Update

Hey,

So I wouldn't say it was a bad week this week, but we didn't accomplish as much as we thought we would when planning and setting goals.  Some of those who we thought may become investigators have dropped off.  Like Gleb who is very reluctant to hear any kind of gospel message, and Zhenia who obviously likes us so doesn't want to tell us no, but both times we had meetings with him, he called at the last second and made up an excuse not to come.  Then we had two terrible first meetings this week.  One guy just brought his bible and whipped out every scripture to try to prove our church wrong, which Elder Drasso eloquently countered every time.  Then he told us we were serving the devil and stuff. Then another guy who just wanted to talk about America and wouldn't let us talk about the gospel.

Mom; There are a couple things maybe for the next package.  If you could send me a picture of when I was baptized for my photo album and if you can find one, maybe one that's funny or slightly embarrassing, from any time in my life that would kinda start a story or something that would be good.  And for music I can't remember exactly what I told you to send, but if I said Social Network soundtrack, I'm thinking probably don't send that one.

So, we have had some really fun p-days.  Last week we went to the senior couple's house and watched The Incredibles.  Apparently in the mission you can watch 1 movie from the approved list every 3 months.  And this afternoon we are going to the Novosibirsk Zoo!  So that should be pretty cool. 

Our investigator, Aleksei, said he would take me next week to get a jacket for the winter.  I'm really excited, he's a really cool guy who was a pilot.  He showed us a jacket that he has.  It's got like an inch of wool lining the entire inside including the sleeves, and the outside looks really warm - I don't know what is made out of.  Elder Drasso says it's probably the warmest coat he's seen.  Apparently it's like a military jacket and Aleksei's friend is a wholesaler or something and he's going to take me there to get one, so I hope it works out, and he said it should be under 5000 rubles so I'm happy about that.  I'll probably go to the rinok next week to try to get a hat and boots.

Aleksei has been serving us some awesome food that his wife makes - like a potato cabbage soup and some fish thing that were both very Russian and very good.  All the food here is really good, and that's probably because its very fattening.  Pretty much all the milk is 2.5%. I don't know if you can get less.  Also, Russians put mayonnaise on everything and like a lot of it..

So we are moving on Wednesday, so hopefully that will all go smoothly and it will turn out to be a pretty nice place.  It's in a different area of town, I hope it's close to the metro because that will cut down on a lot of travel time if it is.

Some answers to questions:
- I haven't got the package yet... hopefully soon
- You can get peanut butter at a couple specialty stores here apparently.  Sister Gibbons had like 20 big things of Jiff stored up in closets that she found that were "best" if used by a couple years ago, so we have been using one of those, it still tastes good to me.
- Sorry, no pictures of the flower bed, I'm not good at taking my camera places
- I'll answer the Old Testament question the following email but it will be Daniel fo shizzle


-Elder Topham

A Tougher Week

Hey guys,

So guess what I found out, anyone can email me on this email address (andrew.topham@myldsmail.net), so that's really cool.  Definitely give the whole big family my email address and you can put it up on my blog and facebook.  So I can receive emails from anyone, but I can only send the one out, so people will have to wait for responses, but I can get them every week.  I'll just print them out here, it's pretty cheap.  Also, if you have questions in your email, if you put them at the front then I can skim through it and respond to them.  And read the rest of the letter in detail later. 

It's been a tougher week.  We got stood up or cancelled on a couple of times in our meetings, and the ones that we had didn't go to well,  also, we didn't get as many contacts as usual, but we are still working just as hard so I imagine that will turn around soon.

We did some service this week. On Wednesday we went to an old folks home and basically just shoveled dirt and carried rocks around until we made a huge flower bed that looked like the world with rocks for the continents and flowers for the ocean, it was really hard for me to understand what was going on, but with much pointing and sign language, I was very effective.

We also went to this lady in the ward's dacha.  It's kind of like a summer home a little away from the city with a big garden usually.  Russians love to garden.  A lot of them are just little shacks. We were mostly outside cutting wood the whole time.

