Saturday 26 November 2016

HAPPY 2ND THANKSGIVING!!!

Heyyooo!! Happy American Thanksgiving everyone!!! Yes, I get two Thanksgivings this year. Be jealous;) hahah. So I'm pretty thankful for that because yesterday was a pretty cool day in the MTC! That's why our p-day was changed to today this week btw.

In the morning we went to choir practice before the morning devotional with special guest Elder Neil L. Anderson! And we sang " Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" which was really cool and I love that song. He talked on the importance of being grateful for ALL things. Our many many blessings and even our trials because they are what shape us into who he knows we can become. He also brought some of his grand-kids who talked a bit and it was super cute. Sis. Newman and I always freak out whenever we see kids cause we miss the cuteness ahaha.

This week to prepare for the Devotional, we were also supposed to read the talk called "Living in Thanksgiving Daily" By Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin. It's a really good talk! It's pretty funny too, but it especially helps us to remember to always keep a perspective of what we have and how grateful we should be for it every day.

So then it was kind of weird but we had our big Thanksgiving dinner for lunch! But it was actually super good!! They even had egg nog. YUM! Except I felt so gross after cause I stuffed myself lol. We just had simple "sack/lunch" dinners but the other district set up a cute table for us to all eat together as a zone so that was nice.

Later we had a devotional explaining a little about the service project we were about to do and we got a sneak peak of the Christmas initiative the Church is doing this year. They released the video today!! But we got to see it yesterday and it is SOO good!! And guys. I'M SO EXCITED!!! This is literally so great. Go watch it! And see what they'll be doing all month cause I think it is so cool! The campaign is called #LIGHT THE WORLD and on the website are a bunch of different ideas of how we can share the light of Christ with others at this wonderful time of the year by doing what He did when He was on the earth. Loving and serving! I'm so excited to start this! I'm a little limited while in the MTC but we can adapt to any situation and I'll try as much as I can to light the world over here in the ol' empty Sea (<-- creds to Emma;)  And I would LOVE to hear if you guys have any experiences this month of you "lighting the world" .  I just love Christmas! Thanksgiving’s done. Christmas here I come.  SO PUMPED!

Oh and here you go, here's the link. you don't even have to search it up, easy right? My first good deed;) really cute video  :
https://www.mormon.org/christmas/light-the-world?play=hero

Then we got to watch a really good movie! It's called Ephraim's rescue. And it was actually pretty funny too. Also let me tell you, it's pretty hilarious to watch a kiss scene (just a little don't worry, it's still a church movie ahaha) with a couple hundred missionaries! hahaha we always joke around with each other about "page 33" in the white hand book (book of missionary rules) because that's where it says no flirting etc. ahahah we're all just like WHHAAA  THIRTY THREEE!! ahaha

NEXT, we did our service project! Which was fun, we all helped in making meal bags for "feeding the children"( I think  that's what it was called.) I don't know the exact number but we made a lot of children not hungry for a meal so that feels good :)) Actually, I think it was 359,000 meals :)
And lastly, they turned on all the Christmas lights last night and they're soo pretty! Like the same people that do the craziness of lights at temple square in Salt Lake City did these I'm pretty sure cause the lights are on every single branch, all the way to the tips, which always blows my mind cause it looks so good! We took some pictures but we'll take more later where you can hopefully see them even better.


Sorry long email, but  yesterday was so fun. Mostly though I wanted to say how SO THANKFUL I AM. I'm thankful for everything and I have been blessed SO much but these are some of things I'm most grateful for:
I am Sooo thankful for such an amazing, supportive and loving family!!
-My parents who are the best and are amazing examples to me.
- Super sweet friends
FOOD, and chocolate:))) and sleep:)
The party hats Sister Williams's mom sent to us... hahaha we (me mostly and sis. Newman)  had some fun with them. Btw. I swear we work a lot, even though it doesn't seem like it;)

Super cool teachers who teach me Russian:) and a super awesome companion and district!
Being a missionary! Being in the MTC and the opportunity to serve for 18 months!
My new Ukraine Dnipro Mission Shirt!!

I am SO grateful for the Book of Mormon. It seriously helps me so much. Every time I really study it, I find things that uplift me and help me to learn.

But I am the Most grateful for my Savior Jesus Christ and His sacrifice that allows us all to repent and be happy in this life and after we die.

Thanks for all the love guys! Have a great week and remember to always be thankful for all we've been blessed with, if you look, you can find SO many.

LOVE YOU
Cectpa Horne



Friday 18 November 2016

3rd Week in the MTC

Whassup!? I feel like time is going by pretty dang fast here already, so it feels like yesterday when I last wrote you all.. at the same time not...  it's weird. lol. Anyway. Not tons happened this week. But like half our zone left us this Sunday! They all went to the Baltics, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia I think, and it's much quieter here without them and weird because it is now only our district and the other district of all girls going to Russia who are a part of our zone! And we all came in at the same time. So we have no "older" sisters or elders to look up to for help and stories anymore: / But it'll also be nice. We probably won't get any more Russian speaking missionaries in our zone until December though.



