June8th

Hey Fam!

Thanks for all of the emails!  You are all great!  I love hearing how you are all doing and just what you are doing in your lives. It really is important for me to hear and to know that life still goes on. So thanks for all that write and REPENT for all that don't and write me!  :)

It was a good week....as always...I feel like, although I have been here for awhile now....I feel like it’s starting to feel normal to do missionary work every day and it is just what I do now!  crazy huh?!    Russia is good :) for all those that asked. It has been HOT!!! way way too hot and humid!  I think it was like 86 yesterday or something and I just feel wet all of the time and it will soon get hotter I have heard....but I k now I should not complain because it is way hotter in other places. It’s strange it gets really hot and super cold too here!  Strange....anyways it has been raining like everyday too and I thought I would share about the rain because I love the rain!  The Russians on the other hand do not love the rain.  It will just be really really hot and then all of the sudden just a DOWN POUR comes!  And all of the Russians run away fast! And they all stand grouped together under building hang overs and in the crossing the street tunnels underground and under anything else they can find!  They just stay there until it stops!  And usually here, that is just like 20 minutes. But we have places to be people to see and things to do! And we are not scared of the rain so we just walk in it and everyone looks at us like we are crazy! Which we are a little bit.... but anyways we don’t have a lot of people come to church this week and a lot of people cancel appointments and say "I got all ready and then it started raining...so I couldn't come"....what a lame excuse! haha we thought Russians were all tough and macho....haha but anyways I told them that at home sometimes it rains all day and a lady asked me with shock and amazement, "so what do you do?! Stay at home all day?!" and I said...uh no...We just go out in the rain....she thought that was strange!


Me and my companion were going through the song book and we got to Angels we have Heard on High and I told her that Chelsea loves that song cause it says her name!  So I just thought I would tell chels that...and all of you of course :) she thought that was funny!

When I first came here people told me that in about my 3rd transfer it would feel like people started talking slower, but I didn't believe them, but it has happened! I feel like I am improving with the language little by little and I even understand when I read the Book of Mormon in Russian! It’s so great!  It’s strange, I can teach lessons in Russian all day long and talk to our investigators on the phone and do all that need to when it comes to doing missionary work but then when I just try to talk just because it just doesn't work! I guess that is the gift of tongues for you....

Grandma asked if I get to go to other places for visa and no, I just get to go to Finland. It used to be that they sent us all sorts of places but now we have a good set up with the temple president there and he gets our passports all ready for us and its close and there is a temple so...that’s it...but that’s ok, I like it there.

As you know I am reading in the New Testament right now and as I read in it and then a bit in the book of Mormon I have found that they match up! And I can always relate them to each other! Cool huh?!  like today I read in 2 cor 13:5 and examining yourself and asking yourself how you are doing g in living the gospel and then I read in alma 5:14-30 and it is pretty much a test in there! How to test yourself in how you are doing!  It was cool...but I don't know if I passed the test....but in the end he says, if you can’t answer everything correctly, repent!  I love that, it’s as simple as that, if you aren't doing something right, and then repent!  sometimes people get scared of that word...repent...but really all Heavenly Father is asking us to do is to CHANGE. That is all that repentance is.  Change.  So change!  Do better!  One of the elders here always says "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got"  if you don't like what you are getting, if you aren't happy with the life you are living or with the person that you are....do something different!  I think that is a cool concept.

So I have been reading this talk again that Brandon Bellon sent to me while I was in the MTC (if someone could get this to him that would be cool...like mom you could get on my face book and send it to him or something I don’t know) I need to thank Brandon for sending this. I read it in the MTC but I was learning so much that I didn't really think about it much but for some reason I felt like I should read it again and it has changed the way that I have looked at my mission. This talk is called "The Fourth Missionary", it talks about all the kinds of missionaries that you could be.  And basically the kind of person that you could be, you don't just have to relate it to missionary work.  I love it.  I feel like it has changed me already! Changed the way that I need to look at my mission and at life in general.  It talks about my favorite topic as you have noticed throughout my emails and that is BECOMING.  Becoming who you want to me but not only that, but becoming who the Lord wants you to be and knows that you can be, and how to do that. It is very interesting and brings up a lot of things that I had never thought of, or I guess never really internalized.  One thing that it said (it goes something like this) is that You right now are a combination of all that you have seen, heard, thought, said and done. That you control who you are becoming (because we are constantly changing and becoming every moment) by controlling and deciding what you hear, say do, think and say.  Another interesting thing is that it talked about how everything in life happens to see how we will respond to it.  Every good, bad, or ugly thing comes to see if I will respond as Christ would or as a natural man would.  You will never learn patience if you have never been annoyed by someone, you will be known as trust worthy if an opportunity to be dishonest was put before you. etc etc etc. and it also talks about serving God and doing your calling because you want to.  Not because you have to but because what you truly want deep down is to do what the Lord wants.  It’s not just about not doing what's wrong, it’s about going out and doing good.  I think before my mission I thought I was doing good and I was walking the high road....embarrassing to admit....that was doing great.  I was living life, not doing anything bad, I went to church, I said my ritual prayers and I read my scriptures and I would think, whew, those lamanites! They were bad!  All that pride!  tsk tsk! Or those Pharisees, such hypocrites!  They should just go to church :) haha and I just went about doing the basics what I had to do and fit in the right things into my day.  But that is just crazy. We aren't here to just live and fit in the church stuff to cushion our fall. We are here to grow spiritually to see who we will become.  And as the talk says, at the end of your life when all is said and done and everything and everyone else has fallen away, what will be left, who will you be. What characteristics will you have, how will it be to be around you.  Who will you be?...........well that is my tangent and I can't fit all of it in because it’s like 34 pages or something ridiculous like that! haha but it is good....so thank you Brandon!