So our next meeting with Gleb didn't go too well.  He is still really nice and wanted to talk to us about everything but our church... like his time in the military, all his favorite American movies (which was very hard to relate with because they were all rated R) and how much he loves boxing, he's an amateur boxer and loves Manny Pacquiao.  So that was fun to talk about, we finally convinced him to watch Finding Faith in Christ with us and he was surprised at the end that it wasn't anything crazy about our church but just normal stuff he believed, so that was good, that was our intention.  His wife fed us some awesome soup, and we made them peanut butter cookies because they had never heard of peanut butter before.  I hope we make progress there, but it will be hard.

We have a meeting with our basketball friend Zhenia tomorrow, he was really cautious to meet with us, and I know he wouldn't have said yes if we wouldn't have been good friends already, so the basketball paid off.

Speaking of basketball it was really scary this week.  We got a text from the AP's, that told us "due to a series of recent injuries basketball and soccer are now forbidden, starting immediately"  I was pretty upset about that.  But the good news is, about 3 days later there was a repeal and it said basketball and soccer are okay as long as you play within the guidelines of the missionary handbook so I'm very glad that got sorted out.

So on a regular day we actually don't get out until pretty late, because we have personal study and comp study and language study each for an hour, then if you are in a training companionship, or first 3 months in the field, you have an additional hour of companionship study every day, which is usually role plays of lessons or other situations and usually includes watching some little clips from the PMG DVDs on our tiny portable DVD player that we just got. It's usually pretty similar to what we did in the MTC but I guess its good practice.  Some days I feel like all of that studying is taking up a lot of time and I just want to go and actually do something. 

As far as regularly scheduled events, we do English club for an hour every Tuesday and Thursday at 6:30.  And we have district meeting for 2 hours on Friday and sports night for an hour or two on Saturday night.  We plan after our studies on Thursday mornings now, and you plan the next 10 days, its kind of different.

So besides that, we fill our time with meetings and when we don't have meetings we usually do drop by's to inactive members homes or talk to people on the street or a combo of both.  Street contacting is not very effective, so I really want to get better at it. 

Here are a few music suggestions for you:

I think it would be awesome to load up an MP3 player, (just a cheap little flash drive stick one, maybe we still have the ones Sam and I got for Christmas a while ago) with some songs from my itunes library.  EFY CDs are pretty readily available in the apartments, but I would really like some of my other church music, and classical music, and some Christmas music..  For some suggestions about which to choose, especially on the classical because there's a lot, look on the how many times I've played it and if it's a bunch send it, if it's none or a couple then don't.)  Some things to make sure to put on there are the first Lord of the Rings soundtrack (the other 2 if there is room),  Inception soundtrack, Weezer string tribute, and Social Network soundtrack, they are all instrumental so they are allowed.  Also a few suggestions of CD's that you may need to buy.  There is a piano player named John Schmidt.  He does some hymn arrangements that I love and some modern classical music, so maybe a couple of his CD's, some church and some other.  Maybe some Josh Groban, like if he has some inspirational not to pop-y songs, or albums and especially his Christmas music.  And the first Pirates of the Carribbean soundtrack... Other than that it's up to you - I'll tell you more if I think of them.  Please use my itunes cards that I left at home to get the music.  And whatever is easier, buying real CDs or downloading the songs and burning and sending me a copy.

A couple questions from your emails that I haven't gotten to yet.  There are about 50-60 missionaries in the mission from what I can tell.  The only one from the MTC that I see is Elder Walker.  He is in Sniggari (Dad will like this: the two elders who serve in Sniggari are commonly referred to by other missionaries as sniggers)  When I was in Moscow I didn't really see anything but the airport and the embassy.  So not much, I was so tired and delusional anyway.  

Good job Matthew beating dad and grandpa! It sounds like you are doing great.  

Danica, make sure you say hi to Ms. lewis the stuco teacher at Palo, and Mr. Keirnes and everyone else I know while you are there, try to drop my name as much as possible.  I miss you both and love you both.  

