Mellow Week

Well this week was pretty mellow.

Monday afternoon we played some basketball at a little park behind a university. It wasn't too bad for being an outdoor court. That was the first time I've played since my first transfer, I think. It was a really casual game, because it was with missionaries who didn't play and some Russians who weren't very good. So I don't really know how much I've lost. It was pretty tough to dunk, so my vertical has definitely decreased. Then we had no meetings in the evening so Elder Anderson and I set up a white board and a table in the park and it said "Why are we called mormons?" It was alright, not too much interest, but we got a couple numbers and a couple appointments set up, it was nice to have a little different approach.

Tuesday we met with the office staff and President. Had a good meeting with an investigator, we hadn't seen him for a while and he had neglected to actually read the Book of Mormon, he just read a bunch of stuff about us on the internet so we had to answer a lot of his crazy questions then actually teach the lesson. We found out he's actually a pretty big wig in his church. Sounds like basically the equivalent of a counselor in the bishopric, he goes to some kind of protestant church. We put on a movie night and showed everyone The Testaments, it's a sweet movie. I think everyone liked it. We had a pretty good turnout. Then we went home teaching.

Wednesday I was with Elder Davis. We got stood up on our meeting that we had during the day, so we went to the park and did the white board thing. This time we did it plan of salvation themed and wrote the big three questions. I thought it would have gone over much better than it did, but I basically generated no interest and we were struggling to get people to come over, then he drew the plan of salvation on the chalkboard, but we didn't have much success with that, that day. In the evening we had a great meeting with Misha and his Mom. Misha is looking awesome and coming to church and is a really active member now, his mom hasn't come yet.

Thursday we met with President and called all the zone leaders together. We had a meeting with a former investigator from the area book. Cool guy, we'll see if we can instill some desire in him to seriously try to find out truth. Then we got stood up on a first meeting, and another investigator cancelled on us, so that night stunk. Oh, but the morning was cool. Elders Ortner and Hyde found a guy who wanted a Book of Mormon and he lives right by us. He was leaving to Azerbaijan for a couple weeks that day, so we hurried over there to get him his book and he was really interested and said we can meet when he gets back.

Friday we had district meeting, taught Marina at the Webb's about callings and serving in the church. We taught Misha again. We had another investigator lesson but he either didn't show or called right before to cancel (if you can't tell by now that happens just about once each day so they all kind of run together).

Saturday we had a sweet first meeting with a street contact, Dima. He's a medical school student and a DJ, he does his own techno music and plays it at clubs. He's the classiest guy you'll ever meet. We had a good first meeting. Then the Novokuz elders were in town on the way back from visa trip so they introduced us to someone who they used to teach. Then we went home teaching that night. Our hometeaching companion is awesome. This little energetic guy, Paval, who is a tram mechanic. I just heard from the other elders that they actually hooked up Aleksei and Paval, and Aleksei wanted to hire Paval to help him fix his roof, but Paval just wanted to do it as service. But Aleksei ended up paying him and they've been working on it together.

Sunday was church, we were really disappointed when one investigator called us the night before and said he couldn't come, another didn't show, and another potential who we thought might come didn't show. We went to branch council in place of Elder Ortner, and that evening we put on the fireside for the youth and young adults in the city. We talked about sacrifice. I told that story about how I didn't make it on the basketball team in 6th and 7th grade, but then once I made the sacrifice to dribble to the park every morning and make 100 shots I received the blessing that I wanted and even more. It's really tough to tell stories in Russian, but overall the fireside was great.

I'm still reading the Old Testament. I'm near the end of Numbers now and I really liked the part about the talking donkey, especially because when I read it the image in my head was the donkey from Shrek and the voice was Eddie Murphy, so that was a sweet personal study to say the least. I usually spend about 20 minutes a day on the Old Testament and the rest on other things like Russian Book of Mormon or specific doctrine of that day and in general lesson plans.

