Christmas

Hey! I don't have much to say because we just talked  yesterday. The rest of yesterday was awesome! We went to the mission home and Sister Gibbons made an awesome dinner. President shared a spiritual thought and a couple missionaries did some really good musical numbers then we did the white elephant exchange.  It was really fun. The I came home and did call in reports and read the big paper thing and the book (of photos and thoughts from family members) while listening to Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack... best weekly call in reports ever! It was an awesome Christmas, definitely very unique and one that I will always remember. I loved reading the message that all the family wrote, that and the call were definitely the best part of Christmas.

I attached a couple pictures here of the party at Presidents.

First, I got the light up and Christmas carol singing tie, only to be stolen by Elder Harrison

Then I stole the Justin Beiber doll from Elder Howard (I really wanted that) only to be stolen by Elder Bounous, then by Elder Huffaker (which is extremely funny because he is the 70 year old cowboy).

Then I got a little missionary comic book with a ton of scripture puns, only to again be stolen by Elder Bounous.

 

Then I ended up with a lame little girls plastic pink locket, so it was a fun party but had a disappointing result.

 

Me expounding on the holy scriptures wearing shopka

Me pondering the holy scriptures while wearing shopka.

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They went and saw The Nutcracker for cultural night.

Picture of me in the opera theatre.

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Christmas Eve:

The gift that I took to our White Elephant gift exchange.

Christmas Eve dinner

Various present opening pictures and the aftermath: 

 

Party at President Gibbons's house 

Full of Miracles

I'm at the Webb's right now using their iPad to email while Elder Hyde is on the computer. We went to our regular internet place but it was totally full with ten year old boys playing World of Warcraft and stuff so we called the Webb's and asked if we could come over a little early and use the internet at their place. The district is all coming over a little later to make Christmas cookies or something like that. So anyway, it's really nice of them.

So this week has been alright. The bad news is that we haven't really had much success in the regular usage of the word, but the good thing is that we've been pretty busy doing things besides just straight tracking and street contacting. But don't worry we still got our fair share of that in.  We went to the concert of our investigator that took the picture for us. It was really sweet, he plays the marimba which is basically just a huge xylophone, but it was sweet.  He played with four sticks and it was really cool, and only half an hour so that was awesome, hopefully we can get a good meeting with him in a little while.

Drunk guy from the office didn't show and the number he gave us was bad, unfortunately that's more of the usual than the exception.  The guy from art club came to church, but then we haven't seen him since and he has never once answered his phone.

But we went and saw the inactive lady from art club. We had a decent meeting with her, but here's the awesome part. Dad will love this. She fed us holladiets (holodets). I have no idea how to spell it in English. Google it. It's basically meat gelatin. Actually the flavor was good and we had a little bread with it and actually when spread lightly on the bread it was good, but there was like no bread and she said you are just supposed to eat it plain anyway. It would just melt in your mouth in the grossest way possible, I can't even describe it. But it was awesome -  when she told us that she had it I was really excited because I have been wanting to try it for a while now.  It was gross, but don't worry I ate all that she put on my plate.

So New Years is really big here, bigger than Christmas. Because everyone celebrates it and just goes out on the streets and gets drunk from what it sounds like. But they also give gifts for New Years. And they call it the New Years tree instead of the Christmas tree. We are not allowed to leave our apartments after four in the afternoon on both New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. So those could get kind of long. Bad thing is that a lot of our contacts have been telling us that they are too busy now and that I should call them back after New Years, so we will see.

So Christmas sounds like it will be really good. We are spending the morning at the Webb's with the district, they are making us breakfast while we do calls. We have church from 11-2 then from three to seven all the missionaries in the city are going over to President's for dinner and I would imagine probably a spiritual program and maybe a fun thing too, we will see. But it sounds like there won't really be down time, and to Rob:  there is no tracting rule, so that's really good.  So I'm going to FaceTime around 7:00 here in the morning. I think that is 4 there in the afternoon, but I may be off. I should be able to call you, but if not I'll send a email or something if there's a problem.

Well, really not that much interesting to write about. I finally broke out the big coat last night. It was really nice. A little inconvenient for pockets but really warm.

Aleksei has been out of town for a month, but last time I called him he said he had been reading the Book of Mormon with his buddy up there and he is really interested in it. So Aleksei asked me if he could give it to him and I could get him another one.  This guy is full of miracles, so eventually it will be his time.

Well Merry Christmas. I'm excited to talk to you soon. Love you.

Elder Topham

Promising

So this week has been pretty good.  Mostly because we have been trying a bunch of different things and we've had some interesting experiences, but it's still been pretty disappointing because we still don't have any progressing investigators.  But we have some promising contacts that we are excited about. 

 

PS, I'm actually writing this from the mission office today, and a drunk guy just walked in asking questions about our church.  We set up a meeting for tomorrow, but we'll see how that goes.  I've got his number and I'll definitely call him tomorrow morning. 

 

So no transfer this time around as expected.  With the new training program there is a specific 12 week timetable of things you have to complete studying and applying as a companionship, so except for the occasional exception, trainers stay with their new missionaries for 2 transfers.  But next transfer I'm pretty sure I'm going to be out of here.  So we'll see.  Some there are some really good missionaries going home this transfer, and less and less of the "older generation" are left.  Elders Drasso, and Eborn are both going home, along with the best American Russian speaker in the mission, Elder Septon, and a couple others including the assistant, Elder Stewart.  And there are a few coming in too.

 

We did a few cool new finding methods this week.  We invited everyone at English group to a big "group lesson" in a comfortable setting.  Not a big turnout,  just 2 eternal investigators, 1 active member and two less active members.  The sisters, Elder Hyde and I taught together.  It was fun, we tried some fun, thought provoking ways of teaching.  Like writing the names of gospel principles on a plate, breaking the plate to symbolize apostasy, then showing how you can't put the pieces together- you have to restore it.  The only problem is that Sister Trottier tried to throw the plate into the trash can (in order to control the shrapnel) and couldn't get it to break. Like 3 times! Then the people there were like "No we get it! its a good plate don't break it!"  It was really funny. 

 

Then we also had a movie night. Just to watch Finding Faith in Christ, there were like 4 nonmembers there so, it's not too bad.

 

Here is quite the interesting experience.  We met a guy contacting.  An old little guy with a huge beard, really friendly, he's an artist and invited us to his art display.  So we were like sure we'll swing by, because he seemed pretty interested in hearing from us.  So we show up, and it turns out it's more like an art club.  Or something weird like that where there were like 10 oldish people and they were displaying this women's pictures. It was really weird, but anyway, we had no idea what was going on, but turns out, one of the people there is an inactive member who the sisters always try to get into contact with but she ignores them, and she likes us so we might be able to get to her.  And the oldest guy came to our movie night, then to church the next day, so I don't know, it's crazy how this has been. 

