Elder Drew Topham: A Lot of Time to Contact

Sorry I haven't really read the emails that you sent me very well yet. I got a lot of stuff from President today, and the absentee ballot, and I sent those pictures so I don't have much time. I'll be able to read them this week and answer them thoroughly next Monday.

This week didn't go too well. I guess it started off really bad when Monday night we had a lesson with an investigator at a member's house and right before he texted us and canceled and said that he didn't want to continue meeting with us and coming to church any more because he doesn't want to leave his own church. And besides that message he hasn't actually talked to us about it or answered our calls. We also had some rough days Tuesday and Wednesday with people canceling first meetings on us. Really the only investigator who we are consistently teaching is Viktor. And even that is really one once a week because of his work schedule.

The Visa trip was nice and went very smoothly. All of the planes were on time and there were no problems at all in Helsinki so it was great. We had a little bit of time Thursday evening to see some stuff in Helsinki, Elder Davis and I had to go to the travel agency there but it didn't take long at all. Then with our group we got to see some of the churches and cathedrals there, so that was really cool. Friday morning we went to the temple and that was also really special. That is probably the last time we will get to go to the temple on the mission because some new measures got passed that we should be able to get three year visas soon. Also, even if that doesn't happen soon the area presidency made a suggestion that you shouldn't go to the temple on visa trip you should just get the next flight out immediately. So we will see what happens next time. Actually, next time I imagine Elder Davis and I will just get our new visas when we are in Kazakhstan. It was nice on the Visa trip I had a chance to talk to Elder Hyde for a long time and catch up with him on stuff, because I hadn't seen him for a while.

Saturday and Sunday we had a couple lessons between home teaching and recent convert Aleksei, but we had a lot of time to contact and I bet that will also be the theme this upcoming week. New missionaries come in this week so we will be spending a bunch of time with them and that's always really fun and my favorite part of the transfer. We are also doing a training meeting for all of the district leaders on Thursday.

Probably the best part of this week was when Aleksei passed the sacrament. That was really awesome, in fact it was really cool that Misha did it with him and was walking him through how to do everything. We talked about missionary work with Aleksei and he wants to go it sounds like, but he isn't very sure yet. Well, I feel like things are going alright and we've been working hard and everything but we've really hit a slump in the area, so we'll see how it goes.

- Elder Topham

Oh yeah, sweet video of the AK 47 and awesome job at debate Dani, sounds like you are owning.

Well here are a few pictures from Finland...

The first couple are from a Lutheran church that is made out of rocks, it's really cool.