Sister Tanner in Ukraine: Off to Atlanta, Georgia

August 26, 2013 Monday

A quick update since I last wrote: we spent a lot of time on our own attempting to learn Russian and going crazy. It kind of reminded me of my first couple days here.

When we do have a teacher, we go over some grammar principles, and then hear lots of mission stories and see lots of mission pictures.

On Sunday Sis. Finlayson and I got to sit on the very front row for Relief Society, and I was sitting next to the daughter of the speaker, who was Sis. McConkie of the General Young Women's presidency; so that was cool.

My ultimate contacting game was a success, except we kind of removed the competition part from it, because it destroyed the quality of the contacting.

On Friday, as you now know, I received my re-assignment to Atlanta, Georgia! Cool story - so when I was waiting for my original mission call to come, I was thinking about all the places I could be called, and trying to pump myself up for them. I randomly thought, "What if I got called to Atlanta, Georgia. Yeah! I would actually be so excited to go to Georgia!" True story. Sis. Finlayson can verify, because I told her about it the night before we opened our re-assignments. So yep, true to my word (phew) I am so excited to go to Georgia! And lest anyone be confused, I will only be in Georgia until my visa arrives, and then I am off to Ukraine.

Re-assignment opening. It was a party.

So nothing really exciting this past week, but exciting times ahead - stay tuned!

Love,
Sister Tanner

Early Tuesday morning we were able to talk to Diana for about 15 minutes while she was in the Salt Lake Airport. Here are some things we talked about. She was going to be one of 48 missionaries arriving in the Atlanta, Georgia mission that day. 24 missionaries originally called to that mission and 24 going there while waiting for their visas. All 7 elders and the two sisters called to Donetsk were sent to Atlanta. It is unusual to send them all to the same mission while they wait for visas. The visa waiters are to be given an extra hour of study time each day to study their language. The missionaries going to the Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine mission remained at the MTC as their visas were expected within days. We asked her to say the name of the church in Russian and to say a basic door approach in Russian. She rattled it off and sounded good to us, but of course we have no idea what she said. She did not put on weight in the MTC, but some of the elders in her district did due to the large quantities of available food and the sitting for hours a day while studying. Her second cousin Eleanor Jackson entered the MTC last week and she saw her several times. She was very excited to be heading out to put to use all that she had learned and to share her testimony of Jesus Christ.

The Atlanta Georgia mission has a Facebook page and we were able to get these photos from their page after Diana arrived.