The last of the holidays.

1/12/14

The holidays are finally over! I never thought I would be someone who was happy that the holidays were over but it's been Christmas here for the last month. And no one has been answering their phone. Last week was the Russian Christmas so hopefully things will start moving back to normal. This week was good! We had a lot of time to contact but we met a lot of really cool people. We met this one lady who was probably the nicest woman in the entire world. She kept telling us we were beautiful and calling me her master. Hahah. Good times. An upside from the week, we contacted a man with a cross-bow. He invited us to target practice and to an international yoga studio. I was reading over my journal from the beginning of my mission and it was so weird to see how much I've changed. To see how much my ideas and focuses have changed. We were updating the area book last night and I was looking at all of the members' pages and I was hit by how much I love these people. Every single one of them is such a huge miracle. I was thinking about how much I love the girl we saw get baptized and that every member we have was also some missionary's miracle, someone's fasting and prayers, and thoughts. I'm so grateful to know all of these people, to know their stories and see them progress in the Gospel. I cannot think of any place I'd rather be than Nizhny Novgorod. I'm going to try to convince President to keep me here the rest of my mission. Haha. I don't see it going well. In other news, Sister Southworth is doing great! It's so weird to be the trainer and see all the progress she is making and have her not believe me when I tell her that she's doing good. Because I was that exact same way. I'm always blown away by the simple things in life that are universal, like smiling, or acts of kindness. I was getting the keys to our branch building from the guard and he said, "That girl is always smiling." in reference to Sister Southworth. And it's true. She is always smiling. It's something that people notice, something that makes them wonder what we have to be so happy about. I love that. I hope you all have the best of weeks. I love you! Love, Cectpa Harris