Elder Drasso was gone from last Wednesday night to Saturday morning on his visa trip -  I guess that's how long they last.  We pretty much have  a routine going now but moving is going to stink.  Apparently getting an apartment here is a big pain.  And especially getting a good one, so we'll see what the ZLs get for us or if they get one.  I haven't started buying winter stuff yet, it's not too bad at all.  I've only had to wear my rain jacket without liner when it was raining, and it worked really well.  Even when it was raining my shoes held up well so we're good so far. Love you all, I'm going to try to send another email w/ pictures.

-Elder Topham

Here's the Miracle

Hey Guys!

So it's been a really good week, way better than I expected, I'll try to tell you all of the highlights.  First, before I forget, I received a dear Elder from Matthew yesterday, it sounds like he wrote it the day I left from the Salt Lake Airport, so that might give you a good idea of how long things take to get here.  Make sure Sam put the mission address/dear elder instructions on my FB.

Ok, so the awesome thing about this week is that we have 5 first meetings set up with new potential investigators! That is way more than I thought we would have.  And I look back on every one of them and they have been a miracle in some way.  First, on Sunday we went around to an area and visited all of the families on our list that were either labeled inactive or no label because nobody even knew who they were.  Only one of the families answered the door for us the whole time.  In Russia there are huge apartment buildings and there is a separate staircase for each 20-40 apartments or so.  And they have huge metal doors and you have to use the keypad and call up before you can get into the building.  Anyway, only 1 person out of all of those families let us into the staircase even. At a couple we snuck in behind other people but then weren't let in the door,.. Anyway the person who let us in happened to be our second house, he is a 25 year old guy named Gleb. He talked to us at the door step for a while, he had never even heard about the church really, his wife has been an inactive member for about 8 years.  Anyway he was really nice, he invited us in, served us watermelon, and talked to us. Then his wife walked in, and was also really nice, and gave us some awesome soup that she made.  She knows almost nothing about the gospel, she's basically a wet investigator.  Gleb agreed to have us come back later this week, but he assured us that he's unconvertable, so we'll see, he will at least listen to us.  We think it's a miracle that the wife wasn't at home initially, we think that if she was the one to answer the door, she would not have let us in.

The second miracle happened yesterday, we had a meeting set up with an old contact from Elder Rupper, Aleksei. I guess this guy met Elder Rupper on the street and liked him basically because he's American and came to the mission office looking for him. But he had gone home, so we got Aleksei's number. We set up a meeting, and he is an English professor at a university here so the whole thing was in English! it was so awesome, I actually understood everything.  Anyway, so while talking to him after a while we find out that he is not religious at all, and doesn't know if he believes in God.  But here's the miracle: just last week, he went on a trip to the place where his mother was born and it is hard to describe but basically he had a spiritual experience that made him start thinking more about God this week, and believing in God. At the end of the lesson he even prayed for the first time in his life! It's such a miracle- I think if missionaries would have met with him a week earlier he wouldn't have been ready.  So, we have some good hopes for those two investigators, and hopefully our three other first meetings will go well too.  One of them we met at English club, one we met at the grocery store, and one was a former investigator from the area book, so we'll see.

We haven't had any hot water for the last couple days and for probably the next week, so needless to say that really stinks. I've been showering at night right when we get home and I'm all hot and sweaty, but it's still painfully cold.  I guess the whole city is on a central water heating system, so whenever they need to repair something it gets turned off and I guess its pretty frequent in the summer.

We are also being kicked out of our apartment by the end of the month, because the landlord sold it. I still don't have any pictures, but I'll get some for next week.

Another strange thing around here are there are tons of stray/wild dogs around.  Especially away from the busy streets, like where our apartment is located, there are a bunch of them.  And missionaries are really scared of them because I guess if they bite you you have to go through tons of hassle getting rabies shots at stuff.

I had my first Russian tea the other day.  Well, first I had some fruit tea at a ladies house and I put sugar in it so it was awesome, very close to apple cider, but the next day, a man offered us tea and he literally went to his yard, pulled out some kind of plant, and put it in boiling water.  It was not very good, but I still got it down no problem.

So I haven't had much crazy food here.  Every meal we cook on our own.  It's common for people to give us tea and some snack things at meetings but we have to cook all the time.  I'm very grateful that Elder Drasso is a very good cook.  We mostly eat basic things.  We eat pasta multiple times a week and rice and chicken stuff.  He makes really good sauces.  My two favorite things that we eat here that are a little different is, palmeni, which is a lot like pot-stickers - fried dumpling type things which we eat a lot, and we make sausage sandwiches.  The sausage here is really good, so we just slice some of that, cheese, and mayonnaise and put it on toasted bread and its delicious.  Elder Drasso made blini this morning and that was really good too.

P-day is being changed to Monday next week. So I'll be able to email again then.  I guess that's the way the big people in the church want all of the missions to do it.

So music is allowed here and it's awesome.  Elder Drasso has a bunch of good music and there are a bunch of CDs lying around here from previous missionaries.  I think we have every EFY CD ever and most Mo-Tab CDs.  And we have a few other good ones like the Joseph Smith Nashville CD. So as far as Christmas presents,  I think I will maybe make a list of some CDs or songs that I want and you could surprise me with a few others.

I got to play basketball this week.  We have a 16 year old friend who I want to become an investigator named Zhenia.  He showed us where a good place is.  It's not too bad, it's an outdoor court with a bunch of hoops.  I think the 3 point line is too close, the baseline isn't far enough under the basket and the bottom of the basketball standard sticks out too much so you land on it when you do dunks and lay ups, but other than that its good.  There were a couple of other people there too that we played with, they aren't bad, its just funny the different things they do.  I think we are going back Saturday night, when a lot of people play there.  That is usually sports night at the branch, but there are always tons of missionaries at sports night so we think basketball will be more fun and more effective anyway.

I really like it around here.  We ride the metro a bunch and the buses too when the metro doesn't go there.  I love metros, they are awesome.  The area is really big so we usually have to ride the metro a few stops then walk a while to get places.  It's weird, some of the areas in the city are really, really run down and just not nice areas, and it's crazy how much we stand out.  But it's cool because I feel totally safe wherever we are.

I gave a talk last Sunday, it was easy because it was only 5 minutes and I could choose the topic, so I just did it on faith.  About 10 babushkas told me that I did a great job (or I think that's what they were saying) I think men don't compliment much around here.

So just a little more about Elder Drasso, he is a really good guy and a really good missionary,  and I'm definitely learning a lot of things from him.  He knows a ton from experience about missionary work around here so I'm learning a lot. He understands Russian really well and speaks pretty well.  He takes rejection really well too, it's amazing how he can go from person to person saying no and other things to him.  He is really nice, he has already ironed a couple shirts for me in the morning when I've been doing other things and is always willing to cook.

So I haven't started looking for winter clothes yet, maybe in a few more weeks.  Thanks for your emails mom and dad, I'm going to print them out so I can read them in more detail.  Love you all!

-Elder Topham

Glitches

Hey Everybody, I'm doing really well. It's Wednesday afternoon here right now and everything has been going pretty well.

I don't know where to start... First the keyboard is pretty nice because it has English letters and Russian letters, so its pretty easy, but every single word that I'm typing right now gets underlined with a red squiggly line because apparently these aren't spelled right in Russian.

So I'll try to take you through what's happened since I last emailed.  The next morning so last Thursday, all of the trainers came to the mission home and we had breakfast with them, then they announced to us who was going to be companions with each of the trainers and where we would be going.  I'm with Elder Drasso and if that name sounds familiar that's because he was companions with Elder Eborn twice (once in the MTC) so you've probably read about him quite a bit.  He's from southern California and he's only got two more transfers left after this one I think.

So I'm actually serving in Novosibirsk right now, from what I've heard we were supposed to go to Krasnoyarsk, because Elder Drasso served there for a couple months, (he's only served there and Omsk)  but the apartment that was supposed to be for us fell through, so they gave us the AP's old apartment in Novo.  So that's all good and I'm really glad that I get to serve in Novo, the other cool thing is that our apartment is only about a 10 minute walk away from the mission office and branch building and only about 20 from the mission home.

