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This is a famous Russian folks song sang by famous Russian twins. You can find it on youtube by typing "katusha" We are trying to learn it in our class. Its about a lady during the great war and her man serving in the military, and she is keeping hold of all the good memories. 

Some additional Friends I made while at the MTC.

Letter from 25 January 2011

Another week down and out. we got our new name tags this week with how our russian names are spelt they look pretty sweet. So we havent really got our flight plans yet but we are thinking that we will be leaving the 15th of february and probably pretty early in the morning. 

Just to let everyone know the toe is doing fine i give it a bath everynight before i go to bed. I do have to go back to the doctor this week though. Its exciting to get off the MTC campus every once in awhile its like we are in jail and cant go outside the boundries and so when you do get to go into the real world. . . oh boy . . . its a big deal to everyone. 

We are learning how to teach people in russian the word of wisdom and tithing which is pretty easy i think. A cool experience i had last week. so there are people who come in and volunteer to pretend like they are investigators, so we were teaching these 2 people one was from Arizona and the other was a native from Ukraine. Well come to find out after teaching him that the native is actually really famous in Ukraine! I guess he was like a finalist of their style of american idol. But when we were getting to know him (in russian) we asked him if he worked or went to school and he said no so it all makes sense. . . he is a famous singer. We thought that was pretty sweet. The language is coming along really well we have native missionaries here and i love talking to them in russian. And they help us out alot with how to say things. Starting tomorrow we are only speaking in russian now so no more english here in the MTC unless we have too. Oh one of the new missionaries was telling me that there is some kind of contraversy in moscow about religion and that we wont be able to wear our name tags when we get there, and if we do we could possibly be beaten up and thrown in jail. I am not saying this to scare you mom. . . just thought i would say :) but we will see how things go, i am excited to get there. i hope everything is going well for everyone back home i love you all.

Love elder spoerri  

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Letter dated 18 January 2011

Alright lets start off by saying we had elder holland come and speak to us last thursday and that was great even though he called out pretty much every missionary and told us that we arent good missionaries but just need to keep working hard. it was a great talk by him. so wendesday, just any other day but that night i dicided to perform surgury on myself haha. So i have had an ingrown toenail for a few weeks and i asked my companions if it was normal for my toe to be like this and elder wininger comes over and was like no you need to dig that thing out so we had all the tools lined out on the table and i and like tearing my skin away from my toenail and tring to just tear the nail out. Wininger was freaking out yelling like NOO!!! JUST YANK IT OUT!!! and stuff but i couldnt do it, it was pretty painfull, but our own surgury took about an hour so we were way past curfuw haha. so went and got my toe checked out the next day by the nurse here and i was like i think i have an ingrown towenail and she was like ok take off your shoe and sock. . .  so i did and as soon as i did she was just like yup. ok. lets get you a refferal to go see the doctor. so on thursday i went into the real world! it was sweet haha not really though. but i went to the foot doctor and after he looked at it for a sec he was like ok we need to numb your toe. and i was freaking out a little bit. he comes back with this needle and jabs it on the inside of my big toe and that hurt so bad!! then he was like ok 1/3 done and pokes the needle on the top of my toe and that didnt feel good either then he says 2/3rds done and pokes me one last time on the outside of my toe, that one hurt the worst! i was sitting there holding onto my belt so tight and elder goddard was sitting there laughing at me haha then after the shots i couldnt help but laugh haha it was funny. and then i couldnt feel my toe for the rest of the day. He gave me the nail that he cut out of my toe and it is now taped into my journal. other wise that was all the interesting news that happened this week. The language is coming along really well and i can actually hold a conversation in russian and teach all that i need to in russian. I am so excited to get over there. We also got new elders in our zones this week so that was exciting but they arent really friendly. they make all of us older districts look bad. they and studying all the time and when we get back to the room we like to talk but they do companion study. but everyone is doing great. i hope everything is going great back at home i love you all

Love

Elder Jordan Spoerri

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Letter dates 11 January 2011

Ok so here is the scoop of what is going on here in the good old MTC. The days are the same we are now teaching in full russian to investigators and i realized that i know some but i dont know that much. they just start talking to us in russian when we ask a question and i only understand a few words but can somehow make out what is being said and try to respond back. This week we had a zone activity and the set up what is called a reenok and basically its like mexico beggars. they have their little shops set up and haggle you until you buy something but it was sweet to see some stuff from russia, i will just say now that i am going to leave most of my stuff there and buy alot of stuff before i come back. One thing i want that sounds amazing to me is a fitted suit lined with seal's fur!! How sweet would that be? they say that the business men wear those kinds of suits, but as far i know i am doing business, i am doing the lords business bringing people unto him. Also the shopka's they had a fox one at the reenok and it was amazing! it was so warm and HUGE!! but they are about $150 USD but i plan on getting at least 2 of those! Oh one of my goals over there ( i know mom you will say i dont need this goal, but i do) is to buy a new tie every week! the ties over there are really good quality and very cheap you can get a tie for 2 or 3 dollars. I got an email from Andy Player and he actually said that they eat at peoples houses all the time and that he actually just had the meat jello and he liked it! I dont know if i will be able to handle it. We went to the temple this morning and it was pretty cold. I had on my scarf and my shopka, the one i got from germany, and my bum fighter gloves. So i wrapped the scarf around my face and nose just so my eyes were showing and then put my shopka on and tied it, and that helped the scarf not fall down. I wasnt to cold but my companions were. I just thought it looked sweet with the scarf and shopka. i am so excited to get to Russia for the Fur hats! the older distric just left to go to their missions and it just made me want to get out of the MTC even more and just go talk to people even if they wont understand me that much. Also the temple food is AMZING!!! we decided that we are going to eat there ever time we go to the temple because its so good!!! The food in the MTC just kills my stomach, i dont know what it is but i feel sick from the food everytime after we eat. anyways hope everything is going great back at home i love you all.
С ЛЮБОВЬ
СТАРЕЙШИНА СПЭРРИ

Guess Who??!!

