conference in Helsinki, Finland so they can do a temple trip in July. I wish I could go!!!! I believe it was Elder Robbins (?) who talked about marking off children as 'Done' like some checklist. We all had a good chuckle at that! So, what would you say about that, family? I'm not quite there yet, huh? :P Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
We'll probably have to push back Jüri's baptismal date...*sigh* We had the branch president teach him with us once this week, but since Bro. Raid already has something against him, they were just kinda bickering, so it wasn't very effective to teach with a spirit of contention there :/ He's just lacking faith and trust that God will bless him if he just tries to live the commandments. We'll have to work on the basics, because he's going to need some more time to bring for the fruits meet for repentance and baptism. The good news for the mission is that we have 40 baptismal dates though!
You're right, that Boston trip was a long time ago! I could totally imagine Dad have a good laugh at Stacey's blunt response :P HAHAHAHAHA. I would've roared with laughter as too! I've seen a couple of beagles around town lately and so it's made me really miss our little silly Tilly~ Thanks for all the love, hugs, kisses, and support!
Much love,
Courtney
P.S. The contacts are great. Oh, and last week, Bro. Tšekmarjov made us amazing banana milkshakes. Oh boy, they were SOOOOO DELICIOUS. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, eh? :)
Monday, April 4, 2011
April 4, 2011 Generel Conference
You're already in the high 90s??!? Wow. Today (finally) is absolutely gorgeous~ I think I might ditch the boots and leggings soon. Wearing pants under skirts for the last, well, 5 months or so
might take some adjusting to go without, he he! It's also strange to see how the sidewalks seem to grow nowadays. Were they really that big before the snow? I dunno. I'm glad to hear all is going well back home!
I got the package last week, woo hoo! The Starburst jelly beans didn't last long though, ha ha ha. They were just sooooo goooood. Like a burst of flavor in your mouth (hence the name? lol) Now that's American candy for ya ;D
We have Zone conference in Tallinn on Friday and I think some Emeritus member of the Seventy is doing a broadcast on Sunday. General Conference was great! We'll watch the rest of it in English this week or in the following weeks. We actually had 3 investigators come to at least one of the sessions! 2 of them are men that have baptismal dates, one for the 30th this month, but we still have a lot to teach them. The hard thing with Jüri is that we're experiencing some
resistance from some of the branch members who don't feel comfortable about him. We need a fellow lady member to teach him with us, but some declined or couldn't make it so we had to have the Elders help us teach. I think there are rumors going around about Jüri, which may or
may not be true, but I think he's trying to change. We'll be able to tell by how well he keeps his commitments when we teach him next time.
Now for some good news! Turns out Sis. Aitken was misdiagnosed and she actually just has Mononucleosis, hence the extreme fatigue. So, I guess once she can keep up a missionary's schedule for a full week, then she'll be ok to come back. I would think she'd come back here
since she's already learned some Estonian. Elder Aardema went back to Tartu, so now Elder Elmer is here and this is Elder Baird's last transfer. For today's p-day, we'll be playing tennis with the Elders and one of their English students, so we're excited for that :) Gah, I can't think of what else to write about!! Sorry fam! I get pressured and then my mind goes blank >.< But I hope you know I love you so much. You're such a great strength and support to me!
This joke's for you Ryan: What is a Russian's favorite movie? Horror Show!
Much love,
Courtney
P.S. Just so you know, my release date is December 9th. I've known for about a month now but I forgot to tell you :P
might take some adjusting to go without, he he! It's also strange to see how the sidewalks seem to grow nowadays. Were they really that big before the snow? I dunno. I'm glad to hear all is going well back home!
I got the package last week, woo hoo! The Starburst jelly beans didn't last long though, ha ha ha. They were just sooooo goooood. Like a burst of flavor in your mouth (hence the name? lol) Now that's American candy for ya ;D
We have Zone conference in Tallinn on Friday and I think some Emeritus member of the Seventy is doing a broadcast on Sunday. General Conference was great! We'll watch the rest of it in English this week or in the following weeks. We actually had 3 investigators come to at least one of the sessions! 2 of them are men that have baptismal dates, one for the 30th this month, but we still have a lot to teach them. The hard thing with Jüri is that we're experiencing some
resistance from some of the branch members who don't feel comfortable about him. We need a fellow lady member to teach him with us, but some declined or couldn't make it so we had to have the Elders help us teach. I think there are rumors going around about Jüri, which may or
may not be true, but I think he's trying to change. We'll be able to tell by how well he keeps his commitments when we teach him next time.
Now for some good news! Turns out Sis. Aitken was misdiagnosed and she actually just has Mononucleosis, hence the extreme fatigue. So, I guess once she can keep up a missionary's schedule for a full week, then she'll be ok to come back. I would think she'd come back here
since she's already learned some Estonian. Elder Aardema went back to Tartu, so now Elder Elmer is here and this is Elder Baird's last transfer. For today's p-day, we'll be playing tennis with the Elders and one of their English students, so we're excited for that :) Gah, I can't think of what else to write about!! Sorry fam! I get pressured and then my mind goes blank >.< But I hope you know I love you so much. You're such a great strength and support to me!
This joke's for you Ryan: What is a Russian's favorite movie? Horror Show!
Much love,
Courtney
P.S. Just so you know, my release date is December 9th. I've known for about a month now but I forgot to tell you :P
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
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
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
Monday, March 21, 2011
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
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
Monday, March 14, 2011
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
Monday, March 7, 2011
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
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
Monday, February 28, 2011
February 28, 2011 End of February
Things are starting to warm up a little more! The temperatures are fluctuating around the freezing point, so that's nice. I hope that means that the nasty sheets of ice on the paths around town will be mostly melted by next week? Ok, maybe it won't happen that quickly, but hey, we can dream :)
Thursday was Estonia's 93rd anniversary of their (first) independence. We met with some of the members at the church that morning to sing the national hymn, and listen to them tell stories and we sang some more song from the hymnbook. One of our eldest members even brought her traditional Estonian garb so I got a picture of that! We tried asking folks if they do anything special for their holiday, but we never got any really good answers. It made me wonder what America's Independence Day would be like in the winter? No more barbecues, watermelon, and corn on the cob!! There might have been a parade here...? If so, I don't know where or when it was. We did see some dirt bike racing on the river. Yes, on the river. They plowed a flat track on the snow the day before and there were a bunch of races going on. That made me miss the Figure 8 races at the fair :)
We only had 8 people in our English class this past week, so that was kind of a bummer since half of them are old students. Maybe next week...? Anyway, we're doing a private lesson with one of them this week.
Unfortunately, I haven't heard anything from Sis. Aitken yet. Some fun stuff for this week is that we will have Sis. Tanner coming down form Tallinn for a few days. I think she's probably one of the most senior Russian-speaking sister missionaries, so that'll be awesome. We already have a referral for her to work with and Raissa (Russian, inactive member) agreed to meet when we have more exact details of when she's getting here and for how long.
One mini-miracle this week was that Sis. LeDuc contacted an old lady on the bus right before we had to go to district meeting and they started talking as if they were old friends! We got off at the same bus stop near the church, and she showed us right to her apartment. She invited us in, but we told her we'd have to come back in 2 hours because we had our meeting to get to so she agreed to that. After our meeting, we go back, and she cooked us a meal for lunch! Perfect
timing since I was getting rather hungry! She was a really sweet lady who had been through a lot and she was really grateful to have met us. She said God must have put us in her path :) She gladly accepted the Book of Mormon, although she's always been Lutheran. We had a return appointment for later in the week, but she called us that night and had to cancel because her daughter was going to come pick her up to go visit relatives, but she wants to meet again!
Gah!! Sorry fam! I ran out of time to tell you more this week, but I hope you all know I love you tremendously! Thanks always for the prayers and love.
Courtney
P.S. Could you tell me Maureen's mailing address when you get it? :)
Thursday was Estonia's 93rd anniversary of their (first) independence. We met with some of the members at the church that morning to sing the national hymn, and listen to them tell stories and we sang some more song from the hymnbook. One of our eldest members even brought her traditional Estonian garb so I got a picture of that! We tried asking folks if they do anything special for their holiday, but we never got any really good answers. It made me wonder what America's Independence Day would be like in the winter? No more barbecues, watermelon, and corn on the cob!! There might have been a parade here...? If so, I don't know where or when it was. We did see some dirt bike racing on the river. Yes, on the river. They plowed a flat track on the snow the day before and there were a bunch of races going on. That made me miss the Figure 8 races at the fair :)
We only had 8 people in our English class this past week, so that was kind of a bummer since half of them are old students. Maybe next week...? Anyway, we're doing a private lesson with one of them this week.
Unfortunately, I haven't heard anything from Sis. Aitken yet. Some fun stuff for this week is that we will have Sis. Tanner coming down form Tallinn for a few days. I think she's probably one of the most senior Russian-speaking sister missionaries, so that'll be awesome. We already have a referral for her to work with and Raissa (Russian, inactive member) agreed to meet when we have more exact details of when she's getting here and for how long.
One mini-miracle this week was that Sis. LeDuc contacted an old lady on the bus right before we had to go to district meeting and they started talking as if they were old friends! We got off at the same bus stop near the church, and she showed us right to her apartment. She invited us in, but we told her we'd have to come back in 2 hours because we had our meeting to get to so she agreed to that. After our meeting, we go back, and she cooked us a meal for lunch! Perfect
timing since I was getting rather hungry! She was a really sweet lady who had been through a lot and she was really grateful to have met us. She said God must have put us in her path :) She gladly accepted the Book of Mormon, although she's always been Lutheran. We had a return appointment for later in the week, but she called us that night and had to cancel because her daughter was going to come pick her up to go visit relatives, but she wants to meet again!
Gah!! Sorry fam! I ran out of time to tell you more this week, but I hope you all know I love you tremendously! Thanks always for the prayers and love.
Courtney
P.S. Could you tell me Maureen's mailing address when you get it? :)
Monday, February 21, 2011
Pictures Again!
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