“Are you serious?! We haven’t even been here 10 minutes! Come on!”

Hey From Ревда!

We’re back. I left a week and a half ago and he left a month ago and we came back together. It was more of a secret rescue mission really. Plus, I served a three-year mission in China while I was there.
It was very nice to get back into the motherland, and no joke, five minutes after getting off the plane we had a drunk confrontation waiting in line for passport control. He was a funny guy, and while he was talking to us in Russian, I was saying loudly in English, “Are you serious?! We haven’t even been here 10 minutes! Come on!” That was at the Moscow airport. Back in our home court in the Yekat airport we had to negotiate taxi prices to take us to the office. I used to avoid/hate this, but now I learned that you just can’t let anything slide and argue to the last kopeck. This time they wanted to squeeze and extra 100 rubles out of us, nothing unusual, but the reason was because of the financial crisis, which they reasoned was “because it’s your crisis affecting us, it’s not our fault, it’s your fault.” Yes, it’s our fault so we will pay you 100 rubles more. You better believe I gave him the fig. (The fig is a hand gesture that resembles a hand holding a nose just after it has been “gotten” from a child’s face. That’s why we don’t play that game in Russia. I believe the same gesture is the letter D in sign language.)
To give one the fig in missionary terms doesn’t necessarily imply the actual hand gesture, most often we say it to mean rejection or to psyche someone out. A common usage is to put your hand in your pocket when someone asks to borrow money and you pull out a fig instead. It’s not anywhere near the middle finger in case you were worried. Church members do it all the time. Interesting side note, I actually knew the fig before my mission. Alex taught me sophomore year, ‘cause his bother served in Russia. I’m gonna drop him the biggest fig-bomb the next time I see him.
I was really nice to get back though. Talking with my MTC buddies we all got excited to serve in our area’s and “lift where we stand” as President Uchdorf taught. I LOVE my MTC group and hope to stay in contact with them my whole life. We got the transfers email today, but nothing had changed in the entire mission, so I think it’s a joke because the subject line was a scripture reference to patience. So I guess we’ll have to wait. President assured me that I would be staying another and Griffy would be leaving so well see what happens. We have a mission goal of 100 baptisms before the end of the year and we have 56. I’m still committed to this goal. I don’t think I can say all will achieve their part of the goal but we in Revda will do our part to reach this goal. I love you, this area, this branch, this country and the Lord.

-Elder Magleby