SO. MUCH. RUSSIAN.

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Wow wow wow okayyy here we go, another weekly email! I hope you aren't getting sick of reading this yet cuz we still have a long way to go. 

So this week our district did an English fast competition. Basically, we speak only in Russian (or Ukrainian for the one elder who is Ukrainian speaking) from 9 am to 9 pm. If anyone says anything in English they have the "curse" and whoever has the most curses at the end of the week has to bring a treat to district council. So yes you could say I'm DEAD every night by 9 pm but my Russian has improved so much already! So I've gone from a level -2096 to a level -1114 but by small and simple means are great things come to pass! With Russian, I've definitely learned that PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE. 
Update on our investigator Luda! She has a baptismal date set for December 29th and we couldn't be more excited for her! She also found work at a pizza place in the city so things are looking up for her! We are excited to meet with her more this week (and to see if she can give us discounted pizza hehe). 

If any of you didn't know December 1st was the Light the World kickoff and was a day of service! Sister King and i thought the best way to spend the day serving was to bring homemade banana bread to less active members in our ward around the city. We baked 15 Loaves of bread and mapped out everyone's houses by metro (subway) stop and apartment building. We also were blessed with a few fresh feet of snow that morning so it made the day all more fun! It was really fun to try and get into all these apartment buildings and most of them didn't work but we sang Christmas carols while we got hopelessly lost (2 times), slipped on black ice (3 times) and ended the day with hamburgers so we were HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY to be serving! 

So yeah that was my week! As we get closer to Christmas we get more and more excited about this work. Im so grateful to be serving at this time! Love you all!
Cectpa Daines 

Pictures: 
1. Made some buttermilk pancakes after a looooong day at church on Fast Sunday and you best believe we ate all of them
2.  Some of our "Light the World" banana bread
3. It's getting a little too cold to stand in the park and hand out Books of Mormon
4. CAKE. Wow, I am just realizing how much I ate this week. 
5. It's COLD 








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