The Days are Marching On!

Guess what? I'm 20! Thank you, thank you, thank you for making my birthday so great. I cannot even tell you all how much I loved my presents, packages, and letters. They made me so happy and definitely made my day so special. I started off the day to waking up to a loud knock on the door. I went and opened it to find my door covered in sticky notes from Sister Mecham and the sisters in her room. I'm going to attach a picture. It was so sweet. They had all written things they loved about me and made a sign that said, "Happy Birthday! We love Sister Harris because...." and then the sticky notes were all nice things. Then another sign that said, "Love, the Sisters in 321." Like, what the heck? Could they get any more darling? It was the cutest. Definitely a fabulous start to the day. Then, we went to class. The Elders wouldn't let me come in the room for a second but when I did, all the lights were off. They yelled, "Surprise!" and turned on the lights. They had made me this fantastic card (which I also am sending a picture of.) that used candy to replace some of the words and it was on this cut up box. It was so funny and so nice of them to take the time to make it for me. They had also bought me a normal card and all wrote nice things to me. I'm thorougly convinced we have the best Elders in the entire world. Then, they all went out in the hall and told me to sit down. They come in and start singing this Russian folk song and doing this dance formation. Hahahaha. It was unreal. I'm going to try to send the video of it so hopefully that works. When my teacher got to class she had me come up and sit in a chair at the front of the class. Apparently in Russia it's a tradition to pull on the birthday person's ears as many times as they are old. So she like tugged on my ears 20 times. It was not enjoyable. Haha. And then my other teacher sang the Russian Birthday song to me. I advise you all to look it up on youtube because it's great. I got a package from Jill and Scott which was seriously the greatest and then I got a package from Micki and Tiffany and my grandparents. Holy cow. Why do I have the best family in the entire world? I cannot even begin to tell you how much all of that meant to me. The present from Micki and Tiff is probably the greatest thing of my entire life. Oh my gosh. I couldn't even look at it without crying and I spent personal study reading it. I couldn't keep from laughing and crying and smiling the whole time. I am so blessed. Thank you to everyone who contributed to the 20 Things Book. I love it more than air. It's the greatest thing. Oh, and the skirt and shirt and picture were great too! Thank you so much! Anyways, guess who I ran into on my birthday as well? Elder Neely! Cool, huh? He had to come up to this MTC for this teaching thing he was helping and I happened to run into him so we got to talk for a minute. That was a pretty cool birthday present too! Overall, it was a super fantastic birthday. I cannot say this enough, THANK YOU. (yes, please read that as if I'm yelling.) Because you're all the best. It was so good.

 

Other than that this week has flown by! I have 13 days left in the MTC. I cannot wait! Send me on that plane to Russia, please. We are all so excited. We get our travel plans on Thursday and it's almost all I can think about. I have been so grateful for my time at the MTC but I'm soooo ready to be in Russia. I do have a couple of stories of cool things that happened this week though. So one of our teachers, Sister Brewer is just the coolest. She's a native from Russia and she joined the Church when she was 15. Then she went on a mission to Temple Square. There, she would sometimes give tours in Russian. One of the ones she gave was to a pretty high profile Russian Ambassador. During this time was when there were very few missionaries being let into Russia, it was about a year or two ago. So she gave this tour and she felt that it went horrible. She just didn't feel like it was very good at all and that the ambassador seemed totally disinterested but she kept going anyways. The Ambassador met with one of the 70 later that night and talked about how impressed he was with his tour guide and asked where they found such exceptional young people. He then went on to say he was going to do everything in his power to get more missionaries into Russia. How cool is that? We're all here, going to Russia because of cute little Sister Brewer's tour. The power of one person is pretty dang cool.

 

Also, I had my exit interview on Sunday. I cannot believe that. It feels like a week ago I had just got here and didn't know one word of Russian. I still don't know a ton but I can have a conversation in Russian. Granted, it has to be about the gospel but since that's my purpose I'm pretty happy about that. Also, right now there are currently two Russian Branches. We are getting 100 more Russians in one week so this week they are creating a third Russian branch. Crazy, huh? The work is really moving forward in Russia and I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am to be a part of it. Oh, and tonight we are going to the first ever MTC Devotional to be held at the Marriot Center. We've exceeded numbers that can fit here! That's a pretty legit problem to have. Both MTC campuses will be bussed or walking to the BYU Marriot Center tonight and rumor has it that someone pretty big is going to be speaking. So cool. In Relief Society this week they said we have 1297 sisters at this MTC plus more at the other campus. That's insanity. They had over 850 missionaries come in last week. So cool.

 

Oh, and of course, how can I forget one of my most embarassing moments thus far. So we are teaching our "investigator", her name is Gala and shes' actually our teacher. Anyways, she's playing herself before she was converted so she's really fun to teach. So we taught her yesterday and she asked how we were doing. I said we were doing very good, or "ochen horashow." Then she asked why. I told her because she was our favorite person to see. I did an exact translation from English to Russian which is, "loobeemie chelovyek." But in Russian that's what they call their boyfriends. So I told her we were doing good because she was our boyfriend and we got to see her. Perfect. It was so awkward. She laughed and I couldn't even pull it together because I was laughing to hard. Hahah. So great.

 

I don't really have much else to say! The days are marching on. I basically sit in a classroom and study the Gospel and Russian for 16 hours a day. OH! I saw Sister LeSeueur. That's not spelled right. I didn't get to be her host but I ran into her a couple of days later. She's doing so good and it's so fun to see her around the MTC. I also ran into Elder Mark and I get to see Sister Mecham everday so that's the greatest thing. I love you all so much. Thank you for all the things you do for me and for the letters and packages and the best birthday ever. I couldn't ask for anything more. I love you! Have a fantastic week.

 

Love, Cectpa Harris

 

Oh, also, several people have asked me this. You say Cectpa: see es tra. It's not super different from Sister. Love you!