How many companions does it take to kill Sister Howell?

Excuse the missionary slang. Because this is my last transfer I am "dying" as a missionary. I started out the transfer with Sister Clark in Odessa, then I came back to Billa with Sister Kovelenko. Last Saturday Sister Kovelenko went down to Odessa and Sister Helelyan and Sister Movesardian are with me now. On Wednesday, we will go Voskresinsky in Kiev (my first area) and on Saturday something else will happen. I don't know yet. The assistants like secrets. All I know is that I will be on a plane next Tuesday and I am trying not to think about that, while everyone else keeps reminding me.

Last week we were visiting Bobushka Anya. She is paralyzed on one half of her body and because of that, when she speaks, it is in hardly understandable Russian. Since I'm Ukrainian speaking I can only understand about 10% of what she says. So, she was in a very talkative mood that day and went on and on telling her life story. Occasionally she would stop and pause for understanding. I didn't want her to repeat herself ten times, so I said, "pravelno," which means: correct. Then she would keep on talking. Later, as Sister Kovelenko and I were walking to our next meeting I had her recap on what Anya said. She said that in her life she has had three major concussions and once, her son-in-law tried to inject her with something in order to kill her, so that he could sell her apartment. After her last close call with death, her daughter said that even the dead world will not accept her. What a horrible thing to say to a person! After a few seconds I said in shock, "I hope that was not one of the times when I said "pravelno"!" Sister Kovelenko was laughing so hard that I thought she would fall to the ground. But she told me that no, I had said pravelno after Anya said that the Lord must have an important purpose for her to keep her alive so many times. Wooah, I need to be more careful!

-Sister Howell
10-4-10