Elder Anderson and I took a trip to Barnaul this week. We left on Monday evening. Worked all day Tuesday and Wednesday and came back Thursday morning. It was really cool. There are only 4 elders in the whole city and that's all. Both of the companionships are a brand new missionary and a trainer. I spent the first day with Elder Smith, my buddy from the MTC who is training now, so obviously that was really cool. and the second day I was with Elder Duncan who is new, that brought back some memories. I feel much more suited to be a trainer now than I did during the 3rd transfer (sorry Elder Hyde). Elder Duncan and I taught a sweet first lesson. A young guy in his 20s invited us over to kinda get to know us a little more. We change over and say hey we want to teach a lesson about what we believe and why we are here. He says sure, and his mom was around in the kitchen so we just took a shot and asked her if she wanted to join us. She said, "Sure that would be interesting, would that be ok if I sew while I listen?" We said, "Sure of course." Anyway we start teaching and the whole entire time she put her sewing stuff down and just had her eyes glued and was super active in like answering questions and stuff. It was a really ideal first lesson and they accepted to read and pray and come to church so I hope that turns out well for them.
Yeah, so that was the highlight of the week. Also a funny story- we went to visit and teach a member, Brother Mihael and we had a really good lesson, he's doing missionary work so we kinda helped him out. Then that night we get a call from Brother Paval and he wants to go home teaching with us the next day. We said great, we meet him that night and we set off to find the house. We are just following him along and we walk all the way down to the end of a muddy road where there are small houses and the street ends and he says "oops we must have the wrong street," so he makes a call, and wanders off and we follow him for a good half an hour trying to find this house. I finally ask him, "wait, who are we going to home teach?" and he says "oh, Brother Mihael. Haha we felt so dumb, because we knew exactly where it was but we had no idea who we were going to and we were just following him around. Anyway, we made it and had a good home teaching visit.
This next week will be interesting. We have a presentation at leadership training on Wednesday that we have been working on and need to finish up. Then the Europe East Area doctor is coming in to tour Novosibirsk and we are supposed to schedule appointments with various clinics and hospitals and take him around on tours so he will know where we can send our missionaries to. That will be quite interesting. I've been studying up on all kinds of medical terms and stuff this week, but It will still be extremely hard to translate, so hopefully Dr. Hatch (who is supposedly a radiologist) wants to do mostly looking and not very much question asking.
Well I think that's all. Things are really going well and exciting here, a little too exciting sometimes, but that's better than too boring.
How is the Hunger Games movie? I bet it's either super awesome, or terrible. I think that would be hard to make because it's already so epic in my mind that it would be a disappointment, so let me know.
That's cool that James is subbing for you, I bet he's a really good teacher too.
Well love you Mom,
Elder Topham
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| Me in Barnaul cooking lunch with Elders Rich and Smith. |
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| Us with Marina and the Webbs at their apartment. This is yesterday after church when she was confirmed. |
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| Choir practice with all of our MTC-mates |
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| Picture of our missionary choir for conference |
