A Cool Experience

Hey,

I really enjoyed Dad's email. That's what I've been thinking a lot lately. Especially the last couple days.

Mom, thank you as always for your nice emails, those are all very much appreciated. One of the things you mentioned was only pictures on P-days. And that is an issue that I've been trying to deal with, because I was in the ZLC when all of the rules were decided and discussed and when that was discussed there was no consensus on that issue. There's a lot of confusion with rules because so many were added and discussed that it's not very clear sometimes.

Dani, keep it up. Good luck on the forensics tournament. That's like CSI right? Whoever finds the murderer first wins the tournament? Ok fine, just kidding.

Well this week was pretty good.

I think the beginning of the week went pretty well. We taught Ilya on Monday night and Tuesday night. Wednesday I worked with Elder Walker. Thursday evening we were on a train to the Kuz ( he means Novokuznetsk) and we were there all day Friday. That was a good trip. I was with Elders Turley and Bunnell. We had a cool experience on the train, it was a day train so it was just a regular sitting car with three seats to a row. Elder Davis was in the middle with me and a lady at his sides. After a while into the ride, the lady asked him what I was reading and if she could see it. So she took my triple combination and read it for about half an hour. Then we talked for the remaining 2 hours of the train ride. She was actually only changing lines at the Kuz to go to a little town far away from all the cities in our mission, but we gave her a Book of Mormon and all the pamphlets. And got her info. That was just really fun because of how rarely people themselves show interest.

Saturday evening was nice, we taught Ilya, Viktor, and Aleksei. Now Viktor and Ilya both have dates set in October.

Sunday was going to be really good because one of our investigators was going to come, then on Saturday night, while contacting, someone agreed to go with us to church the next morning. So we meet the guy at the bus stop before church and we ride the metro together to church and chat on the way. We get there like 15 minutes early and show him the building and introduce him to a few people then we turn our backs for like a minute and the guy just left, didn't come back, didn't answer our calls. It was the weirdest thing ever. I don't know what he was expecting but I guess there was something there that he didn't like or that spooked him, but I have no idea why someone would actually meet us and come with us and leave before the meeting. Anyway our investigator also didn't show and texted saying he couldn't make it. So it was a pretty disappointing day at church. The bright side came in Priesthood when Aleksei got the Priesthood. We went home teaching with Paval in the evening and other than that just contacted the rest of the night.

Well, I guess that's it, can't think of much more to say. I finished the Old Testament this morning. I think that was a sweet experience and I learned a lot and it was well worth it.

Elder Topham

Tons of Miracles

Hey whats up?

I busted out that sweater that you sent me for my birthday, I think it was for my birthday, because it's getting a little chilly here the last couple days. It's not really that cold, but whenever we go out in just our suit jackets the babooshki always yell at us that we are going to get sick. Anyway, We got back from Tomsk Friday night, and I was exhausted, probably the most tired I have ever been on my mission, besides after long flights, because we just put in 3 grueling days in Tomsk. Elder Davis and I are going to Novokuznetsk later this week. Then Visa Trip next week.

Last Monday we had our last lesson with Nastia. She left back for Kazakhstan while we were in Tomsk. It was a huge success because the main problem we had been having with her is getting her to pray out loud. Before Monday the best we could do was brainstorm with her what she wanted to say and actually write out with her her prayer and have her read it, but at the end of the last lesson she just whipped it right out on her own, so that was a huge success because she really believes everything, but just had that huge hurdle. Now we are happy and confident that she has everything she needs to keep making spiritual growth through prayer and scripture study until she comes back next year and hopefully marries Artyom, then the missionaries will just need to teach a couple commandments and she will be ready to be baptized.

Tuesday we had a really touching lesson with an older man right before we left for Tomsk. He told us about how his father left him when he was little and also his mother was killed by the Germans and he was raised an orphan and just overall had a sad life, and as we talked about Christ and the gospel you could tell that it really was touching him and the spirit was comforting him even in that very moment. We should see him again early this week. Then we had a meeting with all the ZLC + Elder Harrison -Elder Beckh who is in Kazy, and President gave a sweet pep-talk and we worked out some planning details about our trip. He drove the four of us to Tomsk and the other 4 took the bus to Kemerovo. Tuesday night Elder Walker, Stoneking and I worked together while Elder Johnson and President met with the branch president going through name by name all of the men in the branch and finding out where they were at and what the next step is. That meeting was very successful because just by doing so they got a more accurate count and added a few priesthood holders, then made a plan to get a few more the priesthood soon.

Wednesday I worked all day with Elder Stoneking. We spent a lot of time street and park contacting. I think we only had one lesson set up going into it, and we were at the branch standing outside the front talking to people as they walked by until our guy showed up. One guy agreed to come take a tour of the building. So we thought we would do that real quick, and we finished and our guy still had not showed up so we sat this guy down and taught him the first lesson. It was a sweet experience. That goes to show how if you make plans and are working hard the whole time then, even if the original plan doesn't work out, the lord will take care of you and something good will come of it.

