It's been another good week here in Pskov. Our special guest last week was for the city, not just the missionaries, it was President Vladimir Putin. We didn't see him, we just heard on the TV while we were getting haircuts that he would be here. We don't know what he did, or if he did anything, just that he was in the city limits. So that's cool. Yeah, so that was that. There were people on the streets selling Russian flags everywhere, so we knew he would be here. Kinda a slow week for us. Not too many meetings, and most of the meetings that we were supposed to have fell through. Wednesday, we went through Preach My Gospel and made a list of things that we need to do better, or do in general. So we've started doing those things, and it's been better. I did start voicing my opinion more as far as how our investigators are doing, and we had some disagreements about them and what they need to do to progress, but we worked them out and now we're great. We met with a former investigator in a park here and just got to know him, we wanted to see if he would be interested at all. We'll start to meet with him more often. Then for english class we taught Christmas carols. That may be the funniest thing ever, Russian guys singing Rudolph at the top of their lungs and then asking afterwards "Why couldn't he play?" "Poor Rudolph." It was a great time. Then on Thursday, lots of contacting, we had a meeting late at night so we contacted all day. Our Branch President came with us, and he gave me a good pep talk and helped me talk to people. Friday had some more appointments fall through, but one of our investigators still could meet with us. He wants to read the whole Book of Mormon before he gets baptized, and there's nothing else holding him back. Just that. I wasn't so sure. We meet with him and just read, but we also use some of our dinner time to play ping-pong. He would only read when he was with us, and he was still in Mosiah moving very very slowly. So we said that he needed to read at home every day, a certain number of chapters, in order to play ping-pong with us twice a week. He got mad, said "Blackmail", and then didn't come for our next meeting. Then came on Saturday night, but smelled like he had been partying. So we'll work on it. Saturday morning we had a good meeting with a less-active member, and we read the Elder Dube talk from October conference with him. He really liked it, told us thanks for not wasting his time, but then said it's better if he doesn't come to church often becuase then he learns more. It's hard to listen to the same 3 active members talk every week, he said. So we told him to become one of the active members, and research something new, and he said no. Then Sunday we had 15 people at sacrament! A record for my mission! Branch President also made me his M.L.S. assistant, he said he doesn't have time to do all of the financial things for the branch. Dad should be proud.
Basically, this week defined in a sentence: Go home Americans, we have our own religion.
Interesting thing about that. It's really interesting how Russian Orthodox people react to us. Most treat us like the plague. They want nothing to do with us. Others are nice, others don't care, but most are just awful to us. Our Branch President told us about a book written by a Russian Orthodox man called "Мормоны в России" (Mormons in Russia) that has a lot of quotes from famous Russian people (Pushkin, Tolstoy, etc.) about Mormonism, and he said they're all really positive. There's an especially good one from Tolstoy, I forgot it though. Anyways, we just think it's funny that people here don't know that famous Russians like us for the most part. B.P. told us that Pushkin had a Book of Mormon, according to the other book.
I was reading this morning in 1 Nephi and I came across a good story for missionaries and for everyone. 1 Nephi 15:7-11 is how to get an answer. Not by comparing the Book of Mormon to the Bible, not by physical evidence, but by honest, sincere prayer.
Love you all!
Andrew
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