MAN I've only been gone five weeks and my parents have already decided to get all old and go blind and stuff. Hahaha I love hearing stuff like that though because it reminds me of home. Stuff like that is so funny to hear when you know the personalities of Mom and Dad. I'm gonna come back and you'll all have canes!! Haha

Okay, so see what you've started? Last P-day all four of the Elders in my room got our home address and said "I wanna write Ma Morris!!" Good luck deciphering Elder Ortner's letter. He writes super small and he's got pretty bad handwriting... Hahaha. I read over it and I understood what he was saying because I knew the context. Basically, he wanted to thank you for the support, and he said that the package was actually super helpful because they needed to find some clay for an object lesson with an investigator. But lo, when times were bleak, the fart-putty came in the mail to rescue our dear Elders Ortner and Windham. Our most somber respect reaches far to our dearest Missionary Mom, Ma Morris. (Pictures of the us trying to knock over a jones soda bottle with a giant green sticky hand to come.) I also LOVED Caleb's letter, and I loved hearing about stuff from home in the Dear Elder. I always look forward to hearing from home. It gets me through the hard times when I think about all the support. I wish I had a cyrillic keyboard. Then I could take a few moments of pretentiousness and type "I love my family very much" in Russian. BUT ALAS.

Sorry I've been writing really weird so far. Hahaha. How are things at home? Did you love teh pictures? We just took a ton more pictures last Sunday on the temple walk because half our zone just shipped out for the Motherland/Ukraine/Baltic States/everywhere else. THAT'S SO LEGIT. I was way excited for all of them to go... But it's extremely strange not having older missionaries here... It's just weird to think that we're the ones on top. We also get EVERYTHING to ourselves until wednesday in a week and a day. That's when the new elders and sisters come in. Apparently we're going to be getting something like 21 new Russian-speaking sister missionaries. That. Is ridiculous. I wonder how many Elders are going to come in. It's going to be a ton. Anyway, that should be exciting. It will be fun to help out the greenies and kind of get them settled in. I know that helped me out A TON, being able to talk to the older missionaries with more experience. It's so much easier to hang in there during the hard times when you've got people who've gone before. So we'll be doing what we can to help them out.

Our district grew when Sister Alexeenko came in, but then they made a new district of all the Elders who had previous Russian experience. So Elder Ortner, Elder Windham, and Sister Alexeenko all moved to that new district, and now we're just a tight little group of 8. It's really fun, and it's worked out okay. But Sister Alexeenko has kindof had a hard time with her new companions because they're not really as committed as the Sisters from our district (GO 9B!!). So I will be sending ANOTHER updated district photo. WOO. That reminds me, will you send me some photos from home? I'd love to see my dear old family.

Russian's coming well. I memorized the first vision no-pycckuu yesterday. I might sound like a two-year-old deaf kid whenever I try to have any sort of normal conversation in Russian, but at least I can fluently tell people about Joseph Smith! YEAH! But really, I'm surprised at how fast everything is coming. During study it's easy to get down on yourself because you realize how much more there is to learn. But when we actually apply what we've been studying by talking to people, it's amazing to see how far we've come. I really feel like certain things come to my memory that I didn't know I knew off the top of my head. It's legit.

Awesome that people are reading my blog, haha. Or Mom's blog about me, I should say. It's kinda weird because I've never seen in, obviously. Anyway, cool! I really like the idea of it actually. I got some pretty rad photos, so make sure they go up for teh hole wyde interwebz. Haha. I didn't think anyone would really look at the blog, but I've gotten a letter or two saying that friends have looked at it. Reminds me, when did you see Chris, mom? Did you go down there or did he come visit? I really want him to be visiting you guys. I kind of grilled him last letter--AH I NEED TO GO AHHH BYE LOVE YOU