Hey what's up? It's been a good week.
Answers first today:
-Russians like Obama ok, I don't think they would like our president no matter who he is. They like the democrats more in general it seems.
- Yeah, they have been doing under-the-table little "Preach My Gospel"s at some kind of printing place in Omsk for a while. I inherited one in each language from Elder Drasso. They also make a size smaller in Omsk. They are only black and white, but they still work well.
- We haven't switched companions yet. Elder Davis will move in on Wednesday so we can go to the airport early in the morning to pick up all of the new missionaries and Elder Harris. We don't know when Elder Anderson can leave because his Kazy visa hasn't come in yet, so we'll see.
- No, not ready for winter... I'm dreading it.
- I like Dad's story about the referrals. Do you have some kind of weekly correlation meeting with the missionaries? Or what have you been doing as a ward missionary recently.
Ok, everything else:
We picked up 2 new investigators who look pretty promising this week.
One dude, Timor was a street contact that later on the phone invited us to his home, which is very rare for a street contact to just trust us like that. But it was was really nice he showed us all his pictures and we got to know each other well and gave him the Book of Mormon.
The other one, we were at the park waiting for a guy that was supposed to meet us there and we talked to this old Armenian guy and he was very nice and very receptive we sat down on a bench and started teaching him, by this time we assumed that our meeting was not coming. Then in the middle our guy came and sat down by me and I taught him while Elder Anderson was teaching the Armenian guy on the other side of the bench. We are going back to his house tonight.
Aleksei is still looking pretty good. He has been swamped with his job recently and was sick this weekend so we haven't seen him for a while and he didn't make it to church but he should be on board to be baptized soon. Maybe this weekend.
We haven't seen Evgeni for a while maybe even a month, just talked to him on the phone. We had a meeting with him this week. At the beginning I asked him if he prayed about whether or not he needs to be baptized. Honestly I expected him to say something like, "Yeah, I think it will all come with time," or "I don't have a definite answer yet." But he just sat there for a while kinda looking up a little bit, and I started thinking to myself dang, I think he might have gotten it, then I started praying "Please, if he hasn't gotten an answer yet, give him one right now" and it felt like that silence lasted a long time and he said, "Yeah, I got the answer. I need to do it." It was actually kinda a scramble after that because we were trying to congratulate and reassure him and at the same time trying to pick a date and explain what needs to happen before he can be baptized. So it was pretty sweet.
Saturday was really interesting. We went down to Akadem Goradok for a day.
We first had a lesson with an investigator, then Evgeni (the first time at his house), then Vitali, the member who is 84 years old. He is sweet, lived down by the Black Sea during World War II. He's still really active and teaches priesthood every other week. It was nice because we were able to have 3 people to meet with who all lived down there and stopped by some other people to make the trip worth while.
At church Victor and Andrei both came, Andrei sat in the front row of Sunday School with me and didn't hide in the back, so he's still warming up. Sorry, we need to go, we are going to TGIs.
Elder Topham
 |
| Me with our fruit lady. |
 |
| Me cooking some wonderful plove. |
 |
| Me in front of some awesome Mario graffiti. |
 |
| Us and our investigator Paval. |
 |
| Us with member Vitali. |