Would it be possible to get me registered to vote?

There are a ton of new missionaries coming in in August, October and November. Only one elder and 3 sisters are coming in this week.

Yeah we just pick the ties out in order each day so it's really easy. Yeah, the second set of bunk beds are usually empty. We have guests in when we do exchanges sometimes. This week has been really cold, so hopefully it warms up. It's way more humid than Vegas or Utah, but not as much as the South from what I can tell. Where is the new theater that you went to? Elder Anderson is going to come to Shakespearean festival with us next summer. We've been talking about it a bit.

Well that's all, hope you liked the really long letter. Here's a picture of me sitting at a bus stop. Love you.

Elder Topham

Us with the Kemerovo Elders when they were in town at our place for zone conference.

Home Teaching (that's Paval in front of Elder A, the lady in front of me is the one who we home teach, the other two are other members).

bus stop

Training, Tea Kettles, and Travel

Well it was another nice and busy week. Tuesday was leadership conference, Wednesday was zone conference, and this weekend we went to Kemerovo with President.

Leadership training went well. Elder Anderson and I together with the office elders did a nice long presentation about the new English program. The whole mission should probably start that in about a month. Wednesday’s zone conference was really cool. Every missionary in the mission was there and that was sweet. I conducted the morning session. Elder Anderson and I gave a presentation in the afternoon session about companionship unity. I think it went really well. The Webbs even told us that our presentation would help all the senior couples strengthen their marriages. President, Sister Gibbons, the zone leaders and also Elder and Sister Guschin (He’s the one who was just made an area 70) also spoke.

On Saturday the sisters had a baptism. We found out a few days before that they had turned the hot water off at the left bank building for a couple weeks and we didn’t want to delay the baptism, so we were going to have the elders fill up the font a day early, so that the water would have time to get to room temperature . Then Elder Anderson and I collected everyone in the cities chinicks. They are basically electric water boiling tea kettles that everyone uses here because they work well with the higher power output. So anyway we had about 7 of those and we were going to go a couple hours early and try to get the water heated up a bit. Then the problem came when the elders went over the day before and they had turned ALL the water off in the whole building. We were kind of scrambling to get a back up plan and we were about to rent out a sauna to do the baptism. But luckily the next morning the cold water was back on and we could fill up the font, the problem was that the water was freezing cold. I wouldn’t have cared if the person being baptized was a young guy, but it was an old lady. So we were trying as hard as we could to get as much boiling water as we could in there with these 7 electric boilers. We were also fighting the circuit breaker because we kept tripping fuses by having too many of them going at once. So we had to spread them throughout the whole building and shuttle them in when they were finished. So anyway, the water was still pretty chilly for the baptism but not near as bad as it started. The baptism went well. President Gibbons actually baptized the lady. Apparently they made great friends during their interview.

Right after the baptism we got right in the car with President and drove to Kemerovo. You can get there pretty quick in the car, it took about 4 hours. The car ride was sweet to be able to just chat with President and Sister Gibbons like that. I found out that they also have been going to the Shakespeare Festival every summer with their whole family. So we are missing out together on our families going there. Kemerovo is a really unique city. At church were the 4 elders who serve there, 1 family with 2 young daughters, and one old lady, so five members. Then about 4 investigators were there, so that was a very interesting make up. It’s a nice looking city, I think it's even bigger than Tomsk. It was really cool to go there, see the elders and work with them a bit and see the members there and the branch. I’ll send a picture of the branch building. They have a similar situation as Novokuznetsk; the landlord won’t let them take the sign that says “pharmacy” from off their building, so people come in often looking for a pharmacy. Once person came in during the sacrament and really loudly said, “What! This isn’t a pharmacy!”And left. I couldn’t help from chuckling. But it seemed like everyone there was pretty used to it.

Apparently the area presidency looked at the English book we made and said that they really liked it and that they thought we did an excellent job and that it is something that the whole Europe east area may need, so that was pretty cool. 

