Ukraine don't wait up, I'll be there... After one stop!

Здравствуйте

Hey, so I actually have some big news this week!! It's kind of been a roller coaster of emotions since I last emailed. On Friday, we got our flight plans for Ukraine! Me and my companion and the two elders in my district that are also going to Dnepr were planning to leave very early on the Tuesday and all be on the flights there together and we were all super excited! It even made everything seem a lot more real. This is actually happening! Can't wait! 

But then this Tuesday... I got a paper in the mail saying sorry, but your visa hasn't come yet. And so you will be serving a temporary assignment in the OGDEN, UTAH MISSION, until your visa comes. Yup. No, I'm not joking this time haha. I was pretty shocked at first of course. And a little upset, because I had been pretty excited to just get out to Ukraine and be immersed in the language etc. I also am pretty bummed I don't get to go on the trip with my hooligan friends:( But even though it still doesn't really feel real ( nothing really does with me haha) I have accepted and embraced this assignment and I'm excited to love  and serve the people of Ogden, Utah the time that I will be there! ( Still not sure how long that will be ) I know that Heavenly Father knows me personally, better than I know myself and He will put me where I'm needed. Everything happens for a reason! I hope to learn a lot more about how to teach the gospel, and hopefully also not to lose the little Russian I have learned so far ( still don't know how that's going to work aha) but I'm sure everything will work out! Also.. perk of the century: They have Walmart in Utah!! ahaha

Other things that happened.. THE PIANO GUYS came this Sunday night!!! Super cool, I'm a big fan, they're sooo talented. And their music videos are always pretty sweet. For those who don't know them, they're on youtube so go check em out. And they played probably my favorite song by them "Oh come, Emmanuel" !! It's so beautiful, I've been listening to it almost every time I'm on the computer here because it's on Mormon channel ( aha, currently listening to it on repeat actually). Listening to it live though, that was such a cool experience, they played it perfectly! It almost made me cry it was so beautiful. It was also really awesome to hear them all speak. They're hilarious and have such huge testimonies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO7ySn-Swwc

And a little classic Celine move for y'all.. I am the Ukrainian flag :D ahaha I have yellow shorts and a blue T-shirt so at Gym time sometimes I turn into to the flag of Ukriane ahah and this week I accessorized with my little flags too! ahah. and yes of course I ran around, holding them up chanting Uk-ra-een, Uk-ra-een! .. what else is there to do in that situation? :)

Anyway, I can't believe it's Christmas in just a couple days!! So exciting! I wish you all a very merry Christmas!! May you feel the joy that comes from this wonderful time of year where we celebrate the birth of the redeemer of the world! I love you all so much! Remember the true meaning of Christmas. Remember to LIGHTtheWORLD. And have so much fun! We're planning on having a blast at the MTC:) And the next time I email you I will be in Ogden starting out my journey of being in the mission field! :)

с Рождествo!

-Cectpa Horne

Pictures: -Merry Christmas from District 8A! (aka best district ever!)

Guess who came to the Devo?!?!

Добрый день

Pretty good week! I'm still loving my life here but it is sooooo weird that we are starting our 8 week at the MTC!! 10 more days until CHRISTMAS! And 12 more days until UKRAINE!! Like whaaat?? The next time I email  will be my last time emailing from the MTC! what the heck. aha. ok I'll stop freaking out. I'm terrified but also really excited ! It will probably feel more real once we get our flight plans though. 

I feel like I've learned a lot more this week! I think my Russian is improving!( but also not ready for Ukraine AH lol)  I can now mostly teach lessons without having much of a script, I still need to prepare though because if I don't, it can be pretty bad. But I'm also pretty sure our investigators are just being nice because my grammar is so bad ahah. They understand the jist of it though! lol. продолжать, продолжать!

I also strengthened my testimony a lot. We all had an incredible experience this Tuesday evening when Elder Jeffery R. Holland came!!!!!!!! Sooo sweet! He's definitely one of my favorite speakers. He's one of the twelve apostles that is known for his bold and straight forward words. And he was definitely no less of his usual awesome self when he was here speaking to all of us. I love it!! He's also really funny aha. He actually even went over time because he had so many awesome things to say. He spent the whole beginning telling us how much he and the rest of the quorum of the twelve apostles and the first presidency love, honor and are proud of us. awe:) Then talked about the importance of the Book of Mormon in our lives and in the church and how it truly is the keystone of our religion. If it's true then this is Christ's church on the earth today. And visa-versa. It's that simple! but you can only know through study and prayer and through the Holy Ghost. Simple but so important to remember. And it was cool cause he taught the rest of his talk using the Book of Mormon,  about how we can be better missionaries. One thing he said I really liked though was how a mission and life itself will be hard but.. how can we expect it to be easy when it was never easy for Him (Christ). So true.

Something really special I felt even before the devotional that day though was during our choir practice. We sang a beautiful and powerful version of " I know my Redeemer lives" and there's this part where we sang loudly " He lives. He lives. Oh sweet the joy this sentence gives." and I felt the spirit so strong at that moment that I could hardly even sing it. The spirit has always spoken to me  probably most often through music and I know that He was testifying to me the truth of the statement. I already had faith that this was true but now I can say with a sure knowledge that I KNOW my Redeemer lives. He lives.

Speaking of singing though, sister Leuzinger and I auditioned for " oh Holy night" with sister Newman on the piano for the Christmas devotional. We actually got in!! We weren't really expecting that tbh ahaha and now I'm regretting it just a bit because now we have to sing it front of hundreds of missionaries!! ah! But it's also pretty cool:) Except they changed the song we're going o sing because they needed a solo for " oh Holy night" and so we're singing "Mary's lullaby" but so ya! That's Christmas eve that we'll do that. Oh and also it was cool this Sunday we got to listen to the BYU men's choir and they were really good! And it was funny cause some of them got so into it!

