Ok so I tried to do this sneaky way around writing this email and not having just 30 minutes to write it. Basically write it elsewhere and copy and paste it in the email, but it's not working. All the elders in the computer lab tried it, and it failed... Ahh!
so this might not be a long email, because i have 23 minutes to do so. I wasted 5 because I was gonna go print some, but there was nothing to print. No worries
Thanks everyone for the letters and dearelders I got! They really made my day. I had originally writen a caption for each of you that wrote me, but because I lost it all, Sorry. It's gonna have to be short. It was a really long letter before too... Dang\
Thanks for the Cinnamon Rolls! I haven't eaten them yet, but I will tonight. So considered them devoured already. What's a slab leak? I hope the house okay. Give Zoe my love! I miss that animal. Katie. Kandiskys! St. Petersburg is the home of the Hermatage. That largest art museum in the world. I am probably going to be preoccupied on my pdays in Russian, probably gonna hit me up some Hermatage!
Dad, they love love love Russian Literature there. They see them like Tom Sawyer x100,000. mean, mean pride. So Doctor Zhivago is obviously huge there. Mom, I hope real estate is going swell!!
Oh, before I go on, there are some things I would like/need.... First.. A hoody sweater.I know I have one in my room. But All I got is my Lemus, and I hate to say, but it's doing it's job poorly keeping warm in the mornings. Mom, if you can find some sort of hoodie and ship it my way, that would be awesome :) Also! My white puma shoes. There comes a time when wearing your tennis shoes becomes a hastle, and the comfort of my others shoes becomes nostalgic. I think they are in my closet or on my bookshelf. And another thing. Ties. They are currency here. They have tie trades on Sunday nights. This goes for you all of you. If you are ever at a thrift store, buy some cheap ties and send them my way. They would be put to good use. Plus. I love ties now. Those are the only things that can differentiate days from other days. So many suits and stuff! A little note: Skinny ties and Peisley sell for hot cakes here. :)
So this week.. What happened. Let's see. Well for one, I sleptwalked this week. I was having a dream that it was a fast and testimony meeting and i went up to bear my testimony. I remember saying when i got up "should i start talking?" I then woke up standing over my roommates bed... Mind you, i sleep on top bunk, so i jumped out of bed, walked on over to the other side of the room, and stood over their beds. Elder Johnson told me he woke up from me wrestling out of bed, but he closed his eyes. He opened them back up a moment later and saw a dark sillhoutte standing over his bed. He heard me say "Shoudl I start talking?" It freaked him out. But it became the talk of the day during breakfast, lunch, and dinner. IT was hilarious.
There is an elder in my district who is from Germany! He is so funny. I feel bad at times for him though, because he has to work twice as hard. He sometimes has to translate from English to German to Russian, so it makes it difficult for him.. I talked to him about Germany a few times. And I quote him, "We [Germans] don't have too much luck.... We started two world wars, and lost two world wars".. Just imagine hearing that from someone with a thick German accent. It was hysterical. I really love my district. We are all great friends already, and we have been helping each other out with the language. The language is so intense. I can pretty much read fairly well, probably the level of a first grader... It still takes some practice, but I think i got the 33 russian letters down. They have some crazy sounds in that language. One of the coolest words is for Testimony. It basically sounds like Sve-detlstva. The tlstv consnonant combo is a tricky one.
This week, we had what was called TRC. I forgot what it stands for, i mean, it doesn't necessarilly matter what it means. (Sorry for the spelling errors. I dont have much time). But basically we had to introduce ourselves as missionaries to mock investigators and teach one of them a 30 minute lesson (in english thank goodness). I thought we did very well. It was all about the Restoration. Preach My Gospel is an amazing book and it helped us out on our lesson so much. The hardest part was to introduce ourselves as missionaries. It had to be done entirely in Russian too. I have been getting decent at that. It's difficult remembering what some of the words are. But all in all, even in my broken Russian, i got one of the investigators to accept a copy of the book of mormon! it was a glorious moment!!
The MTC really is an amazing place. The Spirit is so strong here. During my pesronal study time, I just read from the book of mormon. I have read over 150 pages already in the past week. It's amazing. It was hard adjusting, but one thing that was hard was to focus during MDT (missionary directed time). We have about 5 hours a day. We basically are teaching ourselves now how to speak Russian. It was hard to focus on that. But I have changed my work habits and now I am quite the working during MDT. Russian Grammar is one of the most ridiculous things ever. So many different cases, conjugations, plrual endings. There are a million exceptions to everything and quite frrankly it can get annoying. But I know it will pan out soon.
The older districts leave in about 3 weeks. So after that, we will become the older district. I leave may 9th! I dont have my travel plans yet, but I am still excited.
Anywho, I gotta bounce. Time to do laundry and stuff.
I would love to get some letters from all of yoU!!!
Love,
Elder Tekulve
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