Goodbye friends, hello friends!

TERE!!

Tallinn District - LIONS!

Well, this week, Sister Durfee and Sister Tullis go home to America....OH HOW I LOVE THEM!! Õde Tullis ja Õde Durfee - thank you both for your examples to me. I love you and will miss you. Ma saan teid igatsema nii väga!! 

Also, dear Sister Goodell is moving down to Lithuania...oh how I will miss her too!! She knows how to work hard. And Sister Mishchenko (thankfully) is staying in Tallinn but will be with another Russian-speaking sister. I will miss being a companion with Sister Mishchenko...I love her Russian accent and her funny quotes. I’m glad to be serving with her still in Tallinn! 

My new companions will be Sister Lighten (YAYAY!!!), and a new missionary straight from America! Sister Lighten will be training the new missionary, and I will be serving as sister training leader for the sisters in Estonia! I trust God to give us all the strength and patience we all need right now as we all go through these transitions. I am excited to learn new lessons with my new companions. HERE WE GO! Da vaiiiiii :)

The work:

• We had zone conference this week in Riga! Then the next day we had a mission leadership conference also in Riga. We love our church leaders and all the opportunities to learn from mission conferences!

MTC Reunion!!!!

Loved seeing my dear Sister Bruner in Riga!

Shoutout to the Riga Russian sisters!

• One miracle I want to share from this week was with a mother we started teaching. We taught her about the Book of Mormon and many other things. At the end, we invited her to say the prayer. She had never prayed before. We taught her how to pray, and she said she would be willing to try! So we all folded our arms and closed our eyes as she said her prayer. She said it silently in her head. It was about 5 minutes of silence...I even started to open my eyes to check and see if she was still praying! After 5 or 6 minutes of silence as she prayed, she opened her eyes and said, "Läks valguseks," or "It became light." .... This woman had had a vision of light as she prayed! She said she didn’t know exactly how to describe how she felt, but she felt at peace. Such a precious moment to witness. 

Fun/funnies:

Sister Goodell was really tired this week....one time she said, "Do you think I can do personal scripture study in my sleep? Heavenly Father has revelation waiting for me in my dreams..." HAHAHA I love her.

It was freezing, and my hands were cold as I was on the phone, so Sister Goodell came up and put her hands and hood on my hands to keep them warm hahahaha 

WHAT A GEM!

Featuring Elder Mateer's "Russian smile"

My friend Nik Wilde came into town, and we got permission to meet up! Love ya, Nik!

Culture:

When people run on the street for exercise, strangers yell, "Jõudu!," or, "Strength!" after them to give them motivation to keep running. Isn’t that awesome?

Taking off our coats because it is SOOOO much warmer now!

Gotta love the tiny elevators here

Spiritual thought:

I learned simply this week that if we want God to tell us something or give us an answer to our questions, and if we have the faith and trust in Him sufficiently, He will reveal His will to us. He reveals himself unto us simply because He loves us. I encourage all of us to prepare ourselves to receive direction from Heavenly Father. If we prepare with faith, God will reveal His will to us. 

Trust in the Lord. Choose joy. Find peace.

Sister Smith-Driggs

Alma 13:22 - “Yea, and the voice of the Lord, by the mouth of angels, doth declare it unto all nations; yea, doth declare it, that they may have glad tidings of great joy; yea, and he doth sound these glad tidings among all his people, yea, even to them that are scattered abroad upon the face of the earth; wherefore they have come unto us.”

Mom comment: This was a photo from last week that the Tallinn senior couple took (yay Allreds!) of Eliza and Sister Goodell helping to set up a first lesson with sister missionaries in Vietnam for a Vietnamese-speaking investigator in Tallinn. There are some amazing uses for technology! The photo looks staged, but it was real:)