HELLO ALL!!!!

HELLO ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow, that was exciting. :)  Thanks so much for the e-mails!!!!!!!!!! I just love 'em!

Well I hope you all had a great Valentine's Day!! All you people who are in love with someone... and all that gushy-ness...

Here, yes they do celebrate it. And at our branch we had a little party thing. Barely anyone showed up, sadly. But I am proud to say that I got a secret Valentine card. From who, I don't know.... hence the secret... :)

I can't believe how long it took you to get those Christmas cards! That's super crazy! I just sent something home, but WHO KNOWS when you will get it! Yikes! I haven't received what you are talking about yet, but I'm looking forward to it!!!!
I hope Grandma's okay!! I'll be praying for her for sure! I hope she gets better soon!!! Man, that's weird because I was just thinking about her this week especially.

Mom, good luck with Kwin and Joslyn at the same time! I can only imagine how that is! CRAZY! And I'm super excited to get your dearelder. :) You're so great. :)

Dad, Finland felt like America for sure! Everything is SO nice there. (and everyone speaks English, haha!) Yet, it still felt like Europe because of the buildings and everything. But yeah it is so beautiful there. Yeah, the church meeting was a lot like at home. It was weird... :) I think I do go there every time, which is AWESOME! That picture of the faces is in Finland... :)

Things are good with me and Sister Gneiting so far!! Yeah, the "G" is silent. It's for sure different to be with an American.  It makes us all grow and learn to live with all sorts of people! But we have fun!

So yeah it's finally getting warm here, too! I hope it continues! I can't wait to see the day when I don't have to wear a big coat and boots and hat anymore! But really, I just feel like it's going to be winter all year long... I've just gotten so used to it! I'm not such a wussy when it comes to cold anymore! :) Ура!! haha

So this week we did a lot of looking for less-actives. We have gotten to know the city some more for sure. It's been tough though... Russian people are hard to get a hold of!! and phones here are Re-donk! half of the time they don't work, and of course there's no voicemail. haha. So it's a challenge.

Our church is being painted so there won't be English club for about a month. ( I know, that's a LONG time, right? To paint?) So we're going to really have to try extra hard to find investigators. We're pretty low right now.... so it'll be interesting! We did some contacting this week and it was so hard with our lack of Russian. But all we could do was bare our testimony and do our best! We know that Heavenly Father is testing our patience and faith!

OKay a story... so we were coming home from the train station, dropping off another sister and we took a taxi home. The driver starts talking to us and asking us why we're here and stuff and eventually we get on the topic of religion, and we talk about that for a while. When we arrived home, we gave him a Book of Mormon and an invitation to church. He said, "no, I don't need it, I don't need it." And I hate it when people say that! I asked him, "How do you know you don't need it already?? You haven't read it yet." So he took it and he said he would read it and call the number on the invitation. I don't know if it was a good idea to say that or not, but it drives me crazy when people on the street or anywhere, when we invite them to church or try to give them a Book of Mormon- the word of God- they tell us they don't "need it." They just don't know. I just try to remember that God has people prepared to hear and accept us and wait for the day when we meet them.  We just keep pressing forward, and hope they come in our path!

I love you all VERY MUCH and I hope you have a fantastic week!! Keep being awesome!

с любовю,

Сестра Рид :)