 

Then, I conducted my first baptismal interview this week.  It was tough because he didn't understand one of the commandments, and we had to postpone it.  It was crazy because there are only very loose guidelines, in PMG and there are no time requirements for any commandments and stuff.  I called the zone leaders to get their opinion and they basically just said it's totally up to you, which I admire, but it made it really tough.  Good news is we'll have another chance to do it right soon.

 

So we are allowed to use Skype or anything we want to call home, including video features.  And the Webb's are offering their computer for us.  So they have an iPad and suggested we do Facetime. they said it works even better than Skype.  So, if you will email me back what I have to do to Facetime call you, we will do that.  It will be Saturday night your time, I don't know exactly when, but I'll get you a time in next week's email.

 

Don't worry, I haven't opened the presents yet.  It sounds like it just might be our district at the Webb's (for Christmas) which will be great. 

 

 

Elder Topham

When You Feel Like You Really Made a Difference

So this week has been really good, it's actually flown by with the leadership training and exchanges.  

Leadership training was really cool, we just talked all about finding the whole time, and it was really good to get some new ideas, so hopefully they will be able to be applied well and work.

So I'm starting to go on exchanges with everyone in my district, and those are really fun.  I had Elder Dawson for a day this week, and it's cool, because he is totally fearless and literally talks to every person, which is mostly good, but there are some people where you just have to realize that it's a waste of time, but that's beside the point.  Anyway, we tried one of the new clever contacting approaches that was brought up at leadership training, and here's the story behind the pictures. I had him take a picture of me in this pretty spot,

then when the first guy walked by he stopped him and asked him to take the picture for us.

He did, and I sent it to you, then as he was giving us the camera back, we just chatted with him, and he invited us over to a little cafe to tell him more, so it was awesome! It worked first time and got us out of the cold!  He didn't end up being really interested, but we'll see, we might see him again.

And we even got let in while tracking on the same day! It was awesome, because we didn't have any meetings planned the whole day and we ended the day with two investigator lessons. 

It's been pretty cool, the last two weeks I've given 5 blessings, 4 for health and 1 comfort  It's pretty cool because that is definitely one of my favorite things to do. Dad and I have talked about it some, and it's been really cool how what dad and I talked about and what it says in my P. blessing are really true.  I actually feel kinda drained after we leave those meetings, but it's a really good kind, like I just finished working out, so I love it.  And to make it even better we gave blessings to an inactive guy and his active mother.  We saw them 2 days later and they both were really grateful and said, "thank you so much, I felt better the next morning and went to work" and the guy even came to church! Well, at least sacrament meeting, and he was playing on his phone most of the time, but it's still progress.  It's just really cool to see these instances where you feel like you really made a difference.

So the branch just made home teaching assignments and we have a companion, so hopefully he will be down with going with us and that will allow us to have a few more appointments.

So, to answer a few questions, it's pretty much the same decorations here for Christmas, just not near as nice, as far as homes and things go, they do trees with some lights and ornaments, but it is all just apartment buildings, so there really aren't lights on houses, but Lennin Square looks pretty, they put up some lights and it looks really cool.  So Elder Drasso was looking for a nativity set for a while for his parents and wasn't having luck, but I'm sure they would have them in Moscow.

So for our meals, we pretty much have to cook for ourselves every meal.  Aleksei is the only one who has ever fed us, oh and gleb too back in the day, as far as full meals go.  We have a pretty basic diet, pasta with red sauce and meat, pasta with white sauce and chicken, rice with chicken, rice with chicken and frozen veggies, pelmeini and vereniki, those are the dumplings with meat and potato in them respectively. Sometimes with frozen veggies also.  Sandwiches, American or Russian style. Ummm... maybe a few other basic things with potatoes.  We are going to do a borscht this week, we had this little borscht pack in the fridge you just have to add potatoes and cabbage, so we'll see. I bought a cabbage this morning that's pretty cool, I was surprised with how heavy it is.  We usually do breakfast pretty nice, we take turns cooking up some eggs usually. It's nice because it holds you over through a long time and it's a really cheap source of protein. especially here it seems.  

Dennis is really nice, but pretty much not interested.  Ilya actually gave his Book of Mormon back to Dennis to give to us.  We convinced Dennis to keep his own, and I can see another meeting coming in the future somewhere, but we'll see.

So I just recently finished the New Testament.  Usually during studies I warm up with a chapter or 2 from the Book of Mormon, then some from whatever I'm reading straight through, like the New Testament (I don't know what I want to do next, either Jesus the Christ or Old Testament).  Then I work on whatever topic I want to study that day, usually it has to do with a lesson we are teaching that day or an upcoming district meeting or something. I like the system it works pretty well.

So here's a little story to kind of illustrate how things are just different here.  The ZLs came in to town on a bus, like a 5 hour ride, from Tomsk.  They got off the bus and Elder Erickson realized that he left his backpack, they go back to get it and it's gone.  Elder Stuart (the ZL, not the AP) finds the bus driver, somehow finds out that bus driver hid it, and pays him 200 rubles to get it back.  It's really funny, mostly because little corrupt things like that happen all the time, but it's really funny because 200 rubles is like five bucks.  It might have even been 100 ruble's, I don't really remember but it was something ridiculous like that.

It's been pretty warm considering the season, still haven't been wearing the big jacket yet.  I think there will probably be a big temperature drop soon, so we'll see.  So anyway I haven't frozen yet, the work seems to be picking up, so I'd say everything is good.

Elder Topham

This is Tamara the less active woman who we see fairly regularly, and her teenage daughter, and the little girl is their neighbor.

This is What You Need

Well maybe I'll start with Thanksgiving... It was awesome!  We were at the mission home from 2 until 9.  It was supposed to be from 2 till 7, but Sister Gibbons, with little resistance, was able to convince President to let us stay longer.  There was tons of food, way more than enough because there were quite a few missionaries there too.  Sister Gibbons, and the two senior couple sisters all cooked. Elder Hyde and I made some cookies and brought some ice cream.. the cookies were good but lame compared to the other desserts, so nobody really ate them.  But the ice cream was very useful to have with the pies.  So we kinda relaxed for a while before dinner. Then after dinner, President wanted us to watch a movie together and he chose one that is, I guess, a family tradition for him called Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby.  I don't know if I would have liked it much in my pre-mission days, but it was awesome! 1- because it was a movie, 2- because it was good, and 3- because it had some very politically incorrect parts that were hilarious, and because of Presidents reaction because I think he had forgotten that those parts were in there, and was kinda regretting showing it, but we had fun. Then he let us pick one, and everybody picked Tangled, which is a solid one too. Also, keeping in mind how every movie is 100x better on the mission, so it was amazing.  So anyway, it didn't really feel like a traditional thanksgiving, probably because it was with different people, and no fried turkey, no waking up early to watch Sam go run, no watching football, and so on. But it was amazing, and it did wonders to recharge the batteries and lift the spirits.

