Whazzup

Hey! So here's my week: Tuesday was really fun. We had splits. I was with our district leader, Elder Fausnaught, and we went to Gachina. It's a small town about an hour south of St. Petersburg, and it's the "city of miracles" because every day they don't get yelled at or they talk to someone who hasn't ever heard of our church before it's a miracle. It's a really small, really Russian Orthodox town. So I was down there for a fun time. We had a meeting with a less active who pulled up MoTab on the computer for our opening hymn, he's a really goofy guy. We had a good meeting with him, we committed him and his non-member daughter to church, and they said they would come. Cool beans. We talked to a lot of people on the street, one was a satanist who was really nice to us, even after he read our tags. He gave us a thumbs up, said good luck, shook our hands, and walked away. That was a strange experience. On Wednesday we finished up the split, we had a good time together in the morning. Splits are the best. After we came home that afternoon, it was the usual in Avtovo. Less active hunting, new investigator hunting. We found out that the one investigator that we've met with in the last two weeks is moving back home to Ukraine... I'll send his new address to Elder Davis and give him the deets. I think in three weeks here we've had the amount of meetings we had in a half week in Pskov.. it's pretty slow going here, but we're working on it. There's a lot of people here, someone is bound to be interested. On Thursday we did weekly planning. I also had a dream on Wednesday night that included my homecoming talk, my friends and family, and Elder Holland. It basically went like this: at my talk, everybody that was there was so bored or so disinterested that they left. Even Elder Holland. Then, I woke up with this feeling that if I don't get talking to EVERYBODY I will have a boring talk and boring stories. So that was fun, I'm not going to be boring. Friday we served at the Hermitage, and we got to look around for twenty minutes afterwards. That's our mission rule. So it was cool. I got a map and I'll keep track of where I've been and what rooms I need to see. I got some good recommendations from grandma, so I'll be sure to check those out. Also.. I lost my SIM cards for the first 6 months of my mission... I couldn't find them anywhere. Oh well. Saturday was fun. We had english group, there was a nice group of people. A nice old guy that told me some cool antique stores where I can find a Soviet flag and other such items. He also gave me a list of places to see here in the city. Fun. Sunday was fun, we had stake conference. It was awesome. Our stake president is the Russian on I'm a Mormon with one daughter and he's a neurosurgeon or something crazy like that. He's really cool, and the whole conference was about missionary work. So that was fun for us. It was also President Clark's last stake conference, and he gave a ten minute talk 100% in Russian. He's got good Russian, I'm really impressed. Anyways, that was fun. I think I said 'fun' about 3,000 times. The stake conference was smaller than people we have in our ward at home.. that's crazy. Be grateful for a huge, awesome, supportive ward! Yesterday we played floorball at the stake center, I played with Elder Dibble (who played D at Jordan, same age as me) and it was fun to yell lacrosse things and use lacrosse strategy with him. He reminded me about how bad we were last year, then I reminded him how they got kept out of the playoffs two years ago. Then we laughed and had fun.

So, my thought for the week, just put your shoulder to the wheel and get to work! Whatever you're doing, just do it 100%! It seems really hard to try 100% in school or lacrosse or a calling all the time, but it's easier to put in hard work up front and see results and feel good about the effort than to wait and have to work even harder later. I've noticed that with this area, I just kinda laid back and expected my companion to introduce me to the area, but he didn't know the area any better than me. And now we're having to work really hard to make up for a few not so good weeks. Just my thought. Work 100% all the time!!! I love you all, thanks for being so awesome!

Andrew

p.s. I FOUND MY CARDS GOTCHA! HAHAHA