I Taught a бабушка!!!!

July 10, 2019

Hello!

This week was kind of long but really good! I officially have less than three weeks until I head out and I am so excited!

I hope that you all had a great Fourth of July! My Fourth consisted of classes, classes, and teaching. We had a TRC (when we teach a volunteer who speaks Russian) that day. We got to teach a cute girl who was getting married that next week. It was so fun being able to communicate with her through a whole different language. That night, we had a religious freedom devotional with our branch presidency. I love this country and the freedoms we enjoy. It was fun looking out of the windows and seeing all of the EFY kids attempt to create "MTC" with their phone flashlights outside. After the devotional, we watched the fireworks from the Stadium of Fire. It was so fun!

Festive Fourth of July Sisters

Something kind of funny that happens is that everyone asks me to pray. In literally every meeting. Everyone laughs because I am asked to pray so much. But I love the practice!:)

On Sunday, I was asked to pray in sacrament meeting and I accidentally said "We are grateful for the opportunity to endure Sunday". Luckily my branch contains Latvian, Estonian, and Ukrainian speakers so more than half of the people didn't catch my mistake;)

Our zone plays sand volleyball now and it is so fun I love it so much. 

Yesterday we taught a бабушка (baboshka- grandma) from Russian in our skype TRC! It was really neat being able to talk to her and about her life. She actually understood what we were saying! Woohoo!

My comp and I taught our investigator (teacher) about the Plan of Salvation. It went really well and I think that I am starting to understand the importance of question and the process of teaching by the Spirit.

This week has been emotionally draining. Russian is so hard. I was getting so discouraged with my abilities but we had a really great devotional with Elder Anderson of the Seventy. He talked about how everything that we do should be because we love Christ. Satan is the voice of discouragement and if we follow Christ, everything will work out. I am going to work on being fluent in the language of the Spirit. Through practice and action, the Spirit can lead us to do incredible things! The whole meeting made me want to get to Ukraine and start preaching with my simple Russian testimony. I love God and I love the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I love you all!   

I love you all! Write me!

Sister Merrill

THANK YOU to whoever sent me Crumbl!  Seriously made my week! 

My district girl gang

Sister Johnson and I

TomAto, tomato, “together”, “death” :-)

July 3, 2019

Hi everyone! 

This week I hit my one month mark! I have loved my time here at the MTC but I am so excited to head to Ukraine/Moldova in four weeks:) 

The Russian langauage is getting really difficult.. We are learning about cases and it is just so so so hard to conjugate the verbs, figure out if it is perfective or imperfective, and then add the cases to each word. Every sentence is like a crazy, wild puzzle but I really enjoy speaking it. Right now there are only 18 Russian speaking missionaries at the MTC but next week 42 Russian speakers come! Crazy stuff...

Language mistake of the week: for some reason, I always mix up the work death (cмерт) with other words that sound similar. So I was teaching a task practice to my district and instead of saying "together!" (Вместе) I said "death!". Anyways... just quirky Cectpa Merrill things!

Also, my zone gets really competitive in volleyball and it so fun. We are already planning our intramural team for when we come home;) 

Yesterday, we had a devotional with a member of the seventy and he told us how powerful a simple testimony is. In lessons, I have felt the power of expressing what I know in my broken Russian and I can feel the spirit so strong. I know that I will just need to have the courage to open my mouth and the Lord will justify my words. 

I love you all so much! I hope you have a great 4th of July!

Love,

Сестра мэрэл