The Abou story was pretty sweet. The stuffed animal dog has always been there. His name is Frank. The only problem is that we recently discovered that Frank is a girl. He has a pink collar and eyelashes. So we are very disappointed.

In honor of Wiz Kalifa our black and yellow picture.

Elder A and I found out that we repeat ties a lot so we layed them all out with all their matches so we can not have to repeat.

Elder Jones and I in front of the branch in Kemerovo.

In the Kemerovo branch with a babooshka who needs to be baptized.

My Apartment

Everything Relates to the Temple and Christ

Hey, this week was a little more mild. We didn't travel at all. Next week we are going to Novokuznetsk and the following week Kemerovo, so we will be doing some more traveling shortly.

This week we've been doing some work with President planning the combined Zone Conference and the Leadership Training. On Wednesday, we had a Zone Leader Council. I really like the Zone Leader Councils because they are basically living room chats with President, just talking about the successes and struggles of the mission and making plans to make them better. I love the members of the Zone Leader Council. 3 of the 6 are from my MTC group. Me, Elder Blake, and Elder Davis. Then you have Elder Anderson, Elder Car, (the surfer from Malibu) and Elder Terry. So it's a really good group. One of the things we were discussing at the council was how to use family history as a finding method. Russel M. Nelson, when he set apart President Gibbons, promised him that family history in Russia would soon be as effective as English was in the 90's in Russia for baptizing people. So we took an hour break in the middle of ZLC and the 6 of us, plus President, went out to the park. We had a sign up on an easel with a picture of Tolstoi and it said, "Are you related to Leo Tolstoi?" President was really into that because it was catchy. The sign kinda got some people to stop and see what the heck we were talking about. Between the 7 of us we got a good number of phone numbers of people who said they would be interested to learn more about their family history, so we'll see what we can do with those.

We also discussed and made the final changes to the new way that we are running English group to make it a more effective finding method. We've been spending a good amount of time with the Office Elders making changes to that instruction book.

I had my regularly scheduled missionary interview with President this week also. That was awesome. Among many things we talked a lot about my future career and how I can get revelation and guidance on my mission. We were talking about studies and I asked him if he thought it would be worthwhile for me to read the Old Testament, because I've read all the other standard works on my mission. I was actually pretty surprised with his answer because he said, "Absolutely, without a doubt." He continued on and explained why he likes the Old Testament so much and about how we can really get a lot out of it if we think of everything in the Old Testament with relation to Solomon's Temple, and he drew it out for me and explained some of the symbolism and how it all relates to Christ. So I've been reading the Old Testament, really focusing on how everything relates to the temple and Christ. I'm in Exodus right now, Moses just owned pharaoh this morning so that was sweet.

Saturday was another interesting day. I spent it on left bank with Elder Blake. Left bank felt like an entirely different city. It was cool, we had a good time. He and Elder Car are so out there and outgoing. I don't think I'll ever be quite like that, but it was nice to have a little bit of that rub off on me.

Yesterday night we put on a fireside for all the members to get them excited about missionary work. It was a really good. Not a great turnout, but everyone there loved it. Both the branch presidents spoke, and some people shared their missionary experiences and we watched some video clips.

Some random requests:

Can you send me Coach Sanchez's address?

Could you give me the website where you got the Russian CTR rings?

I'm going to call my Monday morning at 10AM, so if I counted that out right that should be 8PM Sunday night for you. I'll use FaceTime again. Can you you send me your name for FaceTime? Just exactly like we did it last time.

Yeah put me on the (family reunion) Email list, I'm always happier the more full the inbox is. That will be interesting.

Elder Anderson's great. He's very humble and works hard. It is actually impossible to get in an argument with him. I think I already told you that he was the Utah state champ in the shot put.