Anyways that’s about all my time....I love you all so so much!

Love Sister Trottier

June 1st

Hey family!  And friends of course! Thanks for all of the emails! You are all very awesome! 

 

I feel like it has been a couple of weeks since I have written because so much has happened! But at the same time I don't really know what to write. Every week someone mentions someone that my letters get sent to and it makes me a little nervous...I feel like I have to think more about my letters and try to make them sound good...but I don't have time for that so I guess you will all just have to deal with it :) 

 

We have found a few more investigators!!! Which is definitely positive!  As we work people just fall into our laps! It’s such a blessing from Heavenly Father.  It’s hard when our investigators seem to be progressing slowly because I just want them to know the truth as I do and to feel the Spirit as I do!  Yesterday we taught Andre about the temple and the spirit was so strong there. We had Elder and Sister Maughn there and it is good to have their perspective. They worked in the temple for 10 years before their mission and André speaks some English so he can connect with them.  And we talked about how his family that has died have had the opportunity to learn about the gospel also and he thought it was an incredible idea that we can learn and progress after this life as well.  He said "well that gives you a lot of peace and hope for this life doesn't it?" and we were just like "YES!  Exactly!!! Isn't it great!?!"  He is awesome!  

 

This weekend was Zone Conference, so President Trejo, His wife and the APs come and we spend two days in training and conferences but it is so incredible.  As they talk (especially President) it confirms again to me that we (everyone) is really called of God for their callings. He knows just what to say and he knows how to help us, strengthen us, inspire us and teach us.  It is incredible.   He said that the most important chapter in all of scripture is 2 Nephi 31. The whole chapter is about the doctrine of Christ. This is what we should be teaching EVERYONE!  member, inactives and investigators alike.  WE went through and read it together and talked about each verse.  If you read it pay attention to who is speaking. Here the Father and the Son both speak. That is so powerful!

It’s hard to put into a paragraph what we learned but....we learned a lot. And always we have an activity where they teach us something about contacting and they send us out to the streets to contact!  It’s good but always a little bit nerve racking.......but it is good.   Contacting is probably one of my biggest challenges, first of all it’s scary to just stop someone on the street to try to talk to them, and second, what do you say? What do you say after you say the first thing? What if you can't understand them?  haha anyways we have been trying to get better and we practice all of the time. I have been asking other missionaries what the key its, and all of them say, the key is FAITH!  It seems as though that is the key to everything doesn't it?   Also to have confidence.  And I say this to all of you too!  Have confidence that the knowledge you have of the gospel is what other people need to hear!  Because it is! It can change eternity for them.

President Trejo is going home soon and there is this tradition that you do when you leave the mission and that is that president cuts your tie (yes even the sisters) so we got ties and cut them and took pictures and you give them to him and write your name and the date that you will get sealed!  haha I thought that was a little presumptuous ( I can't spell....I would blame it on Russian but I couldn't spell before either....)  but it was funny anyways

 

There were a few things that I wanted to tell you last week that I forgot and a few more just interesting things about Russia and us here :) hope that ok...

 

Baboooshki (grandmas) here have this weird thing about dying their hair...they do it all of the time and they do it by their selves so a lot of them have BRIGHT red hair, or pink or purple or just bleached. I’m sure it’s bad for their hair but....none the less they do it.  And it’s pretty common haha

 

Some of you keep asking if it’s cold and no... It’s warm. I just wear short sleeves right now! super nice, except its hot on the buses and the sun is up until like 11 at night and up at like 3...it sounds like its colder there than it is here...that’s funny right?

 

So every summer they turn off the hot water for like 2 weeks at a time in different parts of the city to fix stuff so we only have FREEZING COLD WATER!!!  So we are not going to take ice showers so....we heat up water and fill up pots and pans and our sink with hot water :) haha its funny. And I was wondering, we have these things we call Chai-nicks and they are like electric tea pots and we heat up water in them and it takes like 2 minutes to boil! It’s brilliant! Do we have those in America?

 

Laundry- we have a washing machine but no dryer so we have this strange looking clothes dryer rack and dry our clothes on it. It’s not bad but our clothes are pretty crispy :) yum

 

I received a real life letter this week! It was from Ben Coles! I was very surprised! But it was a good surprise!  I will give this job to WHITNEY JENSEN! to pass this on to him ok?  Love you whit!  Ben-thanks for the letter! I am glad to hear about your mission and that it went well and you are home and happy.  Thank you so much for writing! I will try to write a real letter but I can't promise anything..... :) thank you for the stories of your conversion. They actually came at good times for me and have encouraged me to do what you have done, especially with the language. So thank you very much!  You are awesome!

 

....Well that’s all...I love you all so much!  And I love the gospel!  My verses of the week are in Alma...don't remember what verses or chapter now...well the verses are 36 to the end...but it is talking about the Liahona.  And how the word of God is our Liahona today. I love those verses. So go on a scripture chase and find them, read them and apply them! 

 

I love you!

 

Sister Trottier