Hey from Chelyabinsk,

You may already know this but Chelyabinsk is Russian for “I’m going to Finland for my last visa trip.” I’m pretty grateful because our group has generally gotten the shaft when it comes to visa trips, not that Kazakhstan is the shaft, it’s just that every other group has gone to Sweden or Spain, which includes going to the temple, and in Kazakhstan the closet thing we did to that was go to a Cathedral and a priest there told us we were going to Hell, and it wasn’t even because we were some crazy other religion, it was because we were Americans. Actually I just remembered how it happened; he asked one Elder where we were from, we said America and he told us that there was a picture of Hell located on the rear wall. What an informative nice man.
Anywho, back to the present--we’ll be in Finland this Friday and Saturday which is special because that’s Russia’s temple and a little closer to home, it’s where my patriarch served his mission, and even attended the dedication too, so it will be nice to see, but the last group who went on this time schedule got to the temple just after it closed so we probably won't get to do a session. Жалко.
We had a great very successful elders quorum activity this past Saturday. 15 men strong! The elders quorum president is a great return missionary and he’s remodeling a house a little ways outside the city, which is cool because 98 percent of Russians live in little communist apartments. We helped him shovel around some gravel he had dumped by a big ol’ truck and make a driveway of sorts. Wasn’t even that hard, plus we had barbecued chicken, and to my shock it tasted just like bourbon street grill, I loved it. Russians make me laugh sometimes though, they’ll freak out at you if you walk outside without a hat on if it’s below 70 F because it’s “bad for your health” but in priesthood the young women made cookies for us and one guy went to go get a cup of water to drink and then passed it down the row and they all took a gulp, and at this barbecue they were all very active about washing their hands before we ate and I saw the district's first counselor using bread to wipe up and eat the sauce left over from the marinating chicken! I was very surprised to see HIM at church the next day. The best part of the activity was that Artyom came and worked even harder than most of us bums and the whole quorum has been amazing at accepting and supporting him. If this keeps up, it’s totally possible that he could serve a mission. Good priesthood quorums are amazing.
We went on splits over to little ol’ Miass this week. It was fun and efficient. They just made Elder Mizin branch president there which is great because he is a hard core Russian Elder who doesn’t take Kpaп from less-active or apostates. So I got to get back to my old stopping grounds with my old stomping companion Elder G. Taylor. We are very excited for Miass this transfer, Elder Mizin is seriously going to fix a lot of problems there that an American elder couldn’t and he and Elder Taylor are already doing amazing. Good on ‘em.
While there we helped a young couple move apartments, and let me give you the stats: They lived on fourth floor, no elevator, and we moved them to another apartment of the same building four segments away and 7, yes Seven floors up. Now this was a new building so it is equipped with an elevator, and also as it is a new building this feature was not yet functional and it just sat there taunting us every floor. What hurts most are my forearms from gripping and my calves from climbing all the stairs. I actually can't walk down stairs normal yet.
Something also fun going on in our area is that a nice family’s son is turning 8 soon and they know it’s not necessary but thought it would be good if he heard the lessons from us. So for the few past Saturdays we’ve taught the doctrines of the kingdom in a very simple clear manner for little Sasha. And he’s a riot, kinda quiet but when he answers a question he goes off on crazy comparisons and tangents. Some of these include when I explained that the Holy Ghost will be like a flash light for him to know where to go, he said “Yeah, or like a Lightsaber, and I could do this [swish] and this [swash] as he proceeded to slice up his babushka. And repentance, “Yeah, repentance is like when Spider-Man tries to get the black suit off of himself and throw it” [starts peeling invisible goo off]. That last one may have been partly my fault because when I drew him as the stick figure walking along the path of the gospel at the beginning of the lesson I gave him a Spider-Man head. But I’m not convinced he wouldn’t have come up with it on his own anyway. It has been a nice teaching opportunity to teach really, really simply though, which is actually what we’re focusing on at zone conference tomorrow.
Wow remember when that was the biggest deal of any letter home at the beginning of my mission? And after tomorrow I’ll only have one more. Yikes.

Well, I’m doing great and thanks for the especially good letters from Mom, Dad, & Andy this week. Notice the lack of one Californian universities namesake.

Love,

Starayshina Magleby