But here's the tough part of it all.  Technically we are opening up an area.  Novosibrisk has three districts: left bank of the river, right bank of the river and snigaree (which from what I can tell is kind of like a suburb of the city)  there are two elders and two sisters and a branch in left bank, there were two elders two sisters and a branch in right bank, and two elders in snigaree.  Also, the AP's are around sometimes and the office elders all live in right bank.  Also a senior couple in left and the office couple in right.  So we got put in right bank too.  So we had to split the right bank area with the two elders already there.  The bottom line is right now we have no investigators.  I really wanted a solid teaching pool when I came out here and not have to spend all of our time finding, but that is not the case.

The branch in Right Bank Novo is probably the biggest in the mission.  There are about 300 on the rolls and there were about 50 at sacrament meeting, I've heard that that will increase  after summer to about 80, so we'll see. There are  a few of the strongest members here, but only a few of those.  The branch president only got back from his mission about a year ago I think.

Another piece of good news about being in Novo and so close to the mission office is when you send me dear elders or anything else that comes in the pouch I will get them the day they get to Novo, while some other cities might have to wait a few weeks until someone comes out there.  So continue to email me, but encourage everyone else to use dear elder because I'll get them fairly quickly.

So in my first interview with President Gibbons, I thought it was going to be pretty generic, but he really shocked me. He had some very personal comments.  I thought it was very cool. He also encouraged me to challenge myself  to continue to be as Christlike as I can.

There are a lot of strange things in Russia.  Elder Walker coined a term that I very much like.  He calls them "glitches".  It's like whoever designed the virtual reality software that makes up Russia just messed up in some places and its like: why is this here, or what the heck is this, or why is this made this way, but it makes it all kind of fun.  There are so many but I'll just try to list off a few from memory.

1. Girls hold hands when they are walking down the street and at sacrament meeting and stuff, like teenage/young 20s,  its' really weird
2. You have to hold the shower head in your hand (but it is powerful and warm and you can clean from all kinds of angles I've never imagined so I actually really like that.)
3. The windows open like 3 different ways, it's to hard to describe in text.
4. At the grocery store you have to pay for plastic bags if you want them
5. Nobody has dishwashers or dryers or a/c
6. You have to play with the washing machine for like 5 minutes pushing and kicking it in different ways until it finally starts
7. Said washing machine takes 2 hours and 50 minutes to wash a load of clothes
I'll have plenty more glitches later.

So it's really easy to find American products like Crest toothpaste and Old Spice body wash and stuff so that's good.  There is a really nice shopping mall here, I went there to look for shoes, but it was super expensive. They had an Ecco store and a Rockport store so they had awesome stuff but there's gotta be a cheaper place to get good stuff, it looked like the Fashion Show mall almost, so I would never buy shoes there.  I'm going to keep looking, if not I'll go to a rinok and just get some for really cheap, not expecting them to last very long,  I may ask for some shoes in a couple weeks if I can't find anything, but don't send any unless I ask.

So Elder Drasso leaves on Visa trip tomorrow, so I will be with Elder Boloshov for like 3 days.  He is the Zone Leader and is from St. Petersburg, but he speaks pretty much perfect English and, obviously, perfect Russian.

Its been really hard to do productive work, we have no investigators. So on Sunday we basically set meetings up with as many members as we could, which got us a solid 3.  Our first one was yesterday, we take the metro and bus out there, turns out he's not really a member because he was excommunicated. But is trying to come back.  Anyway it was a really crazy experience.  Street contacting here is really hard -  people just don't want to listen to you.  It's not too hard to invite people to English club, but I don't know how effective that is yet.  Hopefully by next week we'll have a couple investigators to teach lessons to.

Oh, It's really hard for me to understand native Russians.  I can maybe get 40% of whats said in a meeting with a member. and almost nothing on the street when I have no idea what they are talking about... oh well it will get better, I'm working really hard on it.

Really didn't see anything in Moscow, just the embassy and the airport.

I'm super excited about that ring!!!! I was starting to think they forgot about us.

I'm out of time but I'll tell you so much more and answer more questions next time that I didn't get to, so keep sending them! Hopefully I'll send pictures too.  Love you!

