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