Vabadus!

Tere hommikust!

And happy Fourth of July! I'll be going around yelling "Vabadus!" (freedom) all day now. I finally figured out the photo thing so enjoy! This week has been good. We taught our first lessons in Estonian. ahhhhhh. It wasn't pretty. However, it's really emphasized the importance of having the spirit in the lesson. Without it, I would be way too occupied and worried about what/how I was saying something. But when I take the time to pay attentiont to the spirit and the investigator, it's amazing how much I can actually understand. We're teaching three investigators right now: Hilja, Liina, and Siim. They're our three teachers and they're hilarious when they're in character. Since we've been here, we've mostly been taught by Õde Christopher. Last week, we got a new teacher! Her name is Õde Robinson. She's really great. Then there's Vend Strong who has taught here for a long time. He's really good and he's lots of fun. He laughs at our Estonian a lot, but it reminds me not to take myself so seriously.

They're letting us watch the Stadium of Fire fireworks tonight!! And we'll be getting ice cream and we'll have a fireside tonight. We're really spoiled down here at the west campus. On P-days, we get to go to Brigham's Landing! Õde Holdaway and I are planning on making a stop at Great Harvest and The Cocoa Bean. Let's hope they're open today.

Funny Estonian speaking stories: Õde Jarvis is half Finnish. She also lived in Finland for a few years and she speaks the language fluently. So she has a huge advantage in comprehension and pronuncation because Estonian is the closest thing to Finnish. However, sometimes she mixes up Estonian words with Finnish words. The other day, she meant to tell her investigators that "God loves us." Instead.... she said, "God throws up on us." Ahhhhhh hahaha. So great. Vanem Peterson told their investigator that they could call God to come there. The word he used for "here" is a very literal "here in the room" kind of thing and the investigator was sooo confused.

I love my district so much. The four of sisters get along very well and our vanemad are super great too! We're all squished into this little room for class and our unity has grown so much. Oh, we moved into another room! It's smaller than our last one... ha. But there's a sweet picture of Captain Moroni so that's a perk. When we were moving our classroom's stuff, we found so many gems. One was an Estonian Book of Mormon stories book. The ones that have the pictures and are written for little kids. Last night was the first night we had storytime in our apartment. It was lots of fun and it's amazing how much I already understand! And it helps that it's written for little kids... But we're still by the Finns so things are still super loud. But we love them anyway. The food seems to be getting better. The Hungarian elders told us the first week that Friday nights are the best, because they serve pizza! Friday came... and no pizza. We were so disappointed. But to make up for it, we had pizza twice the next week! And then Ode Holdaway's mama sent us a package of organic good food.

Two weeks down and seven more to go! The time is flying by. Seven weeks seems soooo much shorter than nine. For our devotional on Tuesday, we heard from Elder richardson from the SundaySchool presidency. He focused a lot of "What e're thou art. Act well thy part." It was great. This past week, I have become much more aware of what the Lord intends for me to be as a missionary. I don't know my potential, but he does and I'm putting a lot of trust in Him. When I used to listen to the hymn, "I'll Go where You Want Me to Go", it was those lines that always got  to me. Now, it's the last lines, "I'll be what you want me to" but mean much more to me.

I love you all!

Õde Chestnut