Life in a New City

Hey. Well things have been pretty crazy this last week of course, moving to a new city and getting a new companion.  I'll try to get you some pictures here.  Tomsk is cool, it's a much smaller city than Novo.  It's just really weird, I feel much more isolated here, without the mission office and home, a bunch of missionaries, senior couples, and the metro.  But it's a pretty city.  It's really pretty now, there is snow everywhere and it's still white snow, so that's really cool.  I've had to really bundle up.  I've been wearing two hats and two scarfs, two pair of socks with a warmer in between, but my toes still freeze when I'm outside and sitting on buses for a long time.  But other than that, my clothes have been keeping me pretty warm.  But there is a point where if you are outside for long enough it doesn't matter what you are wearing you still freeze. 

 

There's a nice branch building and branch here, one of the two actually church built buildings in the mission.  I've been ridiculously tired recently.  I think it's just a combination of three things.  1- being in a new city,  and not being used to things, 2 - the cold just wears on you, and 3 - Now that I'm with a Russian companion, we speak Russian all day, so all day without a break I have to either think in Russian or translate, which is great, I love it, but it gets very, very tiring.

 

The apartment is good.  It is much bigger than the one we had in Novo. We are on the 7th floor.  It's got a much bigger kitchen, but no oven.  The only problem is that there is junk everywhere.  Mom would die if she walked in there.  Anyway it's just a result of missionaries for years and years leaving their junk there.  Well, it's not really that important. I don't want to spend to much time cleaning it.  We'll probably clean the study/main room, and just stash the junk in areas we don't go. At least for now. 

 

It's cool, we have like 3 or 4 investigators. Obviously it's not a ton, but it's much better than I've had at times.  Here's a good story. A year ago, a teenage kid Vova, here in Tomsk read something about South Park (either the musical or the episode about the Mormons, I don't exactly know).  He went to the library and asked for a Book of Mormon.  They said they didn't have one but they gave him the address to the church and he was baptized, pretty cool huh?Anyway his friend is our investigator. and he is ready to be baptized too, but his parents haven't given him permission yet.  Then we have a Buddhist guy, we have to take the lessons slow with him, but he's doing well.  Then Ivan is a solid investigator, so it's not bad.

-Elder Topham

The Arhepovi family.  We worked with them in Novo.

Me and Elder Vargin outside the branch building in Tomsk.

Me on an ice thrown on my past Pday in Novo.

Sliding down an ice slide on the same Pday.

Me frozen and dressed up.

I'm Going to Tomsk

Hey, what's up?  So it was a really crazy week.  Right when we landed in Novo on Saturday morning, President picked us up in the van and told us all our transfers.  I'm going to Tomsk on Wednesday with Elder Vargin.  He's the tall one from Moscow who was the Zone Leader.  President told me that the Lord wants me to serve with a Russian companion and that my task next transfer is to master Russian.  So I'm really excited. It will be a great learning opportunity, and I'm going to put as much work in as possible improving my Russian. Mastering seems like it may be a little stretch for six weeks, but I will for sure be much better.  But it will also be tough.  I'll be a junior comp, and he's a few years older than me, been out for a long time, and already speaks Russian obviously, so I hope he's not going to look down on me.  I think it will be really fun, he seems like a great guy from the day I spent with him.  Also, Elder Walker and Sister Trottier are also going to Tomsk.  So 3 out of the 6 missionaries in Tomsk will come in together from our former Novosibirsk district.  Also, Elder Harris is coming in to replace me, to be Elder Hyde's comp and the DL here, so if you could give me little status updates from his blog every once in a while, especially if he mentions specific people, that would be really cool.  Tomsk is supposedly the most beautiful city in the mission.  It's quite a bit smaller than Novo, and there are a lot of young people that live there.  But, downside is that no senior couple lives there. So no nice lunches every district meeting :(  But other than that I'm really excited.

 

So Visa trip was fun.  Crazy and stressful, but fun.  The first stressful part was that they cancelled our flight from Moscow to Finland because of bad weather, so we ended up sitting in the Moscow airport for most of the day on Thursday, waiting for news about when we could get to Finland.  They finally got us on a flight later that afternoon, and turns out it was all worth it because they had to upgrade like 10 of us to business class in order to fit us all on the flight.  It was awesome! I wish that flight would have been longer.  We got all kinds of drinks, I had plenty of leg room. We got a warm towel before our 4 course meal.  And we got served caviar.  Yeah, it was awesome.  It was especially funny sitting next to Elder Harrison, who is really quiet and humble, because he started saying stuff like, "I'm glad they closed that curtain back there, I'm tired of all the common folk staring at me."  Anyway, it was a great flight, but we didn't get in till the evening, so we didn't have time to do anything in Finland, we just went right to the temple hostel.  The next morning we did a session at the temple, then barely had enough time to get some lunch, then we had to fly right back out.  But going to the temple was awesome.  And Finland in general was awesome too, as always.  It was really warm, just barely below freezing it. It felt so nice.  And it's always just so clean and beautiful.  Our bus from the temple to the airport was really late so that was stressful too, trying to get everyone to the flight back to Moscow on time, but everyone made it, so it's all good.  I had an awesome time with all of my MTC district friends.  It was hilarious, Elder Blake sat us down and had a DTR (have someone explain this to you, maybe Sam or Rob) to see how far the district relationship would go.  All but 1 of us go to BYU, so we already have an intramural basketball team, group dates, and road trips planned, so it's a serious relationship. 

 

Oh, but it was pretty cool in Finland because I would hear Finnish everywhere, and sometimes hear English, but a couple times I overheard some conversations and understood them, and my mind automatically assumed that if it's not Finnish it's English, but it was Russian! So I was actually really excited about that.  And we went to a pizza place. I said "hello" to the lady working there as if to say "I don't speak Finnish, you need to talk to me in English" she kinda had this look on her face like 'crap this is going to be hard' then she saw my tag and said in Russian, "Do you speak Russian?" So I said "yes" and she just started in Russian, and we had the whole conversation in Russian and it was awesome.

 

Well, let's see.. Leadership training was really cool as always, my little presentation went well, but it ended up being not very organized because I had too many ideas, oh well. 

 

We've made little progress with Zhenia this week, he's still looking good, but it's gonna be just a little bit longer.  Hopefully Elders Hyde and Harris will have him baptized in the next week or two.  I haven't met with Aleksei for a while.  He says he really wants to do family history. Elder Drasso and I mentioned that briefly to him like 4 months ago and last week he called me and said, "Topham, when can I busy myself with family tree?"  So we'll see if we can get him going on that. Hopefully in the long run that will get him to the temple.

 

Oh speaking of temple, they did the session for us in English. I felt bad for the handful of Finnish people who came to their own temple and had to wear headsets.

 

Well I think that's it, I'll let you know how Tomsk is next week.

 

Elder Topham

Don't Stop Believing

Hey! How's it going? It's been a very busy, interesting week. So we didn't get to see Zhenia all week until Sunday. We decided to move his baptism back a week. It's tough, because I most likely won't be here for it now, but we'll see. He needs a little more time, but he's still doing really well. The branch president is really excited about him and his family and everyone really likes him.

So I don't really know what's going on with visa trip, if it will be different with everyone there. All I know is that we are going to be gone this Thursday and Friday. Our district had interviews with President this week, and as I was walking out of the interview, he said to Sister Olga in the office, why don't we make Elder Topham the leader of all the groups for the visa trip. Great... so apparently we are splitting up into sub groups. So hopefully I won't really have to do anything because there will be plenty of people there who have been there a lot more than me.

The interview with president went awesome as always, I always leave those really pumped up.

Transfers are next week, but we don't know about them, and might not find out until after visa trip, so I should know by next email.

I went on exchanges with two of the elders in my district this week, so that is always a nice change of pace.

I had a much better experience with the post office. Last week after email we were walking by a different post office, and I decided to pop in. Went straight up to the counter, asked the lady for envelopes to America, she gave them to me and she might have even smiled for a second. I was out the door in 30 seconds. All I know is I'm going to that post office next time for sure.

We had another fun experience this week. Our district is doing a music night this Tuesday to try to get some new people into our church building and to talk to us. To kinda advertise for it, we six elders divided into two groups of 3 and went to different parts of the big park, where a lot of people are. For about an hour, 2 elders sang and one would hand out flyers and talk about the music night. There's a government rule that we can't do anything outside with more than 3 people at a time or else they will arrest us or something, or else we probably would have all done it together... anyway I readily volunteered to be the flier hander outer for my group, so Elders Hyde and Hoggan sang for a while and I was talking to people. Elder Hyde got kinda tired and they kinda started running out of songs. They could have gone back to hymns, but people weren't super into those, we got the best reactions when we just sang regular songs in English.. Anyway, I took a turn with Elder Hoggan (who is really into theater and musicals and could have gone all day) and I was actually surprised how fun it was. We did a few English hymns and we even did a duet rendition of "Don't Stop Believing." Elders Hyde and Hoggan sang a song from Wicked and Hercules, and at one point Elder Hoggan did a couple solos and both Elder Hyde and I were on the flyers. It was really fun, and only slightly awkward. The police only came one time, and I just answered a few questions and stared him down and he left us alone. The only down side was that it was freezing cold that day, way colder than the days preceding and I couldn't feel my hands or feet by the time we were done. A lady came up to us trying to give us money. She's like, "Why are you out here when it's so cold, here take this so you can go inside." And I was like, " No, just come to the music night." It was really funny and really cold.

Hmm, what else? We had another interesting meeting setting. I was with Elder Hoggan, and a former investigator invited us out to a place where he worked, but it was an apartment so we were confused. We got there and called him, he was gone and said he would be back in 10 minutes, and a Muslim guy answered the door and let us in. Turns out the two of them are working there doing remodeling so we taught a little lesson two these two guys sitting on some paint buckets in this little construction site apartment, but it went pretty well. And they were really nice. The Muslim guy is from Uzbekistan. They were both really nice, gave us tea that we had to awkwardly refuse and just drink the hot water to make it less awkward, and some candy so it was cool.

So it's up to you Mom, but as far as I'm concerned you can tell Matthew that he can use my computer, but only for the Rossetta Stone program, and he just has to be careful with it. But it's up to you, you can decide what you want him to do and tell him to do that, whatever you want.

We have leadership training this week on Wednesday and I'm really excited for that. President wants me to give a 10 minute presentation on language study plans. I think he picked two other elders to do the same thing. It will be easy because that's something I'm really into, language study time is the part of the day that I look forward to the most usually.

Well, love you, Mom. Great job on seminary and to be honest I don't remember some/most of those references you made last letter, so maybe I should spend some more time in the Old Testament.

Elder Topham

Such a Blessing

Hey! What's up?

So it's been another good week. Elder Hyde and I are really pumped and our weekend ended up really good. We actually had the most meetings this week than any other week our whole time together. It's still not a lot, but we are very excited about it. Sunday was a huge day for us. Tamara finally came back to church, and there is another less active family who we started working with, and they were at church too. There's no stat for "less actives at church" but we would have nailed that one this week, so we were already really excited on Sunday. Then Zhenia came to church and just loved it and loved everyone there. He just kept going around meeting everyone and telling them that he finally found the true church. It's crazy, we don't actually teach him, we just kind of give him stuff to read, then in the phone calls and meetings just kinda funnel him in the right direction and answer some of his questions, it's ridiculous. We met on Sunday to talk about the word of wisdom. We had already mentioned it to him before and so he actually started quitting smoking the day before the meeting. He used to do a pack a day and the day before he just cut it cold. He was telling us that it was hard for him, and he kept a big thing of jam with him all day, and would eat a big spoonful of jam whenever he felt like smoking. He said that he ate a liter of jam that day. He's really intense, it's cool. We actually had our Sunday meeting at the Webb's apartment, right after church, it was really cool. At one point he started talking about how he thinks he gets answers to prayers. He said, "When the answer is yes I just feel really good and warm inside, but when it's no it's like the thought kind of leaves me and I can't really think about it clearly any more." I was translating to Elder Webb and I said, "So.. he basically just quoted D&C 9 (Doctrine and Covenants 9:8-9) without ever reading it," and Elder Webb's like well let's show him! and we did, and Zhenia started freaking out. He's like, "Whoa! That's what I said! I've never read this before I promise!" It was really cool. The only challenge with him is getting all the material to him before his date because we have to meet so infrequently and for some reason, he and his wife have this thing, where they want him to kinda get into the church first then bring the rest of the family along later, so we still have to get over that.

So yeah, it was a really good end to the week. Along with that, on Saturday we had to stay in because it was Russian Christmas, and so we just did our district meeting then stayed in at the Webb's house, it was really fun, even though we didn't really do much. The Webb's fed us sloppy joes and pizza, so it was a great day.

Well, I'll be going on visa pretty soon, then right after that will be transfers. I'm pretty sure I'll be leaving this time around, but we'll see. It will be interesting, they are changing the mission to only 2 zones, then they are going to put both zone leader companionships in Novo. It's going to be weird, and also they are changing the way they do visa trips and rather than doing a bunch of small groups they are sending like half the mission together with us, so that will be quite interesting too.

The Russian post office is ridiculous. Its like the American DMV, but worse because there is less order to it. I tried going like 3 weeks ago and it was packed and I didn't have enough time, then it was closed for 2 whole weeks during the holidays. I went today and there were like 4 people in line, so I went and stood behind them, then all these babooshkas who were sitting on benches around the post office started talking to me and telling me that they all had places in the line already and I left again because it was taking forever, so I don't know if I'll ever get letters out.

Hey Mom, I love you. Yeah we went all the way out there for splits, it was awesome. Thanks for those thoughts, I really liked that fable, but I've never heard it! I made a really good taco soup this week, you would be quite proud of me.

Well I think that's pretty much it. Love you all.

Elder Topham

PS - Another cool thing. I talked to Zhenia's wife on the phone a couple times, the first time she asked me how we do baptisms and confirmations, the second she asked me if she and Zhenia could get married in our church in the summer. So we had a good talk about temples. I wish every investigator was like them, it's such a blessing. Aleksei says he won't be ready to be baptized till the spring, so we'll see.

Me at the Webb's for Russian Christmas with Elder Patton

Sam's old car is in Russia!

Me in front of a giant Christmas tree.

This is God's Work

Hey! This was a really awesome week!  New Years Eve was the best day of my whole mission, but I'll get to that later...

Earlier this week was really cool because Elder Hyde and I got to go to Tomsk, to go on exchanges with the zone leaders.  The bus ride to Tomsk is about 5 or so hours. and on the way there it was a really nice bus, and there were only 7 people on the whole bus so we just spread out and it was awesome.  I spent all day with Elder Vargin, it was really cool because he is a native, and I just felt more legit walking around with him. Also, he's 6'8" so I think we really intimidated people sometimes when we were talking to them.  It was really cool, we met a babooshka at a museum so she could show us her exhibit, and it was in its own separate room, she started asking us questions about our church so we sat her down and taught her the first lesson and it went really well.  Then we had a really sad experience when we went to visit one of their other investigators, a woman in her late 20s who has a drinking problem.  She was drunk again when we got there, so we left after a few minutes because it was useless, she was either crying or yelling at us the whole time.  But the part that was the most sad it that there was a little 5 year old girl there, who was the cutest little girl ever, who would show us her toys and just looked so happy.  It was just really sad, because she probably has to deal with that every day, but there was really nothing we could do to help her.  Then after that we went to the bus station to try to get some tickets back to Novo but they were totally sold out for the next morning and we couldn't get out until the next night, so we spent another day in Tomsk.  That day Elder Vargin and I went out to the countryside to visit a new investigator family.  They fed us a really awesome meal with meat and potatoes and a mushroom salad thing, that was actually really good, I think I've gotten over the mushroom thing.  Anyway, it was some pretty legit Russian food.  They were super religious and they all knew the Bible really well.  We would bring up obscure scriptures like in Amos that talk about apostasy and they would know them all, it was kind of ridiculous.  And the dad was some kind of preacher so he kept interrupting to put in his own thoughts and verses, he wasn't arguing but it was difficult.  But the good news is that the only time that they were quiet for the whole lesson is when we were teaching about Joseph Smith and the Restoration.  So that was really cool.  We got a bus back that night, and it was the opposite of the first experience, it was a dumpy bus, I was in the back row that didn't recline, every seat was full.  The heater that heats the whole bus was sitting right in front of me and I was sweating profusely the whole time... it was garbage.  But overall the trip was really fun.

Then last Saturday was New Years Eve, we had to be in by 4 in the afternoon on both New Years Eve and New Years Day.  So we got a meeting scheduled during the day on New Years Eve with Zhenia.  So the story about Zhenia:   about 2 weeks ago we got a call from a guy, and basically he was like hey, you gave me this invitation a few weeks ago, I thought about it, and I'm very interested in reading this Book of Mormon. Can I come get one from you at your building today.  Of course I said yes great! He came right on time, he said he only had 5 minutes he lives in a suburb outside the city and had to catch a commuter train, so we talked real briefly, explained a little about the Book of Mormon, gave him the first lesson pamphlet and asked him to pray about it.  It was really cool because he came into the building and saw our picture of Christ and said "That's it, that's how he is, he is living, I don't like how people always picture him as dead on the cross."  Anyway, some time passed. I was trying to keep in touch by phone, but he wasn't coming into the city for a while and he "didn't want to tell me about his reading over the phone." So he calls us on the 30th and says, "Hey can I come into the city tomorrow and talk to you?" Sure, of course.  We sat down at the branch and asked him how he likes the Book of Mormon.  He said, "I love it, but its pretty hard to understand right now, it will take me a while."  I asked if he had prayed about it, he said "I put my hand on the book, started to pray, and right when I said Heavenly Father I felt my heart start pounding and I felt a feeling in my chest and I knew that He was telling me it was true." Elder Hyde and I were stunned. We expressed how great that is and how we know it too, then I was just like, "well we are having a baptism on the 21st, will you prepare to be baptized then?" And he said, "Well I think I'm ready right now." Once again we were a little stunned.  We kinda explained to him about that's great we just need to teach him some lessons, he needs to come to church, and how he'll need to live the commandments and he was just ready to go.  So we asked him if he read the first lesson pamphlet and he continued on to basically teach us the first lesson while piping in how much he loves everything about families and living prophets and everything.  So then we talked a little about how one of the things we need to work on before baptism is to quit smoking and drinking and he is willing, but he thought it would be hard, so that is what we will be working on soon.  Anyway, that's the gist of the story.  He's awesome, it's great because he has a family too, a wife and two kids still at home.  Elder Hyde and I were just overcome with joy going home and the whole day we spent inside (even though our fridge broke, and we spent a few hours fixing it) it was just an amazing experience.  Also, because for a long time we have had a goal to have a baptism before the end of the year.  We made a plan of all the sub goals we would have to accomplish and when and what other sacrifices and changes we would make in order for the Lord to reward us for our efforts.  It was getting awkward as the year was getting closer to ending and nobody even had a date, but the Lord rewarded us in his own way in his own time, and it just happened to be in the very last moment right before the year ended.  It was just a huge testimony builder that this is God's work and miracles are entirely possible.  It's amazing how we just put in work and work in other ways, contacting and teaching other people and all the other stuff that we do, and God just kinda slips you a miracle in the back door kind of like, OK you deserve this now.  It was just incredible. So needless to say, we are pretty pumped right now.

Other than that, all the rest of the day Saturday we cleaned our apartment, the fridge broke because we were pulling it out to clean behind there, and we fixed that and that was about it. But it was really fun because we listened to all 3 Lord of the Rings soundtracks while doing so.  Then Sunday was great. I tested myself on every single flashcard I have ever made on my whole mission, so that was fun.  Elder Hyde and I set some more goals and I worked on a couple letters.  So they were a good couple days.

They go crazy here for New Years.  There were fireworks going off all night and we went out in the middle of the day Sunday to go to church and it was like a ghost town. And even today almost every store is closed.  The post office is closed for a whole week, it's super lame.  But hey, our internet store is like the only one open on the whole block, so were are happy about that too.

Oh so the signs all (seen in the pictures of the apartment sent last week) said baptism Dec 31.  We should have changed them to say :  New Years miracle Dec 31. Sister Huffaker really liked the white elephant (that Drew took to the white elephant gift exchange) and thought it was cute and clever, so she stole it.  Elder Hyde is a really hard worker,  so he's doing well.

Well it was awesome to hear how everything is going and about the snowboarding trip, I really miss it walking through snow every day, but whatever, it will be there when I get back.

Love,
Elder Topham