Elder Andrew Gwilliam: The hot has made its way up north... uh oh

It was a good week here. Here goes the recap. On Tuesday, like I said last week, we got to meet our new mission president. He's a great guy with a solid testimony and a great attitude. He and his wife spent about 3 hours telling about themselves and sharing their hopes for our mission, then we got to have interviews. It was good, he talked to me a lot about charity (just what I needed) and asked me just a few questions about myself. After the interviews, we went on splits with the assistants, I was with a fellow lacrosse guy. We had a great lesson with a less active member. This less active member has a pug, and the pug has digestive problems. Made for an interesting lesson. The stake president was also with us for that lesson, he's super great. I've never really been able to talk with him outside of shaking his hand at stake conference, he's an amazing guy. He's the brain doctor on the I'm a Mormon videos of Russians. The one with a daughter and a wife. It's cool. On Wednesday we did some contacting and calling people to invite them to English group for the next day. We made a deal. One of us would be calling, two cleaning (we only have one phone) and we would take turns. So we started, I got to work in the bathroom, came out and found one companion asleep on his bed, not cleaning. Well, whatever. Thursday was fun, we had a good weekly planning session where our Russian companion said something nice about me! He usually won't open up his feelings, but when our other companion went into the bathroom, he quickly told me something nice about me. That was cool to have happen. We had a 2 hour chat with some young Jehovah's Witnesses in the park, we nicely shared scriptures with each other for a while, then one of them started talking to me and we just had a nice talk about life and asked each other questions and exchanged emails.That night we had English group, that was pretty fun. Three people came after about 200 promised to come over the phone. On Friday we had some fun and TRANSFER NEWS: Russian is going to Novgorod, our zone is staying almost exactly the same. I am staying with the American for another transfer. I'm excited. We're also going back to something we call the Law of Moses (counting all contacts and conversations and giving them up the line of leaders every week) and so it'll get us working harder. We woke up to the National Anthem that day, and played patriotic music all day. It was great. We also went to this little lake in our area and took a few pictures. I felt like I was back in America. I caught a small lizard. Saturday we had a picnic with a few investigators and members. It was really fun, I liked it. We got to play soccer again. It was great. Luau. Sunday we got to go to a less active member's house after church, and just had a good chat with them. It was fun and I enjoyed doing EVERYTHING (smalltalk, spiritual thought, saying that we have to leave, etc.). It was strange as well because he showed us his new Ecigarette. He's trying to quit, but I don't think that well really help all that much. But it is better than normal cigarettes. That was the week I guess. I'm at a place where I can send pictures, so I'll send pictures.

This week I spent lots of time reading Matthew and I really like it. I finally am reading it deeply, thinking about what is written, and I finally realized that Ask, