Monday, November 2, 2009

The swine flu epidemic has hit Ukraine!

Hey everyone,

Dad, I was going to be so mad at you if you left me hanging in the top of the 9th tied for an entire week! But thankfully Chase updated me and then you finished off the score. I actually really love the sports updates! We don't get any news here about anything and our DL is a huge U fan... so that is all I hear about. Good luck this week with trial! I know it isn't your favorite thing but just remember that I am arguing with the grandma's here at the same time :D.

Mom, I am not surprised to hear of a car load of projects! You amaze me every week. Always looking for some way to improve yourself. I was actually thinking how good it would be to buy a new set of scriptures myself. I have loved having my Russian scriptures because they are marked with all of the lesson scriptures, all of the basic docturines. My English scriptures have a lot of things that I have marked for a lot of different reasons and now when I read them I always read the scripture the same way with the same meaning. It is nice to start over every once and awhile and take a new look at the scriptures.

Chase and Ashley, I am glad to hear that everything is going well. I am actually really curious who was the cat and who was the mouse? I want to see pictures of all of these costumes. I am glad that school is going well and that work is good, that drive is killer when you have to do it everyday! I couldn't open the picture that you sent. I think you have to send it as an attachment.

Brynn, I kinda already wrote you a little note but I love you and have thought about you a lot!

So to start off, last week when mom told me how to protect myself from the swine flu I just kinda laughed and didn't really pay attention to it. I thought to myself, how could the swine flu get me all the way in Ukraine? Well, the good news is I am not sick yet with the swine flu but Ukraine is practically shut down. All of the schools and universities have been shut down for the next 3 weeks and we are not allowed to meet in large groups. Everyone has bought those masks that mom bought to take to Spain and everyone wears them everywhere. When we try to contact people on the bus or on the street they just cover their mouths and walk away. Also everyone has cancelled their appointments with us because they are afraid of the Gripe, haha. I think it is really really funny actually. But as a missionary, there is no rest for the weary so we are pressing on with the work :D.

This last week has been a lot of fun. We went to the Ballet last Tuesday with Ulya and Annetta, a mother and a daughter that we have been working with. It was a lot of fun but our seats were aweful. We are allowed to go to one cultural thing a transfer so we went to Romeo and Juliet, the ballet for about $3.00 US. It was awesome.

We have had a lot of good and bad this week.

Cvetlana agreed to meet with us again and things are going so well. She quit smoking on Saturday and she has had a big increase of faith these last few days. It makes such an amazing difference when a member is helping her. We have again hit a little bump in the road because of the flu and she is nervous to leave her house so we are going to try and work with her a little over the phone and see if we can still make her date for this Saturday. She said that she would be okay if we moved it to next week but we will see what happens. I am really excited for her, she has made some really great changes and you can see the difference.

They don't celebrate Halloween here at all and no one really knows about it. So we had a harvest fest for all of the members and our investigators. The bishop cancelled it because of the flu but he said that if we still wanted to do it we could without the support of the ward. That made things hard but we had already told a bunch of people about it so we still had it. It was fun and a few members came along with some of our investigators. I think they all had fun and our investigators were able to meet some of the members. It was nice of them to come and support us even when they were afraid of getting sick. It turned out okay in the end.

This week we are starting a consecration week. We are putting all of our efforts into making sure that we are working hard and keeping every rule to the letter. We are going to have a hard week with everyone cancelling on us so we will just try to do our part. I liked a quote that mom wrote in the book she sent me. "Pray as if everything depending on the Lord, and Work as if everything depended on us." That is my motto! Well, I love you all and hope all is well. Have an amazing week!

Sister Larsen

ps. it is better to just send letters to the office because we don't even check our mail. You can send letters directly to the office or in the pouch and I still get dearelders through the pouch. I have heard from Holly and Grandma and Grandpa Crookston so far. It has been fun to hear from them. Tell them hi for me. Love you!

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