-Elder Topham

Photos from the Mission Home

with President and Sister Rolfes, the interim Mission President and his wife

group with trainers

the group with the Rolfes

the picture of the "Wall of Fame" of all the missionaries who have served in the Novosibirsk Mission

From the Mission Home

From: Siberian Battalion
To: "Parents, Topham Andrew"
Sent: Thursday, August 4, 2011 6:27 AM
Subject: your son has arrived

4 August 2011

Dear  Parents:

We just want to let you know that your son has arrived in the Russia Novosibirsk Mission safely.  He has arrived in great shape despite the  approximately 36 hours in transit. 

The process includes leaving the MTC around 5:30 AM on Monday morning, leaving the Salt Lake City Airport, flying through New York or Atlanta to Moscow, spending 12 hours in Moscow applying for a second passport then boarding a Russian airline at 10:30 PM for a flight arriving in Novosibirsk at 5:30 AM Wednesday.  Keep in mind that we are 13 hours ahead of Utah  in the city of Novosibirsk.

He has been met by President and Sister Rolfe, our interim mission president,  (the Gibbons arrive tomorrow)  fed breakfast, and been put to bed for a few hours, oriented over 2 days and sent to his assigned city.

The Novosibirsk Mission is larger, in area, than the United States.  We have missionaries in six cities and transfers involve  long  bus and train rides.  Because of the difficult conditions and incredibly long distance from their mission president these faithful missionaries serve in, this is known as a Green Beret mission and requires “outrageously obedient” missionaries.  We are so grateful that your valiant son has been sent here to join this work.  In your letters to him will you remind him of the honor it is to serve in such a mission.

Here is how the mail gets to your missionary.  All mail comes to the office and although this address is slightly different from what may have come in their missionary packet, this is the address suggested by Olga, one of our Russian office staff.  Russian addresses go from the largest entity to the smallest.

Russia 630102

Novosibirsk

46 Kirova Street

Russia Novosibirsk Mission

The name of your missionary

The mail collects here until either zone conference, once every 6 weeks, or until someone is heading that way for transfers or other meetings.  If something is very urgent, you are better off using email that they get to check on their Wednesday P-days, usually in the morning.  They only get an hour on the internet to receive and to send and they are allowed to only write one letter for family and one to the mission president.  It is suggested that others send via pouch mail to Salt Lake(single sheet tri-fold) or send to the office address.  Please be sure that you write weekly emails to your missionary and then as an added bonus, packages and letters.  Be aware that packages can take 2-2 ½ months to arrive at the office and then it can take 6 weeks to get it to the missionary depending on where they are serving.  Be sure to plan ahead for Christmas so think of sending in  September or October.

The first missionaries to serve in Russia arrived on 26 January 1990.  The first official recognition of the Church in Russia was granted to the branch in Leningrad on 13 September 1990 with republic-wide recognition being granted on 28 May 1991.  The Russia Novosibirsk Mission was formed July 1994 so it is 17 years old.  It is a fairly young mission and it is exciting to work with members that are very strong in spirit and small in numbers.

Thank you for your son.  We will take good care of him.

Attached are pictures of him and President  and Sister Rolfe and the picture that will go on the “Wall of Fame”, pictures of all the missionaries since the mission began.

Sister McCauley
Russia Novosibirsk Mission Secretary

From Russia With Love

Hey, so I'm in the mission home in Novosibirsk right now. It felt like we were traveling for so long before we finally got here. I hardly slept at all on the plane rides, so it was so nice right when we got here, they fed us breakfast and let us sleep. I could have slept all day and night I think. Nothing too exciting happened on our travels, they were just really long.

On the plane to Moscow I sat by a man named Sergei, he is a nuclear physicist from Moscow who was at a conference in California. We talked for a really long time, his English was probably a little better than my Russian, so were able to communicate pretty well. He asked what was different about my church and other churches, so on the plane I gave him a little 10-15 minute long first discussion. We talked about Joseph Smith and the Restoration and stuff and I gave him a restoration pamphlet at the end, it was really cool.

When we arrived at the Novo airport, the departing missionaries walked by us and talked to us for a few minutes. OK so I think we are doing some orientation thing now, and I'll go to my area tomorrow. Not sure when I'll be able to email again next. Love you.

-Elder Topham