So the AP's are actually in a threesome now which is odd, but cool because they are able to split off with other companionships a lot.  Elder Stuart, the older one who goes home next transfer whom i really respect, spent a day with us and it was awesome.  I learned a lot from him.  

This next week we have a leadership training meeting for all the DLs ZLs APs and trainers, so that will be awesome to hear from President again and to see some friends that I haven't seen for a while.  And the ZLs are going on exchanges with us tomorrow so we'll see how that goes.  It's really cool to have a lot of different things shaking up the schedule.

This was cool, our little miracle for the week.  We found a piece of paper from one of our old English club activities with a question on the bottom that asks if they would like to know more about the church, and a guy had checked yes. But there was only an address, so we found the apartment in a sketchy neighborhood, and nobody was there so we left a note and the guy actually came to the next English club, found me, and said he would definitely be at church then came to church! haha It was incredible.   So we'll see what happens there, he doesn't have a phone, and he said it wasn't a good idea for us to go to that neighborhood so we'll see.

This was cool too.  There was a baptism on Saturday. We were there and there was a senior couple who serves in Moscow as auditors. They came in for a mission tour, and were there and they needed someone to show them back to the metro and he actually wanted to buy something, so we took him to a store and then they offered to take us to lunch, so we went to Carl's Jr. and it was awesome! They paid for it and it was just sweet, you don't understand how awesome that stuff is until you are out here. haha

Thanks again for the Christmas package Mom.  I'm still enjoying it, it's amazing. The toffee actually tastes like home.  I actually feel like I'm sitting on the black chair watching football, or that I'm sitting in a folding chair next to the fire working on the puzzle.  It's amazing how vivid those memories are, remembering smells, sounds, emotions everything. It's really sweet.

We are still kinda struggling with investigators.  We had 3 first meetings all "pose us the rabbit" as Rob would say.  Two of them had been confirmed on the phone, one of those only 2 hours before the meeting.  Ilya hasn't answered our calls, but Dennis has.  He said he read all of 1st Nephi, but he said something along the lines that he wasn't really feeling it like we do and he called and set up an appointment to "give us our book back" so we'll see about him tonight. The meeting with Aleksei was pretty intense, he wouldn't even let us pray at the beginning, much less offer it himself.  He kept trying to change the subject during the lesson,  but I said, "Aleksei you need to hear this, this is what you need, listen to me for five minutes without interrupting."  It sounds meaner in writing than it actually was, but we have a good relationship so he took it well, listened and after we read Alma 7:11-13

 11 And he shall go forth, suffering pains and ^aafflictions and ^btemptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will ^ctake upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.

 12 And he will take upon him ^adeath, that he may ^bloose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to ^csuccor his people according to their infirmities.

 13 Now the Spirit ^aknoweth all things; nevertheless the Son of God suffereth according to the ^bflesh that he might ^ctake upon him the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance; and now behold, this is the testimony which is in me.

he said "Wow, those verses really touched me" and he let us pray at the end and committed to read the chapter.  It was a big turnaround in one meeting, but he has a long way to go and it will probably be a slow process but he'll get there. Those verses have become some of and maybe my absolute favorites. 

Well stuff's still moving a lot, I haven't frozen yet. I've learned its all about the shoes, scarf, hat and gloves, it's not really your body that gets cold. We are probably going to Carl's again today with all the missionaries. 

I'll attach some pictures. I hope this is "Russian missionary enough" to give you a few options for your card if it's not too late and there will be some at the zoo. They had some white tigers there too which was cool, felt like home.  It's still not cold enough for the big coat, but I did wear a shopka in some of these. 

Love

Elder Topham

Here are 3 "generations" of missionaries: Elder Drasso, Hyde and I after zone conference

 Russian missionary picture

 me almost being eaten by a dino at the zoo.... only in Russia do they have dinosaurs at zoos

Elder Harrison and I at the zoo with the polar bear

me installing some kind of clothes line thing for a handicapped member

I couldn't resist when I saw this billboard for an "american pub"

Magnifying Glass for the Savior

Hey Mom! and everybody else.  This week was really cool. 

So I'll start at zone conference. It was kind of like a turning point of the week and probably much more than that.  First, Sister Lawrence spoke a lot in detail about tribes of Israel and lineage and patriarchal blessings, which you know I've always been really interested in and it was amazing and mind blowing, especially because it was specific to Russia.  It's amazing, almost ever single member here is from one of the lost 10 tribes.  And she spoke about Israelite blood - it was just awesome. Then President Gibbons spoke and this was by far my favorite.  He said he wrote a talk to give to the zone conferences, then 2 nights ago on the train he felt he should talk about something else and wrote a talk for that, and was going to decide right then which one to give. Then he said, "But now feel like I shouldn't give either," and he just started talking about a totally different subject.  It was amazing because I'm sure it applied to other people there, but I really feel like he was talking directly to me the whole time and saying exactly what I needed to hear.  He addressed his remarks to those of us who feel like we have a burden and a task that we seem just too small to handle right now.  He talked about the miracle of the loaves and fishes and Nephi building a ship, and about how we can use our talents and everything we have as a magnifying glass for the savior to work miracles.  It was incredible.  It was exactly what I needed to hear and totally changed my attitude and lifted my spirits.  It just really hit me hard spiritually, and obviously I cried.  But anyway,  then President Lawrence from the Europe East Area presidency spoke about how we can really show faith in order to receive blessings and success.

Anyway, Elder Hyde and I in the next planning session were really pumped up and set a really good goal, and I've created a plan of exactly what we need to do to reach it. Since then it's been really awesome, first just with this one thing very specific to work for, and to pray for, it's really easy to stay motivated and spirits have been really high, and it's been really fun, and my faith has definitely increased.

So there's a lot of snow, but it doesn't hinder travel. They clear the roads alright and the sidewalks are just slippery, but not like piled with snow.

We are probably going to the zoo this afternoon, so that will be fun.  Last week I took that long nap, the week before that we went shopping at the rinok, and before that we played ping pong at the branch and the sisters made brownies.  So that's been the last few p-days.

So the last few days have been really good. We had Elder Hyde's first investigator meeting on Saturday, and we have a few set up for next week.

Thanksgiving we get to go to the mission home from 2-7. Sister Gibbons is cooking turkey, potatoes, and stuffing. Missionaries are supposed to bring salads, sides, and desserts, so I'll have to think of something haha! but its going to be awesome.

So this first investigator meeting-  definitely another miracle.  I've actually come to the conclusion that any time we find an investigator it's a miracle.  Anyway, so this guy Ilya -  I looked back in my journal and found that I actually contacted him on my second full day here, with Elder Drasso.  I asked him if he spoke English just as a starter, and was surprised to hear "Yeah,  what's up, I lived in California for a couple years."  So anyway, we had a nice little convo with him and got his number.  We tried to bring up the gospel but it didn't really work, so we just called him a little later to come to English Club and he was busy, and stuff and things kinda just didn't work out for a while and he kinda fell off our minds anyway.  Two weeks ago Elder Hyde and I walked by him in the middle of a street we were both crossing going opposite directions. We were on the way to do email, and we recognized each other after a second of thinking, "Wait, I know this guy," and as we were walking by only had enough time to say hey, and give a little wave.  Then... same thing happened the next week! same exact place! and I didn't see him till he passed by and it was the same little surprised "oh hey." I was kicking myself for not turning around and following him back to the other side of the street, and talking more, but I didn't think about it in the moment.  Anyway, that night we just called him, and were like "Hey,  that's crazy we keep seeing each other in the same place... so do you want to meet some time and we can tell you a little about our church and how it can help you?"  And he's just like "sure". So boom investigator meeting! I called him a couple hours before the meeting and he's like "yeah I remember, is it cool if I bring my friend Dennis."  Sure! So, boom two investigators.  We taught a good discussion.  Not amazing but good. The spirit was definitely there.  They both committed to read, pray and talk to us again, but weren't just like all over it, so we'll see.  It was just a really cool experience.

Oh and Aleksei finally answered my call and said we can come talk to him this week! So we'll see about that, too.  Sergei is still saying he has no time, which is kinda true because he's getting married on December 31.

I've just been feeling really good the last few days. Elder Hyde and I have been getting along really well, we've been working hard and it's been really fun, and we are very optimistic.

Love you Mom, 

Elder Topham

It's Not Too Cold

Hello,

Well this week things have just kind of been plugging along. We are still struggling to find new investigators, so we have been spending a lot of time contacting and just trying to find people, it's been tough, but it's not too cold or anything. It's chilly out there, but it's fine if you just kinda dress up for it. I tried wearing my big coat one day, but it's still too heavy for the weather right now, so I've been fine with a light sweater and just that rain jacket. Really the most important things are the hat gloves and scarf, oh and boots, I think if you have all of those on you feel warm no matter what.

Oh, I got both packages This Week! How funny is that, you send them at different times, but I always get them at the same time. Oh well, it was just doubly as exciting and fun to open them and it really gave me a big boost to my spirits that day. Thanks for the first package! We've been listening to that Christmas CD the last couple days and it's awesome. Then I opened up the Christmas package and wow! There was a ton of toffee and hot chocolate in there. Thank you so much! Everything was intact except for one of the plastic containers of hot chocolate cracked and spilled in the box. But it's okay, because I think most of it was still in the box and able to be salvaged.

I've gotten sick the last couple days. It's not bad, but it's been draining me, so I'm going to go home and sleep for the rest of p-day. Then hopefully I'll get better soon.

There are some pretty exciting things coming up. Zone conference is this week and that will be awesome. Then Thanksgiving will be at the mission home, and I'll be doing exchanges with the elders in my district, so I'm really excited for all of that.

Not much has happened that's exciting this week... sorry. I'm going to retry those pictures from a couple weeks ago. Some will be on the island in Finland, one will be with our kind of investigator, Sergei.Hope those pictures worked. I have a couple more minutes. So I don't know exactly what to write about, you said you like hearing little day to day details. English club is really fun for me. 2nd group (the one I run) has like 20 people in it. Last time we had them split into groups, make up a movie plot and present it to the class. Before that, we acted like it was a rinok and they had to argue prices with us in English. Tell you what, that is much more fun than doing it in Russian. But it's cool. Some stay for the spiritual thought, but not many are really interested in anything, so I don't know. President said he wants us to cut down on our English club time, so everyone is only going to be going once a week now, so oh well. I really like it, we have gotten some first meetings out of it in the past.

Don't worry I'm staying warm.

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Finland

Novosibirsk

A Long Way to Go

So this week has been really crazy. My new comp is Elder Hyde. He's from American Fork. He has a very strong desire to work hard and is willing to do anything so that's really good.


It's been tough with just the two of us because of our limited language abilities, but I expect to be getting better fast, I hope so at least. It's hard to describe how far along I am, but I am much better than 3 months ago, but have a long way to go.


We don't have any progressing investigators so that is our main problem. Aleksei finally got out of the hospital, but the night he got home, his house caught on fire in the middle of the night and it destroyed one of the rooms and the entire roof. We went over to visit and offer to help, but he said he didn't need any except a lawyer (the fire was supposedly started by someones fireworks) and he didn't want to even hear our message. and said something like "my thoughts are not going to be turned to God or the Book of Mormon now." It was extremely sad. Elder Drasso and I didn't say a word the whole mashrootka ride home, and even when we got home I just sat there for a few minutes. It killed me, we've had too many miracles with him and our relationship is too good for it to just end like that, so it's tough...


So we need to find new investigators, but it's tough and nobody wants to talk to us really. We get some conversations on the street and even members every once in a while, so hopefully we'll have some first meetings this week but we'll see.


We didn't do anything on Halloween, but apparently they carved pumpkins together on the p-day when I was in Finland.


So here's another fun story. My first night as district leader there was a "crisis." The snig elders who live about an hour away from the center lent their keys for the branch to the sisters and forgot to get them back and at 9:30 they get home and find out their apartment keys are in the center with the sisters. So the solution was pretty simple, they just had to come spend the night with us, who are nearest to them, and they could get to a home before 10:30, it was actually kind of exciting to solve a crisis on the first night on the job. And our first district meeting was really good too. The APs and office couple were there. We do them at the office couple's apartment and they feed us a marvelous meal every time. So it was really easy to get input from people and it just went really well. I just had to ask a few open ended questions.


Elder Topham

Changes

So this last week has been really crazy with our first trip to Finland and we found out transfers.  So basically the only thing that will not change is that I'm staying in this same area... Other than this, it's crazy.  So first, Elder Drasso is going to Baraul to finish up his mission as ZL there.  And guess who my companion is going to be... A new missionary!  Straight out of the MTC, haha.  Yeah.. that means I'm training next transfer.  That's pretty crazy because my language is still not good at all.  I'm starting to understand better, but I still don't understand a lot.  But I'm really excited, because it means both of us are going to have to learn really fast, or else we are in trouble, so I think it will help.  I just hope my kid will have a lot of energy and be okay with some mistakes/epic failures to start.  We'll see.  I know president Gibbons is really into having younger missionaries train.  It forces both missionaries to learn faster.  Elders Davis and Walker from my MTC group are also going to start training this transfer, so it's pretty crazy.  Elder Davis was trained by a 3rd transfer missionary also, but as far as anyone knows that's the first time that has ever happened in this mission.  So it's pretty scary.  So, if anyone has any advice for me on what I should do to train, or help us survive, much less be successful, I would appreciate that.

Oh yeah, I'll also be district leader for the right bank of Novo next transfer... But I'm not so worried about that.

So Finland was awesome.  It's like a magical fairly land.  It's even cleaner and nicer and the people are friendlier than Americans.  Everyone there speaks English.  And even the biggest punk looking guy would help us out and show us how to get places -  it's amazing.  We got in Monday afternoon and we left Tuesday afternoon.  The temple was closed Monday, so we had some time and we went and toured an awesome medieval fortress island right outside of Helsinki it was really cool, I'll try to send some pics.  Then the next morning we got to do a session and baptisms at the temple before we left.  We ate at a pizza buffet that night and TGI Fridays in the Moscow airport, it was really awesome to have real food.  I really can't describe how fun it was to see everyone and relax for a little bit.  It was awesome.

Definite Progress

Hey, so I'm leaving on Visa trip early tomorrow morning, which means that one of the days I'm gone is my p-day.  So I went to the Snigeri branch building tonight with Elder Walker because they have a computer and we are taking turns using it.  Sorry I didn't find out this was the plan until recently, so don't feel bad for not having your emails sent yet, it's not your fault.  I'm just sorry I can't answer any questions you have or anything until next week.  Next week's email will be much more exciting anyway because I will have experienced Finland and we will have gotten transfer calls by then.

 

So there were a few really cool things that happened this week. 

 

I went on exchanges for a day with our district leader Elder Bounous.  And it was awesome, I learned a lot, he helped me with my accent, we had a good time.  We also had a great meeting with Tamara (more details to come).  But here's the best part.  Elder Bounous is an amazing singer.  So more background.  President Gibbons called a meeting with all of the district presidencies and branch presidencies in the whole mission at his house.  So it was basically all of the strong active men in the mission almost.  He was going to discuss how they wanted to have a plan to make a stake in this mission.  And here's the best part, President wanted Elder Bounous to sing a musical number to start off the meeting, and it was on the same day as our exchange!  So I got to go too! Then after he sang, President told us we could stay and sit in on the meeting until lunch.  That was awesome because not only did we get to eat some awesome food, but we got to see what was going on.  The AP's were the only other missionaries there.  It was a super high powered intense meeting.  I wish I could have stayed there for the afternoon session too.  Basically, they are going to combine all of the districts into one super district and combine a lot of the small branches into what would meet the requirements to become wards and then the whole mission would be organized like a stake already, and they just need a few more priesthood holders before it would meet all the requirements to become a stake.  The only other one is 80% home teaching.  That seems really high to me. But I guess there's a new stipulation in the handbook that talks about home teaching can be a call if you can't visit the home.. anyway, pres spent a lot of time talking about home teaching, and there's a lot of work to do because most branches, including ours, do not have a home teaching program in place.

 

So one time when we called Aleksei recently he answered and we were talking about the Book of Mormon.  He said that some lady at the hospital saw the Book of Mormon and told him that is wasn't true and was not real scripture.  But Aleksei told us not to worry about it because she's a "simple" woman and she does not understand.  Hahaha it was hilarious. Aleksei is the best.  He's always awesome to us.

 

So this Visa trip will be interesting.  I'm the travel group leader, and I'm still not sure exactly what that means except to make sure that everyone gets back to the country and I bring all of their passports back to the office.  It was crazy, Sister Olga from the office sat me down and gave me all these crazy directions about what to do in the Moscow airport and in Finland so it will be interesting and a little stressful, but it will also be really fun. I'm excited to see everyone. 

 

They just made a new rule from the quorum of the 12, I think it applies to only the Europe East area, but I'm not sure, that no missionary can ever travel alone.  It messes up missionary work a ton, especially because we already have visa trips, so everyone in my MTC group (except the two Omsk elders who will fly directly to Moscow together) has to travel to Novo with their companion, and their companions have to stay here for two days and work with the Novo missionaries until they get back and go to their cities together, it's crazy. 

 

Oh yeah, so I was supposed to say a little more about Tamara.  She is awesome, we've been meeting with her every once in a while since my first week here.  She hadn't been to church in years and years but she is really nice and has nothing against having the missionaries over, so it was suggested that I go over there and practice teaching her the discussions.  So I have been for a while, but anyway, she has come to church for 4 out of the last 5 weeks! And last meeting she agreed to ask the branch president for a calling.  And today, I didn't even have to remind her or anything.  She even waited outside of his office until he was done talking to someone and then asked him.  She is one of the few people that I can clearly see definite progress and I can look back and feel good that we were able to help her. 

 

Well love you mom, and rest of family, sorry this will be unexpected, but no worries I'll hear from you soon!

 

Elder Topham

We Still Have A Lot of Work to Do

Hey everyone! This week has been really good.  

First before I forget I had some logistical questions for Mom.  If you could please, if it's not too hard, and don't worry about rushing it, send me everyone in the extended family's birthdays and addresses.  Also a good thing for the next package whenever it might be would be just a sheet or 2 of return address labels for letters. Maybe one sheet with the mission home address and one sheet with the pouch mail address, that would be really nice for me to have.  Elder Drasso wants the caramel corn recipe and we both say thank you very much.  We usually enjoy it during companionship study.  Also, if you could find and send me the addresses for Tom Randall and Riley Littlefield that would be great.   Also, I'm going on visa trip soon.  And I've heard from the older missionaries that its a good idea to sign up for (I'm pretty sure it's) Delta's frequent flier program, because we can just check in with that card or number every time we fly for visa trips and it really adds up I guess.  

 

OK, cool, so here's what was really good about this week.  Both of our other investigators met with us and Sergei has a baptismal date now.  I don't think I've told you about them much so I will a little now.

Elder Drasso found Sergei in Omsk and Serg said sorry I'm moving to Novo to go to college, and Elder Drasso said great so am I, so we've been teaching him sparingly ever since.  He speaks English and likes to talk to us in English before and after lessons, but we teach in Russian, so he will understand better.  He's in some kind of architecture program.  Anyway, last meeting we talked about Gospel of Christ and we worked a baptismal date out of him.  He doesn't "know" that it's true yet, but he's getting there.  His girlfriend, who it sounds like he will probably marry soon, is really anti Mormon, and he smokes, so we still have a lot of work to do, but it's moving forward so that's awesome.