Those guns in the picture look sweet. No travel the past couple weeks, but the next 2 we'll be going places. After those two cities, Krasnoyarsk will be the only city in the mission that I haven't been to yet. I've been looking into the possibility of opening up Norilsk, and it's less than slim. I don't think any new cities will be opened up for a long time here. There are just so many problems with the branches outgrowing the roots in all the cities and having no leadership and problems. Also in Russia I guess its really hard to open a city, because you need to have a certain number of people already there who can vouch for you and invite you in. And especially with Kazahkstan and President is really about working from our centers of strength. I don't think any cities will be opened in President Gibbon's tenure. But I did meet two people last week who lived in Norilsk, one we taught a lesson to and one we haven't got a meeting yet.

Well I think that's it. Talk to you at about this time in a week.

 

-Elder Topham

 

These are the only 4 pictures I took this week. So I figured I might as well send them all.  I really like the one where president is still running to get into the picture.  These are all after ZLC last Wednesday.

 

This week was pretty slow. The first big highlight was the culture night on Monday. We went to the Siberian Choir concert. It was pretty cool, they had a big ensemble of singers, a traditional band with accordions and balalaika's. But the coolest part by far was their dance crew. They did all that crazy Russian breakdancing stuff with the squat jumps and kicking the legs out while you're in the squatting position. You know what I'm talking about, it was awesome.
Us at the Siberian choir performance

Us at the Siberian choir performance.

The second big highlight was that we had a couple meetings with President. In one of the meetings we worked out next transfer. He's still going to be looking at and praying about what we had all decided and he will probably make a small change or two, but it was really cool to talk through that all with President. You could tell he really valued our opinions and in a lot of ways it was like a big logic puzzle about who can go where and be with who and make everyone the most effective, especially when you consider trying to put people in certain places to give them the right experiences in order to prepare them for a future assignment. Anyway, that was a really awesome and spiritual meeting.

Other than that we had a couple first meetings this week that I hope will end up going somewhere but you never know. The other big highlight this week was our work with Misha and Olga. They are the inactive family that we thought was a headquarter referral. We have been seeing them often and it is usually the highlight of my day because we have been making a really good friendship with them. Misha came to church yesterday and loved it. He kept saying "Hey, I remember him or her. This is awesome." People were really nice to him also, so that went really well. I think it's going to be tougher to get Olga to come back. Lucky for us she works at an ice cream stand so we have to make frequent trips there and check up on her.

So Mom, when would be the best time to do the mothers day call? Should I plan on calling Monday morning here, so it would be Sunday evening for you? That would work out well for us I think. We can iChat if you liked that. Good luck with the family reunion and the hike. That family reunion would be really cool. I would like to chat with some old people about our family history. We are trying to do some finding methods by getting people into family history but it's kind of tough to get it started. Especially because the church programs don't really have any info about Russia.

Could you send me Coach Riley's address if you get a chance?

So this week it's been hard for me to find the balance between working hard and smart. I've kind of been seeing that nothing has been coming from meeting people on the street and setting up a meeting with them and teaching them lessons. They always fade off somewhere along the process. That's mission wide except for the rare exceptions. And it really makes sense, the people who have a friend that introduces them to the church are about 50x more likely to actually get baptized, and it makes total sense because they can see what the results are of living the gospel in their friend and start finding a testimony for themselves. Not just if two random foreigners come up to you and start telling you about their church. Even if its interesting to hear about, there's no desire there to change, so that's been really hard. And I just don't know what else to do to get a member referral. So I'm just trying to figure out what we can possibly do to actually get those quality investigators with good potential. Sorry for that little rant but that's what's been really on my mind recently. So I'm trying to find this better way because our area is kind of at a stand still it seems and nothing is really getting going.

Well I think that's it, we're still doing well. I'm happy, Elder Anderson is really easy to live with and get along with, so that makes things much easier.

Home teaching with Brother Paval.

This guy is on the wall of the office. So turns out I'm not even the first Topham to serve here.