Also we had another visit from an apostle!! Elder Gary E. Stevenson. He was super cool and he served in Japan on his mission too Dad ;) We're a pretty blessed group of missionaries because we've already heard from two apostles and we haven't even had thanksgiving or Christmas yet which it's been rumored that one will also probably come for each of those too! YAY! I love these super humble and wise servants of the Lord! It's also super cool having them speak just to us missionaries. But also to learn that we, as missionaries, actually have the same calling from the Lord as they do, which is to testify and be a witness of Christ to the world. SO AMAZING:))

Something funny that happened this week: So we have two investigators right now: Dasha, and Javlon-bek and things are going pretty well with them! But in one lesson this week I made a pretty big but hilarious mistake. We were explaining to Dasha about the atonement of Jesus Christ and right before we went into our lesson I found these great few verses in the Book of Mormon that I thought would help her to understand it better so I quickly tried to find it in the Russian Book of Mormon (BOM) and highlighted it. And so I gave it to her to read in the lesson and it seemed fine but when we asked her thoughts on it she said something about "zhar"  and "Noy" and we're were like hmm king? and what is Noy? so she drew it on the board and started drawing a boat and animals we were like ohhhh Noah??? Is King Noah the same as Noah and the ark from the bible? So we were like ohh nooo, they're different.. and then we moved on and finished the lesson.. but then we get on with the lesson and I’m thinking, I don't remember King Noah being in the scripture that I wanted to share with her...
So I look up the scripture in both of the books and realize I gave her the wrong one to read!! And the one she read did not make sense at all with that lesson! or any lesson really ahahahah. So the scripture I wanted her to read was Mosiah 24:12-14 which is in the BOM so go read that one first. And then the one she did read was Mosiah 23:12-14 and read that one after and I hope this brings you joy because I seriously cried from laughing so hard when I read it! AHAHA  ( if you don't have a Book Of Mormon, you can look it up on lds.org, and you shall find it :))

I also hosted for the first time yesterday! That was fun. It brought back memories of my first day here. Good times. Oh and last week when we do service on Saturday Sister Condie and I were assigned to be Ghost Busters!!



hahah jk we were just vacuuming the edges of the walls but we have a sweet pic with our cool setup:) Also it snowed for the first time today! I kinda like it actually.. reminds me of home:) and also we had a little surprise b-day party for Elder Williams.

Cectpa Horne







Thursday 17 November 2016

2nd Week in the MTC

Здравствуйте!  (i.e. Hello in English)

Zradsvuytye!!! haha that's how I would write the Russian word using our English alphabet, we don't have Russian keyboards here, I just copied that off of google translate and yup that is just the word for hello, ahah. Russian likes long words that change depending on almost anything you can think of. And there are lots of rules but even more exceptions to those rules ahahah and I haven't skimmed the surface yet. It's all good though!! That was just me letting you know that learning Russian is pretty hard but at the same time it hasn't hindered my desire to learn all of it wholeheartedly so that I can teach the people of Ukraine of the good news of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ!! I am already starting to feel the gift of tongues, when we kind of understand what our fake investigator is saying and when we stop using our scripts and just try to bear our testimonies the best we can, but it only works when we work to have the spirit with us.

So far I know several words really well like: Shto?? ( what), Pachimoo??( why) Ya (me) znayoo ( I (don't) know) and of course "Diki Akoola" ( savage shark) hahah that is thanks to the older sisters and elders in our zone who are leaving this week, already! :( They're super sweet but their nine weeks are up and then our district and the other one that came at the same time will be by ourselves until the next newbies come!

Something funny that happened this week was that I had the most deceiving salad of my life. hahah. So I took a salad last week that looked soo delicious, it had lettuce, cheese, and berries on top but then when i got past the top of it I found olives. ewww I hate olives. Finally I realized that the entire foundation of the salad was OLIVES. it was disgusting ahaha but pretty funny. The salads are usually pretty good here, i think the workers were just being funny experimenting that day or something. I forgive them, but our trust is broken ahaha. Anyway I thought that was funny but there were tons of other funny times too... I've probably never laughed so much in my life lol.

