A Good Day Even Better

This week has been really fun and really crazy.

Monday afternoon most of the missionaries went on a river cruise down the Ob. That was pretty sweet to see some different parts of the city from the river. It was a nice little one hour round trip and we had some good time just to chat.

Tuesday, we spent the majority of the day with President. We had some meetings with the office staff and a conference call with the church lawyer over this area, and some other business. That was also our culture night. We went to the big opera theater again. This time it was a big concert from all of the students who just graduated from the "conservatory" here in Novo, I guess that's like the main musical academy. My favorite performances were the two guys that did an accordian duet and the girl that sang the "Queen of the Nights" aria from the Magic Flute. We had to run home after the concert because two Barnaul elders had just come in to do exchanges with us for the next day.

Wednesday was sweet because Elder's Smith and Rich were with us the whole day. I went with Elder Rich, and Elders Anderson and Smith were together. We stacked that day with as many meetings as we possibly could because there were 2 companionships in the area. We had a good day planned for both of us but it turned out to be even better. In all we taught 9 lessons, and got 7 new investigators (that's probably more than I've ever got in a week). It was crazy because we had 4 first meetings scheduled and were expecting 4 new investigators. One of them fell through, but one of our first meetings brought a friend. One of Anderson and Smith's brought 2 friends. And Elder Smith found a guy on the bus and set up a meeting for that afternoon. Then when they were at the park teaching that guy on a bench someone came up and asked if he could listen too. So they kinda split up and each taught one of them. It was just really crazy because stuff like that never happens. We had an awesome day, we had country breakfast in the morning, pizza and fruit salad for lunch and sharuma for dinner, we really tried to do it right for them.

Thursday we had a meeting with President. Then a couple lessons at the branch and a big planning session.

Friday we had district meeting at the Webb's and they made some awesome burgers. We then went to the airport with Elder Gushin to pick up the three Moscow West elders. We spent the evening and the night with them at the mission home eating dinner and doing a little mission orientation.

Saturday morning we moved Elders Mitchell and Hansen into our apartment. We've been running two companionships in our area for the last few days and will be until Thursday when we will give them over to the north Zone leaders. The other elder is with the South Zone leaders.

Sunday was pretty normal. We went to church and had a good day but had to be home at 7 because it was Novosibirsk day and everyone was getting drunk out on the streets already.

Both Aleksei's are doing well but unfortunately neither made it to church. We are trying to get some of these new investigators to become good serious investigators. One investigator had kept the Word of Wisdom for 2 weeks but peer pressure got to him at a wedding and he got wasted so we are going to call him to repentance tonight (with love of course).

Ok to answer questions:

Piano is good, I can almost play Come Follow Me but I need a lot of practice to get it up to the correct tempo and consistant. But don't worry, if you would have signed me up for lessons when I was a kid I would have hated them.

Elder Balashov is Russian from Saint Petes. There are only 3 Russian Elders right now and also one from Latvia, who is a native Russian speaker. They all go home pretty soon.

It's been around 30 degrees celsius usually. But the problem is that it is pretty humid and nobody has air conditioning, so rather than being like Vegas where it's hot outside but then you go inside and it's fine, it's just always pretty hot.

Kiev is in a couple of weeks. There is a mission tour in early September with a general authority. I should be going on most of that which would include some of the cities here and Kazy.

I think these missionaries who have been recently sent to Kazy have had thier papers in to go there forever and should have gone a few months ago, and are just now making it there. I don't think it was the intended plan to transfer them all now during the switch. For example, Elder Mitchell said they started his paperwork 8 months ago or something like that. I think he is the extreme case.

Elder Topham

Sweet Week

Hey what's up? We've been in Krasnoyarsk the last few days. Friday night we got on a train to Krasno and we slept on the train, then Saturday I was with Elders Bowler and McKay and I slept over at their place, then on Sunday I was with Elders Balashov and Bailey and last night we slept on the train on the way back here. It was a really good trip. Krasnoyarsk is amazing and beautiful. They have fountains and monuments everywhere throughout the city, they also have some small mountains as a backdrop on one side which is really rare in Siberia. The branch there is amazing. They actually have a good number of families there with fathers and children running around. It was amazing and it looked much more like an American ward than the other branches that are in Siberia. They have their own building there also, it looks just like the one in Tomsk. When I was with Elders Balashov and Bailey we had a very interesting first lesson. We went to a guy's apartment, he believes in eastern religion and practices some kind of Martial Arts with big swords. So we took some pictures with the swords and that was sweet.

