Elder Drew 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