 

Elder Anderson and I on the train to Omsk.

Us eating shaurma , we had to take it home that night cuz we were running late.

Us eating shaurma , we had to take it home that night cuz we were running late. Part 2.

Me in Omsk in front of the branch there with Elder Dawson. (It used to be a billiards hall)

Sorry I forgot my camera, so no pictures this week.

So earlier this week the new missionaries came in. This time it was only 2 elders and a sister. It was pretty messed up because one of the elders got his visa delayed by a day, so he came in a day later and it was tough for us to do the traditional orientation, but we basically just did the same thing anyway and didn't let him go to sleep when he landed and just sent him out on a train with his trainer that night. This rotation two sisters went home, Holmes and Clark. So now we have 63 total missionaries: 8 are sisters, 14 are seniors, although 4 seniors go home this week with no replacements. So yeah, it's a really small mission personnel wise. There are 2 full MTC groups ahead of me, and then only a couple scattered ones older than that. I guess they just called so few for that year because nobody was going home around that time.

Tell Rob thanks for the Email and to expect a letter.

Then this is particularly for Dad but interesting for anyone I guess: We will get more missionaries when we get Kazakhstan because that whole mission is dissolving. The president has to give all of his missionaries up, either to us in Kazy, to the Baltic Mission in Belarus, or to the Moscow Mission in the country surrounding Moscow.

So I guess the other exciting thing that happened this week is that we were in Omsk yesterday. That was sweet, it was a really quick trip. President and Sister Gibbons were going down there just for the day with the primary purpose of interviewing a senior couple who is going home. He suggested that we come along because we have both never been there. It was sweet because to Omsk is an overnight train ride. So it was crazy, we left Saturday night at 9:30, got in Sunday morning around 7:00. Elder Anderson and I went to the Elder's apartment who work in the smaller branch there. We studied, went to church, and worked the evening with them. Then got back on a train last night at 10:00 and we were here at 6:00 this morning. (I guess the train made fewer stops on the way back). But the train was awesome! My first legit Trans Siberian Railroad experience. We were lucky because we got to go in the same car as the Gibbon's and they had a nice coupe, so we got the nice coupe next to them (the nice coupe's only have 2 beds). So yeah it was a good trip, I slept a little at home this morning because the consecutive nights on the train had worn me out quite a bit.

Well I guess I really don't know what else to say... This is cool. At the last General Conference one of the Area General Authorities that was sustained was Uri Gushin. He comes from our branch here in Novo, he's the mission driver, he's a little guy and he had a mustache and he looked like Mario, but the church had him shave it off to be a GA. Anyway, it's awesome that he's a general authority now because we are friends and its cool that someone from way out here has that kind of calling.

Well other than that things are just kind of moving along. We've been seeing little progress lately with people in our area. It's kind of hard only being able to devote part of our time proselyting in our area, (granted it still is a significant amount of time to proselyte) just because your mind is kind of split on other things and we haven't seemed to really get our area going like I thought we would have by now. Just still struggling to find good investigators. I don't have anything to complain about obviously, because we get to do a bunch of other stuff that I've never dreamed about doing and it's not boring, but the days that we find that we have open for just work in our area, for whatever reason, don't seem that successful, I don't know its hard to describe. Maybe I'm getting spoiled by doing other things. It looks like this week we will have very little AP stuff and hopefully we can kind of jump start the area and then after that I can feel better about it.

I discovered that I really like a street food here and I've been eating it at every chance possible. It's called shaurma. It comes from these street vendors who are all from the Stan's - what do you call that? South West Asia? Anyway, it's kinda like that Greek thing, they have this big thing of meat being roasted and they just shave off the meat as they need it. Then then make you this burrito type thing with the meat, it's more Middle Eastern tasting than Mexican of course but it's awesome.

Well Everyone have a good week. Love you.