Here are the highlights of the week:

We went to TGI Fridays for P-Day, that was sweet.

Tuesday we went out to a part member family's home and taught the father, it was ok, but he just doesn't care about religion at all, so we are trying to make him see how important it is. Then later than evening we put on a movie night at the branch and watched How Rare a Possesion. That was sweet, I gave a little lesson and testimony about the Book of Mormon at the end of that.

Wednesday was sweet because we just had it stacked with investigator meetings from morning until evening. That may be the first time that's happened to me on my mission where we spent the whole day just teaching investigators and all of the meetings actually work out. The bad news is that our first meeting that day was with an investigator, who we thought has been doing really well. But right when we started he just told us that he thinks he has enough information to make his discision and that it's not for him. It was really sad, we couldn't get him to read and pray because he said no matter how he feels about the Book of Mormon he won't accept it and the church as true because we believe that we can become like Gods and that is the original sin that Adam and Eve made. So we are still friends and he offered to give us rides if we ever need them, but we aren't teaching him any more. The rest of the lessons went well, including getting back in touch with Aleksei and teaching him a good lesson at his home, and he came to church on Sunday.

On Thursday we had ZLC. We met for 2 hours, then took a break to go contacting by the river for about an hour, then ate lunch, then met for another 2 hours. It was great as always. After that we went with the Webbs and Office Elders to Ikea to buy some furniture for our apartment. The only seating in the whole appartment are 4 stools that we always use for studying and eating and I think it was getting to our backs, so we bought 2 office chairs and a little love seat and they are sweet.

Friday we had district meeting then a huge storm/flashflood rolled in with hail and lightning and it was sweet. It only lasted for about 20 minutes, but we went outside after and all of the streets were flooded, and they had all turned into rivers. It actually messed up our plans becuase our investigator was on the way to the branch but was caught in traffic for an hour and didn't make it. That night we took off for Krasnoyarsk.

Well that's pretty much it. It sounds like the family reunion was fun. Oh, here is something interesting. Kazy becomes part of our mission this week, and I think we should be getting in 3 missionaries from the Moscow West mission who will be staying in Novo for a while until their Kazy visas are ready, so we will pick them up from the airport on Friday.

 

Elder Topham

Elder Mckay and me in Krasno.

Elder Mckay and me in Krasno.

Elder Bowler and a member in Krasno.

Us at the samurai guy's house with his swords.

This is a picture from the big conference a few months ago that I just found on the computer.

Elder Topham

A Really Good Week

Well, it's been a really good week. We probably taught more lessons this week than I have any other week in my mission. There might have been one week in Tomsk that was about like this. It just really helps that we got some people who are willing to meet with us regularly and often. All the days kind of are running together in my head, so maybe I'll just tell you a little bit about what's going on by person.

Our best investigator is Aleksei. He's a 20 year old kid, I think Elders Smith and Blake found him and he lives right next to our branch building. He's awesome, he already has a good basic testimony and desire to be baptized, just waiting until he's a little more sure to set a date. The best thing about him is that he is already really involved with the youth program. Usually it seems like we have to force our investigators to meet people and go to activities but he, even without an invite, now goes to the FHE and the youth firesides so it's awesome that he already likes it there and we don't have to be there with him and he's still getting spiritual nourishment and some friends in the church.

