New Week

Hey y'all. It was a good week. I think all the weeks are good. Every week is different, but good every time. On Tuesday, we had a meeting with a less active member from our branch, one of about eighty on our records, and it was a good meeting. He brought a lady-friend that he found sometime and we taught her the Plan of Salvation. This member lives about an hour away from Pskov by train, and he's got zero money, so he makes a really big sacrifice every time he comes to meet with us. He loves missionaries, loves church, just doesn't want to come every week. Too much money. Anyways, we'll be going out to his house sometime this next week to help him clean up. Elder Kartchner went to his house all the time to help out and found all sorts of crazy things there. I'll keep my eyes peeled. Anyways, the lesson, it was good. The lady lives in the Sister's area, so we'll pass her off sometime this next week. That's the worst. We don't live in our area, so when we go contacting really quickly around where we live, almost all of the people we talk to won't be our investigators. But whatever. Wednesday, lots of walking and talking. Thursday, lots of walking and talking. On Friday we had an interesting night, we went over to one of our investigators. He wants us to help him quit drinking, and so we do that... but after we've covered one of the missionary lessons. We're sneaky. He's actually becoming more and more interested in the Gospel part, so that's good. He also plays the guitar, so he always finishes off lessons with us by playing an old gypsy song on the guitar. Then once he told me to play... so I banged out the bass line of "Joker" by Steve Miller Band, and called it good. That's about all I know anyways. So that was fun. After that, we were walking around looking for a less active member's address to see if they had moved/become super against the church/died. That's usually what happens. One of the three. So we asked this guy for directions, and he told us where to go. Then he said "Do you have a meeting there, Elder?" and we flipped. He's a member who we thought moved away, but he really just moved across town. So that was fun, we were really excited to talk to him. Got his phone number. Then we asked the members about him yesterday, and they said that he's an investigator of all churches. He gets baptized into all churches so he can have a better chance of getting saved, just in case, you know? So he's a member of the Jewish religion right now. That was interesting. Then on Saturday, we cleaned the branch. We had a branch party, played a game kinda like Jeopardy. The questions were all insanely hard, but I got one right for our team thanks to a week of studying deep doctrine in the MTC with Elder Jaynes: "What is the name of the nation and its leader that will be on the Earth at the time of the Second Coming?" Answer: The nation of Magog, lead by Gog. Thanks, Bible Dictionary! So that was fun. Then yesterday, just stopped by lots of less actives to figure out their status. Also talked to the member from above that lives far away (he came for literally the last 2 minutes of church... that's it) and he gave me an Armenian copy of the New Testament. Don't know why, but I took it and now I have it. If you all think that the Russian alphabet looks hard to read, check out the Armenian characters sometime. Makes me happy I don't have to read that. Anyways, that's my week.

So a little cool spiritual thought here for you: I was reading Articles of Faith this morning (I got my hands on one, and I can't put it down. President Clark lets us read books like that that aren't technically in the missionary library but could be), and there's a really good chapter in there about faith. How knowledge is to wisdom as belief is to faith. It's not hard to obtain knowledge, but it is hard to use it and remember it when you have it. Same with belief and faith. It's not that hard to believe in something, but to have faith and to act and to use that belief for good is the next step. I just thought that was interesting. Love you all!

Andrew

I know what you're all thinking...yes, that is a real polar bear on the bed.  (The missionary is our zone leader. Goofy guy, Elder Kartchner's new companion.)

Ghetto hockey rink we found one day. Only in Russia.

Bonus material:

For all of you who have asked and wondered why we can't use the word "Elder" when addressing mail to Andrew, we finally have an answer from Andrew! He says:

"We can't have Elder on our mail because that's not our first name, so if there's a problem with the delivery, we'll never get the package."  We learn something new every week!