Austin was asked to assist the spanish speaking missionaries in teaching at the MTC. As it turns out, Jordan had his P-Day that same day and had a chance to meet up with Austin for a couple minutes. What a great opportunity for both of them and take some great pictures...this does not happen every day!!

Austin and Jordan pointing to where they will/have served a mission! 

A quick visit at the dorm room!

Holidays in the MTC

Name Tag in Russian

This is how we started to learn Russian!!??

December 14, 2010

Another week down and I feel like I need to celebrate every time i make it through a week. The language is so hard!! There should not be 24 different ways to say my, or your, it is just crazy how much conjugation there is. But everything seems to be going great! I use to think that the branch president didn't like me but i had an interview with him and it went really well so now I think he is a good guy. Nothing really exciting happens anymore. The days are really repetitive and just so much class time it is tough to stay awake. We try to play games during study time but we don’t even have games that are fun to play for that long. Like Russian hang man. . . you can only play so many rounds of that and especially when you only know like 100 words. . . if that. It is Christmas season here and I am a little upset that there is no snow. My companion keeps complaining that it’s too cold and I am just wishing I were in a short sleeve shirt. We do have special days though in the week like we started scarf Fridays, we also have retro Saturdays. Which was way fun because my district went and bought suspenders and hiked up our pants really high and had really short ties, it was a good day of people telling us we look funny. Oh and I found some doctors glasses to go with my outfit. Also one of my favorite nights the Paraguayans put on a napkin poetry night. One of the best nights of the week by far!! …

 Hope you all a good week and a great Christmas holiday! я люблю тебя (i love you)

Love 

  Elder Spoerri

Room Mates going to Russia

My District in the MTC

December 21, 2010

The weeks are about the same as ever now. Class, Russian, more class, Personal study, Class and then . . . more classes. But we did find a way to get music playing through lds.org and the teachers encourage us to listen to it which I don’t understand why if we aren’t able to listen to our own music? But I am not complaining. Russian is coming along pretty good. Its still really hard but we are almost able to hold a conversation about like what do you do or study… work…sports…and stuff like that. Last night for FHE we played a game its called zoopark. Dad knows this game we use to play it when we were little, but its the game where you slap your legs 2 times and then do the animal signs and then a different persons animal sign. But we did it in Russian, so instead of just doing the sign we had to say the animal too. It was a lot of fun. Some thing exciting we did back in our rooms with Darren and his room was that we turned out all the lights and had a flashlight that we point towards the ceiling. One person spins around for 30 seconds and after that, take the flashlight and make it like a strobe light…I got so dizzy that I fell over 5 times and totally wiped out Darren’s desk in his room. We have to have some excitement through the day haha. Other than that nothing else really happened…the days are long but the weeks go by like a day. Hope everything is going great at home. Love you

Love

Elder Spoerri

December 28, 2010

This week was a pretty good week. We had a lot of devotionals in which elder Russell M. Nelson came to 3 of the meetings and spoke to us in 2 of them. He might be my favorite speaker of the apostles. I swear that during his talk he had revelation, because in priesthood he was saying something… then all of a sudden stopped and holding his thoughts…then continued and said…I need to tell you this right now and he never went back to what he was saying before…so it was pretty sweet! Also Happy Birthday Austin! Hope you had a good B-Day.

Christmas, I hope everyone had a good Christmas, even though being away from the family it was still a really good Christmas! Christmas morning we were woken up by the Ukrainians playing the violin and singing then all the Russian speaking and Ukrainians started singing for like a half hour. Then my room went down to the Serbian’s room with Darrin Novakovich and took turns opening our presents, Just like a family and taking pictures…it was really fun to do it like that. Yesterday was a sad day though the Serbians, the ones we would hang out with every night left to go to Serbia and Croatia, it was sad to see them go.

The Russian language . . . oh boy is it tough! We have almost made it through how to conjugate in all the different cases, which, let me tell you there are 6 different cases and for each case there is a Masculine, Feminine, Neuter, and plural way to conjugate it. So there are like 24 different ways to conjugate every word in their dictionary, in which usually almost every word has to be conjugated in a sentence. It’s tough, but I am finally getting to be able to form my own sentences, which is pretty sweet. I don’t know if I am conjugating them right but they can somewhat understand what I am saying. Thank you Mom, dad, Austin, Christie, grandma and Grandpa, and the jones’ for the presents it made Christmas a lot better to have presents to open haha. Anyways everything is going well here and I hope everything is going great for all of you. I love you

Love

Elder Spoerri

Elder Darren Novakovich and I (long time friends - he is going to Serbia)

Christmas at the MTC...packages from home, yeaa

Elder Branden Zilkowski and I...he is going to Seattle WA