Thursday I worked with Elder White. We had 4 meetings set up. Two from former investigators who I had previously taught and 2 from new contacts from Wednesday. Three of them called and cancelled and one just didn't ever show up or answer his phone, so that was a huge bummer and we again spent a good amount of time street contacting. The highlight of our day was probably at the very end of the day when we were both very tired, and tired of walking around so we went by the boardwalk of the river. We decided that if there is any guy sitting out here alone than he must be out here pondering deep questions. So we spotted a few couples but one guy sitting alone, so we sat by him and chatted him up and ended up having a really deep spiritual discussion and really helped him out.

Friday we had an hour before district meeting so we went contacting in the pouring rain. That was sweet because 2 out of the first 3 guys we talked to were interested at least to some degree. I take that as a reward for sticking it out in the rain. Elder Johnson ran a really powerful district meeting. And we took off back for Novo right after on the bus. (President on Wednesday worked with Elder Jensen and Harris then took of for Kemerovo)

In Kemerovo there were tons of miracles. There were two investigators with baptismal dates for soon and they got them both baptized on Friday, as well as two guys that they found on Wednesday. I guess the elders taught them a first lesson and had them both pray right then and there and they both said they felt a really strong answer that its right and they wanted to be baptized. So they taught them all the lessons and baptized them on Friday. President was there and gave an exception to the guideline that investigators should attend several sacrament meetings before the baptism. In Tomsk there was a lot of success, we didn't baptize anyone but we set a handful of baptismal dates, found many new investigators and I'm sure a lot of men came out to church yesterday but I haven't seen the numbers yet.

This whole trip was a huge testimony builder about how President is inspired and how the revelation works. About 2 weeks ago he said he wanted the 6 of us to go to Tomsk, then a little after that he felt impressed that Elders Anderson and Harrison should go as well, then last week he felt impressed to include Kemerovo, then boom all of these miracles, especially in Kemerovo.

Sunday was disappointing because all three of our lessons bailed on us. So after church we taught another member family then contacted for a while. Pretty much all the investigators that Elder A and I had have died off, so we need to focus on getting some new prepared people. We have one really good one right now who Elder Davis and Anderson found and taught literally right when then got into the city from Tomsk. He agreed to be baptized and he came to all three hours of church and loved it.

Well, I think that is it.

Elder Topham

Solid

Hey what's up everybody. Hey Mom, love you.

This week's been pretty solid, I think it's gone by pretty fast, it was stressful at times but everything went pretty well.

We spent a lot of time this week doing stuff for various conferences. Zone Conference (missionaries), District Conference (members), and Zone Leader Council. I guess when a General Authority comes out here you schedule all of the meetings you can in that week. In the time we were not doing that stuff we had some investigator lessons and some member lessons, so it was pretty busy.

Wednesday we had another test run for the District Conference and we got everything to run really smooth.

Friday was the combined Zone Conference. President Bennett came in and called everyone to repentance. Including having everyone go out street contacting for an hour before lunch. President Gibbons did a sweet job not backing down on anything that President Bennett said, but at the same time making it sound more inspiring and like he is really on our side, I think he did a wonderful job. I thought Elder Bennett's was really good too. He said a lot of things that a lot of missionaries needed to hear that will help many of us change. There are many new rules and restrictions now. A few were some older ones that President G wanted to clarify, some are from recent instruction given by the Apostles at the mission president's seminar and some are from Elder Bennett, the way he interprets the handbook. Most of them outlaw anything that can possibly take away any time or attention from doing missionary work. For example, no music except for P-day and even then only MoTab and Russian classical music. No meeting with any other missionaries to do activities on P-day. No culture night (which is very interesting because we had all bought tickets for a hockey game tonight to be our culture night for this transfer. The one culture night activity that I have been waiting for a year to do. So we are just going to have to eat the cost of those and try to give them away to someone). Oh, and here is the hardest one: senior couples aren't allowed to feed us meals at district meeting any more. And we can't have them at their apartments any more. There are many more but I think those are the main and most interesting ones.

My role for Zone Conference was to conduct the morning session, we also did a bunch of logistical preparation things.

Saturday afternoon we ran the technology for the Priesthood and auxiliary training meetings for District Conference. That one was pretty rough because after we had made a beautiful set up of running a hard wire across the ceiling right to where our state of the art broadcast equipment was set up, it wouldn't work. So we had to do plan B and run the thing with dinky web cams and WIFI. After the meeting we quickly found out that the router just went down and we reset it and ran the adult session and the general session almost flawlessly. It sounds like all of the cities got the feed really well. We also made sure that all of the Americans there had working headsets for translation (that is of course except the young missionaries and president Gibbons). Elder Anderson translated all of the meetings into English for them. While they spoke, Russians translated it to Russian.

