Elder Andrew Gwilliam: Hello Family (& Friends)

Hey y'all, it's been a good week here. It got pretty cold towards the end of the week, but I'm sure the worst is yet to come! It's really not that bad so far. So Monday was a good day. We had FHE at a member's apartment, an investigator and two other members were there with the missionaries. It was great. We played Mafia and it was just a fun time had by all. On Tuesday morning we went to Novgorod to do splits with our zone leaders. I was with Elder Callens from Texas, played QB in High School and is totally ripped and a really cool guy. Really calm and laid back. We had a few less actives to stop by but none were home. We went tracting the rest of the night, had some interesting conversations. Wednesday Morning in Novgorod we had another round of zone training, that was fun. Talked about some new rules, we can't sit by other missionaries on the long bus rides to other cities, and mission-wide Russian 24-7 rule. It's been good for my Russian, bad for my brain. Wednesday night back to Pskov, got home and went to bed. Thursday was a long day inside. We went from being on the bus for four hours right to bed then in almost all day Thursday. It was a long day filled with weekly planning. On Friday we headed over to the branch after studies to take care of some of the MLS duties that have been given to us, and we found a problem... we have a balance of unreported funds of about 76,000 rubles... 2,735 dollars. We don't know why it's there, but I think I'll be making a call to SLC to figure that one out. The assistants came that night and we went on splits with them too. I went with Elder Woodhead from Sandy, he went to Jordan and played lacrosse. Graduated in 2012. He's pretty cool too. On Saturday we had a special training meeting with President and Sister Clark where they talked to us about Pskov and how we can improve. Then we had a little time for lunch, then we came back to the branch and we went crazy all over Pskov. We had set up meetings all over the city. We had lots of groups running around to members and investigators. I was with a Bishop from one of the St. Petersburg wards. We had 5 meetings in a four hour period... 2 with less actives and 3 with investigators. It was awesome, he helped out a lot and gave me some good advice about meeting with less active members. On Sunday President and Sister Clark spoke in Sacrament Meeting, we had a whopping 19 people total there. That's my mission record so far. Sweet. Then we had a third hour meeting also with President Clark about how we could strengthen the branch and be better working together. That was good. We had a meeting with a less active who was baptized in August for right after church, but he came a little early with his girlfriend and they just sat in on the meeting about how to get less actives back to church... a little awkward at first, but it was cool. We met with him, found out his girlfriend isn't a member, but she said she was interested and that once she found out for herself that this was all true, she'd be baptized. We were so excited, like a family could be here in the branch (the less active is 24, we figured she was around there) and it would be a great strong couple. We found out a few minutes after the meeting, she's 16... haha it was a little awkward. Well, it'll still be good. They're coming to church. That's about my week.

Keep doing great things! Keep being great! Do more great things!

Andrew