We have another Aleksei. This is the guy who stopped us in the car last week. We actually had an interesting time because he was scheduled for Monday at 7 and we had another guy, Victor, scheduled for Monday at 6. But Victor got stuck in traffic and was late. So they both were coming at the same time. We got a hold of Elders Ortner and Lionhardt, who were around the area, and they came over to help us teach them both at the same time. Elder Ortner and I taught Victor and Anderson, Lionhardt and Paval taught Aleksei. It sounds like a crazy meeting but turns out he's ready to go they set a baptismal date with him, taught him the gospel of Christ, and told him that he needs to quit smoking but it was super quick. I didn't actually meet Aleksei til a couple days after that. He is quite the character. He has major attention span problems. We'll be talking and he will get distracted and interrupt about something. But the good thing is that it's totally kosher to just say, "No, that's not on the subject of what we are talking about" and go back to where we were. So that was going pretty well, the only downside is that his phone hasn't been working the last few days and he wasn't at home when we tried to go by once, so we've kinda lost contact, so we'll see how that works.

Victor is interesting. Kinda the stereotypical 24 year old skinny emo guy who works at a clothing store in a mall. He's a really cool guy who's willing to listen and we've become good friends but we need to help him really get a desire to change.

Kerill we've known for a while, he's the one that took me to the beach. He came out to church this week. He needs to get past his deep doctrinal questions and rely on getting a testimony of the Book of Mormon. He's mostly just nervous about being deceived when praying for that answer, so we talk to him a lot about the spirit.

Artyom came to church last week. His problem is that he has this perception about himself just not being a religious person so he doesn't need it, but it's all great for us.

Pyoter, we met at English, he likes hearing from us but he likes acting for himself, so there's not much we can do with him. He does help us do our English contacting. Although he only invites pretty women. It's actually pretty funny being out there with him, we did that twice this week. We set up a little table and sign out in the main park in the center of the city inviting people to the next round of English.

We had 2 Evgeni's who we haven't taught yet come to church. One of them is a son of a babooshka who was recently baptized who we've been keeping in touch with, the other we know through young Aleksei, it's his mom's friend.

So the cool thing is that our area is finally really moving forward and we have many people to work with. I would imagine that we should have a couple more dates set next and, unfortunately, some of these might drop off.

We had our regular Tuesday and Thursday meetings and business with President. and taught Misha twice, once with his mom too. Then, add the home teaching and boom, there's a ton of lessons. So it's been a sweet week, I've been really happy.

We are exploring other ways to do the visa trip. We are looking into just going to Kazy for visas. It would be much easier travel, but a paperwork pain, because we would have to get every missionary a business visa each time they went, and their government might not like that. We will also look into Mongolia. I'm not sure what Kiev will be like or what we can do there, including the temple.

I was with Elder Carr on Saturday over on left bank. He is so unique. He is friends with everybody who lives within a couple blocks of their place. Everyone there loves him. My favorite were his friends Mohammad from Afghanistan who sells "seeds" on the corner. He always tells Elder Carr to tuck in his shirt better and told him that he missed his fly, it was really funny how everyone there loves him so much. We had a great day, we had one bad meeting where the guy came with a list of reasons why we are wrong and deceived, nothing that I haven't heard before and stuff like that happens often. But I was feeling really bad after that meeting because he, unlike most of those people who just like to argue with us, seemed to have really sincerely searched it out for himself and wasn't just there to argue. But it came out that he said he had prayed about it, but really hadn't with sincere desire like Moroni says to do. I'm actually not sure what the wording on that is in English, but that sincere desire is what a lot of the people who we teach lack. It's really a desire to absolutely follow the answer you get and be willing to give up or do anything in order to be obedient to Gods commandments. And many people aren't willing to ask with that kind of predetermination to follow the answer.

I'm in Joshua now in the OT, I'm still trucking along, just giving it about 15 minutes a day.

Elder A and I are going to Krasno this weekend on the train with President. That's going to be a sweet trip, and will complete my mission tour. (That is of course until Kazzy gets added)

Last week for p-day, we hung out at the park by the river. I think we are going to TGI Fridays today.