So it looks like numbers wise the only thing holding us back from a stake is the number of active priesthood brethren in Tomsk. So President was impressed that the entire ZLC should go on a 3 day field trip to Tomsk in order to find and start teaching those future priesthood leaders. We are leaving tomorrow and coming back on Friday. Just this morning we changed the plans up a little. Because now President is going to move the Kemerovo group- this is a city with a tiny branch with one active priesthood holder that is about the same distance from Novo and Tomsk and is now a part of the Novo branch- to the Tomsk branch. And we are taking Elders Anderson and Harrison on the field trip as well and now 4 of us will go to Tomsk and 4 to Kemerovo and President will go to both cities. Going to Tomsk will be me, Elders Davis, Anderson, and Walker (all of us have previously served in Tomsk) and to Kemerovo, Elders Carr, Kelly, Bowler, and Harrison. So that is going to be an awesome adventure and I'm sure it will be a very spiritual experience going there with such a specific purpose.

Nastia will be going home this week, so we have a last lesson with her planned tonight to try to get her some good reading and praying habits. We have tons of numbers right now that we got as street contacts, that we haven't had enough time to follow up on and get meetings with. So we will have to spend some time doing that when we get back from Tomsk.

I think that's all. I think visa trips are all back to Helsinki now. Sounds like you did great at the volleyball tournament Dani, that one picture of you hitting looks like you jumped pretty high!

-Elder Topham

Technical Difficulties

Hey, what's up. 

I'm a little later today because we had some stuff to deal with today. First, someone offered an apartment to us that is much less than we pay for ours, so we had to go take a look at it. It's smaller which is fine, but the kitchen isn't good and the location isn't quite as good, but it is significantly cheaper, so we'll see if we move or not. Then, Elder Bennett from the Seventy and the Area Presidency is touring the mission this week and he had us come to his hotel and interview with him today.

I feel like this last week has been ridiculous with the amount of stuff popping up here and there that we have to take care of. One thing is the new program from the missionary department of the monthly "Zone Training Meeting" which is done once a month by the zone leaders with everyone in the zone, in place of district meeting for that week. That's really tough for our mission because the 3 cities in each zone are from 5 to 8 hours apart. So this time we ran the zone meetings by the church webcam program. One of them was decent, they just had some cutting in and out problems, but the other one was a disaster technology wise. Also, there is a district conference coming up this weekend, and that will also be broadcast out to all of the cities in the mission. So we did a test run for that on Sunday after church. It was pretty rough, there should be another one on Wednesday so we will see how that goes. There is also the upcoming Combined Zone Conference. Elder Bennett is going to be there for that so we are trying to help plan and set everything up.

We had a ZLC last week that went well.

The most positive experience of last week was Aleksei's confirmation. I confirmed him and it was a really good experience for both of us. I was actually really nervous when we started but once I got the necessary words out, everything felt really good and all the words just really flowed from there.

We hadn't seen Andrei for a while but we went over there on Sunday after church and I think we are making a little bit of progress with him.

Viktor surprised us and came to church. We hadn't seen him or even talked to him for a couple weeks (he got a new phone number)

We taught Nastia, from Kazakhstan, probably about 4 times in the evenings this past week and she came to church. We were really pleased with her progress, she is so shy that especially during our first 2 meetings it was hard to tell if she was getting anything or what she was thinking, but she's been warming up a little more and when we taught the Plan of Salvation and Gospel of Christ she did a really good job showing us how much she understands.

There are a couple other investigators who we just started with.

We did a nice job seeing members this week. Maybe about 4 or 5 member lessons, we haven't seen any direct results from it, but a few of the members who we taught this week were really pumped during testimony meeting and shared their testimonies and included how thankful they are for the missionaries, so that was nice to hear and I know they appreciated it.

As far as I know all the permissions (to preach in Kazakhstan) went to Astana and there aren't any in Almaty yet. And yes, those are all individual. That is something that we weren't expecting to come through until after the church was registered, but it looks like they are both kind of just going through the system parallel.

Elder Harris is looking great, he's out in Tomsk now. I think they tacked 4 transfers on the end of his mission.

Now we have a few more missionaries than we have had for a while, but about the same as when I came in. In a few months we should have more, especially sisters, we will have many more sisters than we have ever had.

Yeah, as far as a member program its seems like it has a much different feel here than in America. Our goal is to really try to help and strengthen the members. Its tough here because being Mormon is much more culturally accepted in America, and you don't get much persecution for your beliefs, so we are trying to strengthen their testimonies, then help them do missionary work from there.

Well, that's all. Hope everything is going well there.

-Elder Topham