Happy New Year!

Hey y'all, I hope you all had a great time with Christmas break. It's a great time to rest up and think about the things that really matter. It was a tough week. We had more meetings than the last few weeks, but we have a new rule... only Russian all the time, P-days excluded. It's great for practicing and realizing how much I've learned, but the level of communication between my companion and me took a nose dive. Communication about everything from just talking to what we were going to do that day. That's frustrating for me. It was good though, I learned that when I'm just quiet and don't say much I get frustrated and discouraged. Or if I'm just being quiet, it seems like I am. So it was good lesson to learn that communication is important, especially in missionary work, and that communication is what the listener does (thanks Dad). Companionship unity is key. 

Anyways, my week. Monday I won our district ping-pong tournament. Tuesday was New Year's, we had a district meeting from 1:30 till 3:00 then we did some contacting home. We had to be in by six. So we walked home, and we stayed in. We didn't do too much, just kinda hung out. Read some books. We wanted to sleep through all the fireworks that would go off (that's a funny thing to me, New Year's here is all about the fireworks) but we failed. There were so many. They sell the huge ones that shoot up into the sky and are just loud bangs. There were about 2,000 that went off for what felt like hours. It was a bummer to say the least. On Wednesday the fireworks went on all day. There were bangs like at least every 30 minutes. It was really warm on Tuesday, really cold on Wednesday. We thought maybe it was the beginning of the end of our nice weather, but it warmed right back up by the evening. It was also the day when the all-in-Russian rule took effect. Thursday we had 3 lessons fall through. We went tracting all night, and the people just said "Hey guys, we're all hungover. We were sleeping, you woke us up. What do you want?" So that was rought night. Then some people wouldn't let us come into their whole apartment complex. They just kept saying we're all Russian Orthodox, we don't need you or your Jesus, the Lord is with us. Friday meetings all fell through. Saturday we had a really good lesson with an investigator who we feel is really close to being ready for baptism. He just changes his mind all the time, he has a hard time recognizing the spirit. So we are just going to talk to him about that for a while. Sunday was good, we went out to the boonies to visit some less-active members... who moved. Fun. That about sums up my week.

Going back to what I was saying earlier about the people telling us that we had our own Christ, they had theirs... I want everybody to know that Christ is with all of us, whether a member of our church or not. There was a great talk given about that while I was in the MTC by Elder Baxter of the Seventy. He told us that we have to respect the religions of others or they won't respect us and feel our love for them. I've noticed that a lot too, when we ask questions about their religion they seem to be happy to share, sometimes even ask us a question or two. Anyways, just remember that. He's always with us, all of us. I feel the spirit here, but in my life I've noticed that whenever I get the opportunity to think or testify about Christ the spirit is instantly with me, and very intensely. It's a great testimony builder for me to feel that every time, without fail. I've been studying from the four gospels in the New Testament, I love those. There are so many great verses in those books. Anyways, love you all. Keep on keepin on.

Andrew