Something fun we did this week in one of our classes our teacher took us to a different floor and because we were learning "motion verbs" we played a game of "Sergei Says" ahahah it was so fun! And apparently I'm really bad at this game cause I messed up a few times but it's ok I'm pretty used to being laughed at hahahahah. It's true but don't worry I'm fine with it. My favorite part though was when "Sergei" said to go around the floor and when we started walking, I , in the back, started yelling " BIEG, BIEG, BIEG, BIEG" which means race and literally every time I made everyone, including my teacher, start running. ahah it was so fun! ok...you had to be there :)

alright, увидимся!

-сестра Хорн

 

New Calling

Здравствуйте hello my fellow мягкий знак 's!!

What. Is. Up.

So not a lot of new things this week... except one pretty big one:  Sister Condie and I were called this Sunday to be the new Sister Training Leaders!! --- Sister training leaders are basically the equivalent to zone leaders but for the sisters in our zone ( now 14 sisters total) which basically means we're in charge of all of them, making sure they're doing well and helping them with anything they need. More meetings. haha. Also to welcome in the new sisters coming in and we actually got a bunch of new missionaries yesterday! Only four in our zone, speaking Lithuanian and Latvian but another zone has lots of Russian and Ukrainian speakers. One even going to Dnepropetrovsk! We did a little orientation, showed them around campus. 

Really it's not that big of a deal, just a little more responsibility.:/ aha. But could you guys even imagine me as a leader?? Yeah. Me neither. haha. But I will try to be awesome as the previous STL companionships were! And I know the Lord will qualify my service. :)

Oh yeah and a funny thing that happened this week was that we got reassigned to Estonia... JKJKJK. But we did have a little scare that we might have been! So what happened was during our study time this lady comes in to our class room and is like Ciao! and starts talking to us in a language that we were hoping was not Russian because we did not recognise a word! So we thought she got the wrong room or something but then she was like nope! Writes on the board that she's speaking in Estonian and starts teaching us some basic sentences in Estonian, like my name is.. so we were like what is going on?? I was even thinking woah, maybe we got reassigned to speak Estonian! :0 

Eventually we learnt that she was just there to teach us more about SYL ( Speak your language ) and she was the Estonian teacher but there are no Estonian missionaries in the MTC right now so for some reason she was teaching us this. We were still pretty confused most of the time because we didn't understand her but it still went well. WEIRD times though lol.

It's great to hear that some of you guys are also getting really excited about #LightTheWorld ! Keep it up! And for those who haven't looked at it yet, it's not too late!! Go check it out at mormon.org And to make it easier to remember what the Christlike action is everyday they have a calendar you can print out to help! We've been trying to do it as much as we can here, somethings we can't really do in the MTC but we make do. Like yesterday for "Jesus fed the hungry and so can you" we snuck lots of candy in our teacher's jacket pockets hahah. I also read in John 6 about how Jesus is the bread of life. And it is so true. If we will learn of Jesus Christ we will never be spiritually hungry.   

Today is "Jesus prayed for others and so can you". It is so simple but prayer is so powerful. I want you guys to know that I pray for you everyday!  I love you all! And I pray that you'll all try to share the light of Christ this Christmas, just by showing charity and love to everyone. :) IT's super fun too:)

До свидания!

-Cectpa Horne

Doing our Russian faces  

Past the halfway point!!

Hey!! So not a lot to talk about this week.. just same ol, same ol basically.. Except um what?! We had our first month anniversary of the mish/being in the MTC already!! (last Saturday aka happy bday Natie day:)) Weeeeeiiiiirrddddddd. 

Also, time here is hard to explain, it feels like I've been here my whole life but also that time is going by way to fast and I'm going to blink and I'll be in Ukraine! And to be honest it's a little scary cause sometimes it feels like I don't know any Russian, especially considering I'm half way done my time here but at the same time I do see my self improving- though it may be slowly- everyday! 

WOOOHOO It's finally Christmas time!! I am so excited to start this December. This week we had our first real big dump of snow! Monday, it snowed all day and it was soooooo pretty! I couldn't stop obsessing over it. And of course, we had some fun having snow ball fights almost every time we went outside.. (pretty much always started by me ahahah) I don't like the cold but love the snow. And even though I've brought out the winter coat meant for Ukraine, I've resisted the urge to jump into the snow. Sister Condie -from the desert - is not as big of a fan aha. It's a winter wonderland!!

Guys! because it's December 1st, guess what that also means?? It means that #LIGHTTHEWORLD starts today! And the way that we can light world suggested for today is " Jesus lifted others burdens, and so can you " I love that and have a strong testimony of that because I have felt it in my life. He may not take the burden from you but He will carry you through it, if you let Him. And when Jesus said "Come follow me" He wanted us to do as He did and lift others' burdens too! Sometimes it's hard to think of ways to actually do these things but this website has lots of ideas and also a cute little video everyday! So easy to look at @lds.org.. spread the light peeps!:)

Here's lots of pics this week! Lots of ones of some Canadian friends! - A sister in the other district in our zone is from Cardston! And so we took pics with Canadian capes:D

-I also found my Calgarian West Stake seminary sistas! Hermana Guerra, Woodman, (they both already left) and Sister Nowlan! 

-Oh and super cool, we got our Russian name tags! It is pronounced Horne even though it looks like zoff or something haha. (also a cute lil message to you guys in the back)

-  Thanksgiving, service project.

Love you guys,

Sister Horne