Then Ruslan is our other one, his dad is Muslim, and also very anti- Mormon, so that is also tough and he is also a college student who works at a bank.  I have a special attachment to Ruslan because he was pretty much my first successful gospel contact who we got a meeting with - he's moving forward to. 

Aleksei is still in the hospital and doesn't answer our calls much.  

We are getting better at contacting, and I can get numbers pretty well now, but we are having trouble on the next step and actually getting people to agree to and come to meetings with us. So that's been our problem and that's why we haven't gotten any new investigators recently.

We've also spent some time this last week, and will this week, to contacting specifically for English club.  there is a big sign up, Halloween party, English club orientation thing in a week, and we spend a few chunks each week and all the missionaries in the city go out in street clothes with t-shirts that say "free English" and clipboards getting people signed up for English club. Hopefully it will get a bunch of new people there and we can just baptize them all.

It's been pretty warm here this last week, I'm kind of surprised.  But supposedly it gets cold here, so we'll see.  Oh, here's the worst part, they already turned on the central heating for the city, so every time we come into the apartment it feels like a sauna and we have to throw all the windows open, but after we do that its fine.  It's weird - all of the Russians always wear one layer too much of clothing, and look at us funny when we are "under dressed" but totally fine.  But funny story, that's how the former district president here met the missionaries.  His wife stopped them and asked them where their coats were, and they talked to her and ending up baptizing them.  So when it gets colder we are gonna try going out really under dressed to try to use it as a conversation starter.

I bought some boots this week, they are awesome! Fur lined, have a nice zipper on the side for convenience, they were pretty expensive, but I got them from a good quality store, and they are big enough, so I'm really happy with them, they should work really well.

So I had a really vivid memory recently about the first time, I recognized a distinct answer to one of my prayers, and I'm really happy that I didn't forget about it.  It was when I was taking my black belt test for tae kwon do, and it was at the very end and we had to break a series of boards with about 6-8 different techniques, some that I had never done before.  And if I remember right, I was practically hiding in the corner while other people volunteered. and I was crying because I was so afraid.  and Dad called me over and usually in that kind of situation he would tell me to suck it up and just get out there.  But I distinctly remember that he told me to pray and ask for the strength that I needed.  And it worked.  I don't remember exactly what happened but it was like something came over me I got like all but 2 boards in my first try and it only took me a second on those.  And I remember that Alfonso and Bernard's dad was filming it and he asked us if he could show that to his kids, because that was the most aggressive and intense he has ever seen anyone.  Just remembering that experience was a good testimony builder for me.  So when I remembered that I thought it was really cool.  And I was wondering if you remembered that, Dad.  I think you were the only one there, but I'm not sure. and I wanted to see if I remembered it right.

Well I'm still loving it out here.  I love the other missionaries and our investigators and the members.  It's been tough, but it's awesome.

-Elder Topham

I Love it Out Here

Well, we hit a new low in almost every stat this week, so that was definitely disappointing.  But it's interesting, because I feel really good about the effort I put in and we did do a lot of good things this last week.  And just overall I feel good and love being here. So to accurately describe how I feel, I am definitely disappointed and anxious with how things have been going lately, but I'm not discouraged and I'm still very hopeful, because I know we have been doing good here and I just really love being here, it's kind of hard to explain actually.

 

So guess what Mom? I got both packages on the same day! haha.  Last Friday, who knows, one might have gotten to the mission office a few days before and sat there.  But thank you so much! They are awesome, and getting packages is the highlight of the whole week, so having two was even more of a surprise.  They both arrived in good condition and unopened.  The pictures you sent are awesome and I already added some of them to my small photo album that I always take around with me, for when I meet members and just new people in general, I guess.  The only thing that happened is that a lot of the individual baggies that the caramel corn was in ripped, but it was all still in the box, so its all good! It is is all very good. Thank you so much!

 

So some more ideas or advice on packages is probably more candy, especially chocolate. I wasn't big on candy and treats before I got here, but I think it's different now that I have to always cook on my own and there's not just stuff laying around the house. Also if you have a candy bar in the middle of a long day especially when you are contacting or what not, it can be a really good morale booster.  Some candy is found here, especially Snickers are very prevalent, but Reese's are definitely not, so I would have to request, some Reese's Fastbreaks because they are a little more convenient than the cups, and Paydays, and just any other variety of candy.  Also you cannot buy note cards here. and I like to make flashcards out of them to if you could just send a small pack of 3x5 blank on both side note cards, that would be great. I have enough for a little while.  Also Ziploc bags, don't send just bags, but like if you are doing caramel corn or something, put a Ziploc bag around it too, 1 its a stronger container and 2 we can reuse it.  And those fruit bars or something like it are awesome. 

 

So to answer some questions mostly from Mom's email last week

 

So as far as activities with other missionaries here, we see them a lot between English club and district meeting, but now we only see 1/2 at district meeting.  We are invited to FHE every week.  But we've only ever gone twice,  the first week here just to meet people and we brought Grisha one time when he was still being reactivated.  But we don't go usually unless we have a good reason or investigator who wants to go, which hasn't happened yet.  I've talked about some of the P-day things we do.  Usually the missionaries like to get together and do something,  even something small, we haven't done anything big or really fun recently. 

 

So Aleksei has been in the hospital all week.  That was a big part of the reason we had no investigator meetings at all this week.  We tried to call him every day but he only answered once.  But the good news is that he brought his Book of Mormon, and before he went in he said that the only thing he will have time to do in there is read it and pray, so I sure hope he's still doing that.

 

One of our previous investigators wouldn't answer our calls, so we went by because "we were in the neighborhood and needed to use the toilet" which was actually true, he was very nice and let us in but said that he didn't want to talk to us about religion at all but we were welcome to come by and hang out, so there is not much we can do there, just stay in contact every once in a while, but we don't meet with him.

 

Another figged us once on a meeting, and has been totally uninterested in any gospel conversation.  Explanation: Rob said the french term is "posing the rabbit," in Russian the "fig" is a rude gesture made by sticking your thumb through your fingers as if to say "I got your nose." It's mildly rude, so like it's really rude to do it to a stranger or someone older than you, but its' appropriate for us to do to a teenage member who we are friends with who is messing with us or something.  Anyway in Russian the term for standing you up at a meeting is "they gave us the fig" or the more English version, they figged us.

 

Which leads me into my next story.  Another reason for no investigator meetings is that our two others who we actually consider investigators both had back to back meetings set up and they both figged us and had their phones turned off, so that is extremely frustrating.

