Time's A Flying!

So... Here's an update for the week. Last Tuesday was really cool... This story happened after I emailed you last week, so I wasn't able to tell you about it. So here goes. In the morning up at main campus, we met an Elder who was from Samara Russia! His name is Elder Blinkov, and he's going to the Melbourne, Australia Mission! He's traveling in a circle around the world. Well, we talked to him for a while and he told us that he was looking for Elders who were going to Samara. He knows how slow the mail is and wants to give some letters to people who will be in the mission office in Samara. His Dad works there. So we told him that the Zone Leaders from our branch were going to Samara, and he was really excited! He told us to look for him at the devotional that night, Tuesday night devotionals are in the Marriott Center. So I was pretty nervous that we wouldn't find him. That's a lot of missionaries in one place. So we got to the Marriott Center and the Sister who was ushering told us to go to the next portal because we would be in the middle, closer to the speaker. But we ignored her, and guess what? Literally the FIRST person we saw was Elder Blinkov. Man that was really cool. He also gave me a name of a member in St. Pete to find, I guess she helped him get his visa to come to the U.S. Wednesday I got to know a few of the Elders in the other districts better. Elder Hale went to Brighton and played soccer there. He's super cool. Elder Sant went to Colorado School of Mines for two years before his mission, and he loves it there. I just thought that was funny. On Friday we had Dino Night. It's where we go to the zone leader's dome and eat dinosaur fruit snacks in order of least dangerous to most dangerous. The order is: Apatasauraus, Stegosauraus, Triceratops, T-Rex, then Pteridactyl. I bet I butchered those spellings, but that's ok. That's fun. On Saturday we had a sweet lesson with our investigator Nikita. We didn't use any notes or anything and our teacher told us afterwards that it was like one of the best ever. It was so awesome to see my hard work pay off. Russian's coming. The grammar that scared me the first few weeks is now my favorite part. Reading and building my vocabulary are going to be the toughies. Sunday was a crazy day. We held a district meeting after lunch that I taught... I forgot to assign somebody else to do it. So I just talked about becoming a consecrated missionary, even though I was supposed to talk about baptism. I had to address some issues that we were having. Well, long story short I ended up crying at the end. Dang. My comp and I said the sacrament prayers in Russian also... that was an adventure. His ward did nearly everything the opposite that we do it, so we were totally out of sync. But it was ok. Our branch was given the opportunity to attend the Sunday Night Devotional on main campus, which was really cool. We sat four rows back from the front. I was looking for Elder Merrill the whole time (he's at main campus). The devotional ended and I was sad because I didn't see him. We stayed up there to watch the Character of Christ film again... I love that thing. AND GUESS WHO I SAW RIGHT BEFORE THE MOVIE STARTED!?!?!?!? GOOD OLE ELDER MERRILL! He screamed and jumped over his seat when he saw me, and I ran to him. It was so glorious. That's my week. Nothing too crazy going on in the bubble of the MTC located in the bubble of Provo. Love you guys!

Andrew