Humbly Seeking the Truth

Well another very busy week. I was with Elder Carr on Tuesday and Elder Terry on Wednesday. Thursday we were in Moscow, Friday in Finland, and Saturday and Sunday we watched Conference.

Elder Carr - that was quite a day with him. He literally talks to every person. One time we were on a bus. Usually on a bus I'll try to get a little quiet conversation going with the person next to me, but he just starts loudly kind of talking to everyone, and pretty soon people start getting involved like one time they started arguing between themselves on what you can and can't eat during the Orthodox fast, and one time a guy was being rude to Elder Carr but it didn't phase him, Elder Carr asked him his name and the guy said rudely, "Why do you want to know?" Then Elder Carr just started throwing out guesses, "Sergei, Andrei, Ivan..." and pretty soon the people around him started getting mad at the guy and said "Hey just tell him your name, be nice to the kid." It was quite the interesting day with him. We had a meeting with a big wig politician, he's in the parliament for the Novosibirsk oblast, and he's a communist. He wasn't very interested in talking about religion because he is a hard core atheist, but he was nice to us.

With Elder Terry we had probably the best lesson I think I have ever been on. Elder Hyde had met this guy the day before and he said we could come over. He is a very nice, humble man with a family. He basically agreed already with the idea of an apostasy, and we taught a basic first lesson and it was very powerful. Thinking back on it, the reason the lesson was so powerful was because he was humbly seeking the truth and because of that the spirit was totally unrestrained and was carrying the words that we said into his heart. It was great, at the end, Elder Terry just asked him, "So do you think the things that we have taught today are true?" and he taught for a second and quietly answered, "Yes, I do." It was amazing, those kind of lessons are very rare, and I was very grateful to be able to be there and participate in that.

Wednesday night was also Culture Night, we went to an opera at the big opera theater called "Madame Butterfly". It was awesome, and now that I think about it very interesting. I am an American, watching a bunch of Russians, dressed up as Japanese and Americans, singing in Italian, which is being translated on the screen into Russian. Now that's pretty cool. It was nice, I was able to understand everything from the Russian subtitles. The music was really cool. I really love that theatre, it's awesome.

We had a long layover in Moscow on the way to Finland, so we got out and toured Red Square. It was awesome, we had about 2 hours there so it was enough time to go around and see everything and get pictures, but not enough to really go in anywhere.

Finland was solid. We didn't have much time there. Just enough to go to the temple, eat lunch and go back to the airport. The temple was great, it was amazing because I had a couple specific questions that I was seeking answers to and the answers were so clear, it was incredible and I'm very grateful for that.

General Conference was good. The only bad thing was that I started feeling a little sick in Finland, then the travel on the way back without sleeping just killing me and I was feeling like junk all weekend, so I maybe didn't get as much out of it as I would have usually. But I'll do a good study of it in the Liahona. I got some good sleep the last couple nights so I'm feeling better, and I should be good going into this week. My favorites were probably Uchtdorf Sunday morning and Holland Saturday afternoon, I personally liked those the most. I thought the beginning of Elder Scott's about revelation and especially communications from beyond the veil and dreams and stuff was very interesting.

So for your AP - tracting question. First, when you say tracting, do you literally mean tracting or "proselyting". Because in our mission we rarely actually go tracting because its not effective. But as an AP we do have a little less time to do proselyting things, but for the most part we still spend about half to 75% of our time proselyting. The other part of the time is great, it's not like we do any office work or anything. Sometimes we will have some extra meetings like with President, or doing orientation with the new missionaries or other special assignments, but all that stuff is awesome and is a nice change so I like it.

Elder Topham

Elder Harrison and I on the express train from the airport in Moscow.

Me going into red square from the back.  You can't really see me, but I think its a cool picture.

Me reading the Book of Mormon in front of Saint Basils.

MTC group in front of Saint Basils.

Me in front of Bolshoi Theater.

Saint Basils and the Kremlin

I don't really know whats back there!

Me in front of the Kremlin.