 

We spent a lot of our time this week more like private investigators than missionaries, because yesterday there was a big ward council where they finally went through the branch list and got off the names that moved and the bad addresses and numbers and stuff which hadn't been done for years.  So we were going all over this week trying to hunt down these inactive families that nobody has ever heard of.  Banging on apartment doors and finding out where they moved and stuff, so we accomplished a lot from that, but it didn't help our proselyting numbers very much.  The best thing that came out of it is that we found two young adult men with whom it looks likes we will be able to have some consistent meetings and really be able to help.  Also, my contacting is getting better and better,  which is good because we need it.  And I've felt really good lately about the effort that I've been able to put in contacting and in general.

 

I watched general conference this weekend and it was awesome!  Its amazing how much more excited I was and how I thought it flew by now that I'm a missionary, and it used to seem so long.  My favorite talks were Elder Packer, the Japanese 70 in the afternoon session, President Uchtdorf, and Elder Waddel, probably because I thought all of those really applied to me personally and missionary work, and of course I loved both of the prophet's talks and pretty much all of them.

 

I love it out here and I'm really happy so that's good, hopefully next week will be better.

 

-Elder Topham

Making Good Use of My Time

Hey Guys,

So Mom's bold questions first, (if it's not bold there's a good chance I'll miss it first time through).

So here's the deal.  There are no restrictions on what kind of player it can be, so ipod, mp3 whatever.  I found in my apartment a small set of portable speakers, headphones are not allowed.  I think I will use those, and if I need better ones I can buy them here so don't worry about speakers.  Electrical charger is probably better.  I have a converter already, and I also have a converter to USB already for my camera, so any kind of chargeable would be good.  We also have a CD player, and it can play MP3 format CDs (they hold much more audio).  And 1 more suggestion for music, please send the Jericho Road I already have and maybe some more. They are by far my favorite Mormon boy band.

So we watch general conference next week, so I'll see it by next email time.

Here's something cool. I got stopped by the police for the first time on my mission the other day.  We were at the domaphone trying to stop by an inactive member. We turned away to leave and two ununiformed cops come up behind us and show us their ID and start asking us questions about what we are selling and stuff. So we answered them and cleared some stuff up, then showed them the copies of our passport and registration.  They looked at them for a while and let us go on our way. So it actually wasn't too exciting but it was still pretty fun.

President Gibbons has been doing awesome.  He came in and said all the rules are only what is written in the white handbook and PMG.  He had a leadership meeting with all the ZLs, DLs and trainers and he had a list of a bunch of questions he received and he just had them find the answers in those two books.  Most of them were debatable, but apparently he never gave his opinion or interpretation.  So I think that's really cool.  Just to give people agency and trust to interpret and keep the rules as written. He also has been spending a lot of time, personally going with some priesthood leaders to visit inactive families.  He is really awesome.  He is going around to all of the apartments and interviewing all of the missionaries.  Ours was awesome, he just told me to keep lifting up others because that's a natural skill that I have and to keep doing it and being a good positive example.  He was more specific, but it was really cool.

So when that leadership conference was going on, Elder Davis (from my MTC group) came in from Tomsk, and I spent the day with him and Elder Walker, it was Awesome!  We visited a babooshka and she was great and we went contacting.  Or should I say, Elder Davis gave us a lesson in contacting.  He is amazing, he just gets every person to stop and talk to him about anything, then all the sudden they are best friends and giving him their number. It is incredible.  I learned so much from him in just a couple hours.  It was just an overall really fun day.

So Aleksei supposedly has tuberculosis and went into the hospital today.  Dad, I would like you to tell me a little about tuberculosis, because it's hard to tell what's going on with Aleksei sometimes and it's hard to know what is really going on with him.  But he looks and sounds really sick.  But he did say the only thing he would have time to do in the hospital is read the Book of Mormon, so that's good.

But we did recover one promising investigator!  This 18 year old, Ruslan.  He is awesome, his dad is Muslim, and he's a little middle eastern/ Asian looking.  We had a good first meeting with him, but he lost his phone and we couldn't get into contact with him for 2 weeks.  We were about to move his record to the former investigator tab and we called him and he had gotten his old number back, it was awesome, and we've already had 2 more good lessons and a soft baptismal commitment from him.  So that's awesome.  It looks like the biggest problem is that he doesn't think his parents will like it.  H is 18.. but its important to him, so that's 1 big trial we will have to overcome.  

We met an American the other day. That was really fun.  Leo, he is teaching Russian here on some kind of study abroad grant.  He's Jewish, from upstate New York, He wasn't interested in hearing much from us, but he was still really nice and knew a lot and had a good opinion of the Mormons.  But he's here for a full year so we'll see if we can't work with him a little in that time.

Anyway, our week hasn't been great, but I've been having a really good time and I feel like my Russian is improving very fast.  I've learned how to make good use of my time and squeezing in some extra study, and Elder Davis showed me what he does, which I've been doing some more of and that's helped too.  Elder Davis was trained by someone who was only on his 3rd transfer, so I think that's part of the reason he is so awesome, because he is a hard worker and they both just worked really hard.  I have a feeling that President Gibbons is going to do that with a few missionaries in my group.  So that could be pretty crazy.

Thanks for the emails.

- Elder Topham

Turning Point

I haven't gotten the package yet.. haha oops.  It's ok, I'll start bringing them (mints) to church and giving them to the kids.  Yeah, that was the apartment (in the pictures from last week), it is really nice because they just redid the interior.  But it is small and the building's old...but good location.  My coat will be extremely warm, I'm excited to have to wear it.  So this week I bought a shopka from the army surplus store for 800 rubles, you will see pictures of it sometime in the future.  It will be plenty warm.  It's synthetic fur so it was not expensive and I won't feel bad getting some good wear on it, or if it gets dirty.  I'll probably look for a real fur one next year.  I also bought some leather mittens with fur on the inside for 500 rubles on the rinok. Those are probably the warmest things for hands.  But they are not very convenient for doing things, so I'll probably only wear them on the coldest days.  Haven't got boots yet, but I found a store that has some good durable ones and they are getting some in my size soon. They won't be cheap but they will be very good quality.  I would rather buy boots there than on the rinok.  Side note, Grandpa McCoy would love the rinok.  He would do a good job intimidating the vendors and getting good prices.  Good question about the "too cold temperature".. I suppose I will find out if it happens

So this week was also pretty rough.  We have lost a lot of people who we thought would become good investigators in the last few weeks.  And this week we had to spend a lot of time contacting.  I was pretty down near the middle of last week because we had a few days with 1 or no meetings and we were spending a lot of time just walking around trying to talk to people.  With absolutely no success, many times we couldn't even get people to listen for more than a few seconds time after time. So the more that that kept going the more I would get discouraged and not try as much and at the end of the day I was feeling bad about the effort I had put in.  And I was getting pretty down on myself because I didn't see that I was going to be able to improve. But on Wednesday night I think I had a turning point.  I pulled out some of my old letters that I keep in their own folder and read them and it helped more than I could have ever imagined.  The ones that had the most impact on me were the letters that Bishop Lish and Rob wrote, and the blessing Dad gave me before I left.  Just reading those changed my whole attitude, and it was amazing because I feel like all three of them were written to me at that very time in my mission (which I'm sure will reoccur occasionally)  and they understood exactly what I was thinking at that time.  Anyway what happened is they totally changed my attitude and the next day, we still didn't have much success, but when I came home that night, I was totally satisfied with the work I was able to put in that day and I felt great. And that has continued until now, so I'm very Grateful for what I think will be a really big turning point in my mission.