Something that I learned this week is that one of the most important truths we have is that we are children of God. So: message from me to everyone in the world: You have a  Heavenly Father who LOVES you. Бог любит Bac :)))

Hope you guys are having a good November! A good Remembrance Day! Sad I'm missing that but I'm gonna make my own poppy:)

oh and good luck Murica;)

PS: sorry if you don't understand any of my church/Mormon/Mission/Russian lingo, If i forget to explain, just shoot me an email and ask:))

Love,


Cectpa Horne

Friday 11 November 2016

Just a few comments and pictures


No time to write a blog post this week. Things are still going great. Love my mission, my companion and my district. News of the US election went through the MTC but didn't distract us. We're still hard at work. People are just surprised as a Canadian that I know anything about it (I was actually born in the US so I'm an American too).  It's such a small world though. Sister Leuzinger from Switzerland (standing next to me in the picture below) is Sis Joanne Kabeary's 3rd cousin.

love ya :))



Thursday 3 November 2016

Made it thru my first week

EEHHHHHH
Guys I made it  to through my first week at the MTC! And it was awesome!! I love it here. The first day was a little overwhelming but at the same time right after I started to go in I felt totally fine! Minus a few times where I'm like "whoa.. is this really happening??" ha ha. It was super sweet at the beginning because we went for this orientation thing with all the newbies of that day and sang lots of hymns for prelude and opening and stuff and one was "Called to serve" and another was "Army of Helaman" but instead of "And we will be the Lord's missionaries, to bring the world his truth" it was changed to "And we are now the Lord's missionaries, to bring the world his truth" So definitely teared up a bit there ha ha.

So everyone is wondering about what the MTC's like, etc. Well my companion is great!! Actually funny story we already had each other on Facebook before we left because of a sister missionary page on FB. So it was definitely a really nice thing to have, to already kinda know her. Her name's Sister Condie and she's super nice and cool. She's an artist too ( mom ;) ) She's from St. George UT but she's super chill and funny and we get along great!! :) LOVE HER



The Food is pretty good, although at first was like "oh no I'm going to gain fifty pounds here..." but don't worry I've actually had pretty good self control for the most part. Sis. Condie and I usually go for a salad anyway and I haven't had one of the unlimited ice cream sandwiches yet! Which is actually really surprising to me but I think I'm going to wait until a day where I'll really need it aha. I haven't tried the orange juice yet aha but I might because an elder in my district did an experiment to try and he said he was fine ha ha.

I love my district, we have one other sister companionship who we're rooming with, and they're awesome!! There's Sister Leuzinger and she's from Switzerland which is sweet and she speaks Swiss German and English so she is picking up the Russian quite a bit faster than the rest of us. And Sister Newman is from Idaho and she's hilarious and awesome too. We also have 3 elders (starayshanah(i)) is how you say it Russian) and they're super fun. When we're all together we sometimes get way off track though because we have so much fun .. :/ aha but I still LOVE THEM




The very first day we got here we went into our Russian class and it was funny/a little scary cause they were already speaking only Russian to us and we had to communicate with only hand gestures and writing on the board while all of just sat there blankly when she was speaking to us ha ha. Learning Russian has been pretty crazzzyyy but considering, we've already learnt a lot! We had to teach our first lesson with an investigator (fake one, we found out, but acts really real) SO that was insane, but surprisingly we still managed to do it. We've taught her almost everyday and we're getting better at understanding her because she usually helps us out with actions etc. but then she asks us something that we didn't plan for, so we don't know how to answer her in Russian... It's a whirlwind of emotions and stress but over all I've been really happy :) Russian's hard but cool to learn and I'm sure I'll get it eventually.. I can already say most of a prayer :D LEARNING TO LOVE IT. My teacher's super cool too.

Also an awesome experience we had on Tuesday was we had a devotional and I was in the choir which was amazing. Biggest choir I've ever been in, probably the biggest choir anyone there has ever been in because there was like 1100 of us!! That's apparently like at least 3 times to the size of the Mormon tabernacle :O. We sang "Praise to the Man", it was really beautiful and powerful and guess who came to speak?? Our first week here.. and it was President Russell M. Nelson!!  ( President of the Quorum of the Twelve apostles in the church) which was super cool. He and his wife gave super great talks and he was super cute too aha. Some things he talked about, how we can be living epistles of the Lord if we have the doctrine of Christ engraved in our hearts and that the Savior is never disappointed with us if we are seeking to repent. :)

Feels like I've been here for a few weeks already! But in a good way:) We do so much, it's hard to tell you guys half of it. I love it! I'm super excited to be a part of the army of God, preparing to bring the joy of the gospel to the people in Ukraine!

LOVIN IT HERE

For those who sent me emails or dear-elders or packages.. Thank you guys so so so much for all the love!! I really feel it. You are all awesome and it's super funny seeing my district elders get jealous that like everyday when I get dear-elders and they think I have a bunch of "Canadian boyfriends" ha ha. And I'm like the only one getting so much lol it's great. So feel free to keep it up if you want to make them really wonder aha. No but actually, I really appreciate it. They brighten my day! :) and I can only read them and respond on my P Day (preparation day - Thursday), hopefully I'll be able to but if not know that I really love you guys!! I have the best family ever :)

Peace out ! I'll talk to you next week! and  Pray I don't get my companion's cold ( but I'm doing pretty good so far, and yes mom I'm taking my vitamins;)

LOVE YOU ALL

- Sister Horne

 PS-- happy Halloween!! All we did for it switch our name tags for a bit aha (pic attached) and have a little party in the dorms with snacks:)

PPS-- idk how much I'll be able to write next time, and I'll try to respond to any emails but if i don't ....