Oh dear family,

 

I'm HALFWAY through!!! As of tomorrow, I will have one more month till I'll be on a plane to Latvia, and then to Estonia!!

 

Best part of the week: seeing my seester!! It was such a lovely "You've made it through a whole month" kind of present. It made me very happy and it definitely gave me an extra boost to make through the next month!

 

So, last week was our first TRC experience. Sis. Holdaway and I were super nervous and then to top that off, our teacher tells us right before we go that one of the volunteers is a non-member and from Estonia! Nothing like reality hitting us in the face. But TRC is great. It was so much fun. Two of the volunteers were return missionaries so they know exactly what we're going through and we had lots of fun talking with them and had some good spiritual times too! Sis. Holdaway and I did not have the opportunity to teach Tolores. She is so stinkin' cute. She is here in Utah selling books (like that girl that's in Payson from Latvia). We weren't able to teach her but afterwards, we got to meet her! And she talked to us all about Estonia. She was very excited to meet us all. She said it was by far, the best part of her visit to America. She gave us all her number and wants to see us when we get to Estonia. I hope she knows that we'll want to teach her...

 

Sis. Holdaway and I received an assignment this week. We're the new music coordinators for our zone. I played the organ for sacrament meeting this past Sunday. It was lots of fun to try out a different organ. Our whole district has been participating in choir. We sing in the choir for the devotionals every Tuesday. It's lots of fun.. The choir director is very energetic and he tells us lots of stories that make some kind of connection with the song we're singing. This past Tuesday, he was saying something random and then says, "Yo, Adrian....." Oh it made me happy. Then later, he started talkinga bout Rocky again. He talked about the Italian Stallion fighting Mr. T and then Apollo Creed training him and the lovely montage of them running on the beach. Ah. It was good.

 

Question. Is it just me or has it been raining a lot? I feel like it never rains this much in Utah in July. We love it very much. The word for rain is vihm. And for the life of me, it is the most difficult thing for me to make the h sound followed by an m. I'm working on it.

 

Sundays are absolutely fabulous here at the MTC. This Sunday, the Relief Society heard from Carol Mikita, the news reporter from KSL! It was a bizarre experience. I had grown up watching her on TV and thinking she wore way too much make-up and then here she was, pouring out her heart to us and sharing her conversion story. It was really good. She gave a little shout out to Estonia! (so obviously it was good, right) Anyway, she was sharing a story of when she was in Estonia. She was in the town of Nirva (I think that's right--I don't think I'll be serving there). A Russian police officer was getting baptized in a sauna that was in the basement of an apartment complex. She had she had a handlebar mustache and everything! She asked him if his family understood why he was getting baptized. He said no. She asked about his friends and colleagues. Again, he said no. Then she asked him he wanted to be baptized. He answered with one word, Peace. I have come to love that word very, very much. In Estonian, it's rahu. Every time one of our investigators says that word, even if I don't understand anything else they're saying, I know they're saying they're feeling peace and I know they're feeling the Spirit.

 

We watch a movie every Sunday night. This time, it was The Testaments. I'm pretty sure I've never watched that all of the way through... so being the emotional being that I am, I cried. I know that movie is so cheesy, but oh my goodness, the part when Christ calls that man by his first name. So good. But I was emotional because of a story that I heard from Carol Mikita earlier that day. She was at the Kyev Ukraine temple dedication. She was at an open house, and she noticed that many of the people there would walk up to the paintings and start crying. She had no idea what she was saying but through interpreters, she realized that the people were crying because of the depiction of Christ. In the Russian orthodox church, there are many beautiful Christ icons, but they had never ever seen Christ depicted as a resurrected being.

 

Anywho. The Estonian is coming. I read Pres. Uchtdorf's talk on patience the other day. My favorite quote from that is "Patience isn't only enduring. It's enduring well." Or something like that. I'm doing well! I'm happy. I'm tired all of the time and I miss my naps so very much, but things are good here. I love you all! Sorry for the forever long e-mail.

 

Armastusega.