So some really awesome experiences did happen this week.  Our big glimmer of hope in all of our work is Aleksei.  He still has some concerns but he wants to be baptized and he has a date that we are really excited about! He said he will work toward being baptized on Oct 29, but he won't make any promises that he will be ready by then.  So he's been a great blessing for us and is doing awesome.  He fed us an awesome meal on Saturday.  We helped him till his garden for a couple hours, and he had his wife make us borscht.  It was my first time having it and it was awesome.  She also made a salad and tea and honey bread stuff, and everything except the bread and the honey was straight from their garden.  It was delicious.  (Dad: if you still are planning on coming here in a few years. We will definitely visit him.  That will be way more fun than touring any tourist place, to see some real life of a Russian and he speaks English and is just awesome.)  

We also had a really funny experience.  Our branch president just got married and 4 missionaries and some of his family helped him move all of his wife's stuff to his apartment, including some furniture and a piano!  So here's the funny thing.  Turns out a Russian move is nothing like a McCoy move.  Rob and James would have left after 2 minutes there.  There was no order, no prep and mass chaos.  The women were inside just throwing everything in shopping bags, there were no boxes.  Men were just grabbing bags and furniture (often the furniture still had things on it, like a desk with stuff on it, or bookshelves) and putting it in the truck with no particular order.  There was no caution, things were being banged on walls, the piano was hilarious. all of the men just got on it, and there was no order, just a lot of yelling like "go, go go". But hey, it made it down a flight of stairs and up two haha.  And the whole process actually went really fast, took about 30 minutes to load and about the same to unload.

It's starting to get a little chilly, been wearing a light jacket, so hopefully it won't get too cold too fast.

Thanks for the emails, love you all.

Elder Topham

A Few Highlights

Hey Everyone,

So this week was pretty rough.  It was by far the worst stats-wise that I've had my whole mission.  I don't know, it just stunk.  We only had 4 meetings the whole week.  It was bad, We had one of our investigators lose his phone so we can't get a hold of him.  2 said that they didn't want to meet for a while, and probably the most frustrating of all are the ones who we set up times with and either cancel at the last second or just don't show up.  Even our usually inactive family that we see about once a week didn't have time for us this week.  Anyway, it was just all around bad.  But it's weird.  I would have thought that only having 4 meetings in an entire week would mean endless hours contacting, but it really doesn't.  There was a lot of contacting this week, but things just take so long.  Like traveling to and from appointments, doing service, English club,  planning, stopping by inactive members homes, etc. so we were still busy without doing any 4 hours straight of contacting, so that's good I guess.  But it's really frustrating to have so few meetings.

It's really had to contact, nobody ever wants to listen.  The most effective way is to ask if they speak English and invite them to English club, because a lot of times, they will stop and ask you why you are there, or why you have a free English club and then you can talk about the gospel.  That's the only way that I've gotten really any kind of conversation going.  Maybe other than asking some younger guys about sports or something.  Other than that contacting is really hard.

So here are a few highlights of what has happened recently. 

I bought some hair clippers, so I can do my own haircuts, so I'm really happy about that.

Yesterday at church it was really crazy.  So, just as a background: there are tons of missionaries who attend our branch.  4 elders, 2 sisters, the APs, who are going to be around more now and are actually assigned an area now, and the office couple.   Then there are a few, maybe 8 or so Melchezidek Priesthood holders, and three semi active young men.  So in priesthood yesterday, one of the young men who was totally inactive when I got here, but has been coming since, was being ordained a priest.  I can't take credit for that, the other elders have been working with him, but I enjoy talking to him at church and activities and stuff because he is patient with me.  Anyway, the BP (Branch President) asked him (Grisha) who he wanted to ordain him and he pointed at me and said "Elder Topham."  So obviously I was freakin out, because I wouldn't have even been sure on the wording in English.  So Elder Drasso hands me a little card that says the blessing on it, but it was really hard to read.  Anyway it was bad, I accidentally tried to give him the priesthood again, and I didn't realize it until after I read it, I skipped an important word I think, so I had to do it again.  The blessing was rough language-wise, but I wasn't to worried about that, I got across what I needed to.  Anyway, the good part is that I don't think Grisha really cared that I messed up, and he was happy afterward, so I'll do better next time.

I've been doing some fun service at people's dachas, I've harvested potatoes, spread fertilizer, cut firewood, and all kinds of fun stuff.

I found a good place to buy boots, it's a store so they are a little more expensive, but they should be good quality, much better than the rinok and they said they will have my size soon.

I saw Elder Johnson when the new missionaries came through on transfers so that was fun.  He headed out to Krasnoyarsk the next day.

Another interesting experience.  Aleksei, tried to introduce us to our neighbor, because he had expressed some kind of interest in meeting us.  Anyway, we show up and he is drunk.  In America I would say he was really drunk but I have a new perspective now.  He kept trying to give us vodka which was really nice of him, but he would not take no for an answer and he was even getting mad about it. It's good Aleksei was there to help us out, because you could tell he was scared of Aleksei.  We ended up just leaving because there was really nothing at all we could do.  We'll try calling him on a weekday.

Congrats Dani on being picked as a rep.  I hope you have fun doing it.  I'm so happy to hear that you've been playing well in volleyball.  5 Aces in a row! That's awesome.  It's also good they aren't playing the second string as much any more.

Hope you had fun hiking the Y,  Matthew.  And that's awesome that you are in a higher golf group now, what kind of things are different in that group?

Sorry to hear about the (BYU) game.  Sounds pretty bad, but good job getting on ESPN, Sam and Carson. 

And to mom, Just for future reference I don't need any more mints, I have plenty for a long long time, so even though they are convenient for package stuffers, candy especially chocolate is more valuable I would say.

Love you mom.

- Elder Topham

With our investigator, Aleksei at his house.  This is after we had shoveled and spread fertilizer with him for about an hour.  His house is the nicest one Elder Drasso has seen in all of Russia and he built it himself.  His garden in amazing and beautiful.  You can see some of it in the picture.

The inside of my new winter coat.

Me in my winter coat.

Elder Drasso wearing my coat and his shopka.