Elder Anderson and I have been branching out a bit on our meals. We made fajitas and banana bread. We are purposely planning meals now to use the various packets of things that we have recieved in packages or inherited from other missionaries. Like taco, enchilada, and fajitas seasonings, various gravies, and other stuff too. We still have plenty of stuff. We hid one of our peanut butters in the branch somewhere. That way if we don't have time to get much to eat we can buy a thing of bread at the little store and enjoy the peanut butter. Don't worry Mom, we still have plenty of everything. We have been eating well. And lots of fruits and veggies. The fruit lady who works outside our building loves us and always give us really good stuff and takes care of us. Like when it was colder she would always scold us for not wearing jackets. She almost got us a contact one time. When we were buying our fruit she was telling another lady who was looking at fruit about what sweet boys we are and how she should let us teach her about religion. We are also really good friends with Shaboon. He's the Arab guy who works at the shoe repair place by our house.

Ok, I think that's all. I kinda just rambled on this week it looks like. If anyone has suggestions to make these more interesting or specific questions just let me know.

Elder Topham

Me playing the piano.

Us with young Aleksei at the river.



Elder Anderson and I doing home teaching with Paval at Mihael's.

Elder Carr and I cooking up some lunch at his place on left bank.

 

Our Spirits are Really High Right Now

Hey, we had a really good week this week, I feel like we really got out of a little dip in our area.

So mom do you know if its possible to order books in Russian on the Internet and if so how much are they. I was in the book store the other day I was was looking at some books and I definitely want to buy some and they are really cheap here, but they would be a pain to transfer. For example, I wanted to get Harry Potter, the Chronicles of Narnia, and some actually Russian books like Tolstoi and Pushkin.

We spent most of Wednesday and Thursday with the new missionaries, we just did the usual routine with them. My favorite part is always taking the new missionaries and the trainers out to lunch on Thursday. We went to a legit Russian restaurant. I got everyone the holadets to try of course. Then that night was pretty cool too. We went to a part member family's house and she fed us some legit Russian food too. It was this salad thing of cucumbers, boiled eggs, sausage, onions, other vegetables and she served it up in dishes in front of us, then put a little sour cream on it and then poured kvass over all of our bowls of this salad thing. Kvass is a drink made from fermented black bread, it's kinda like root beer, but not really. It's really strong and smells like beer.

Friday we threw a tea party for members and investigators. Very few members showed up but a ton of investigators and new people showed up so that was good.

Saturday I was on left bank with Elder Marcy. Our investigator Kerril lives over there so we met with him. He picked us up in his car and drove us down to a little reservoir where they built a dam on the river. It was really cool We basically had our meeting walking along the boardwalk of this lake with him. They actually even have a beach on this lake. I couldn't believe it, there is this little beach there and it looked like California, they even had little shacks there to buy smoothies and stuff, I couldn't believe it, I didn't think a place like that existed in Siberia.

We had a great day yesterday. Artyom came to church. That got us out of a little streak that we were having when people weren't coming to church. Then that night was awesome. We had just broken our fast and were heading out to a meeting that we weren't really sure was going to show up. On the way, a guy starts yelling at us from his car, he actually really wanted to talk to us. We gave him a thing with our number on it and he drove away because everyone behind him was honking at him. He called within five minutes and said he just wants to come unto Christ and he's willing to do anything, so we have a meeting with him tonight, we'll see how that goes. Then not only did the meeting show up, it went really well and he agreed to meet with us tonight too. Then Elder Blake and Carr met with us to give us an investigator who they found who lives in our area, and he was great and is looking strong. So basically our spirits are really high right now. Basically all last transfer we felt like we were just working and busy and things weren't really going anywhere, but now things have really picked up and we should be able to set some baptismal dates this week.

Looks like next visa trip my group will be going to Kiev. We probably won't be going to Kazy for a while. Pres is going without us late this month.

Well, I think that's pretty much it. We'll know which ones of these new investigators are really serious by next week. I've been plucking away at the piano a couple times when we are waiting for meetings to show up. I had Elder Terry show me where the notes are on the keyboard. Now I can read any song. I can play the right hand of "Sweet Hour of Prayer" smoothly. It's sweet and there's something relaxing about playing the piano, so I like it.

Elder Davis and me eating.

Elder Anderson and me with Misha and his mom, Olga.

Me with Elder Mckay.

- Elder Topham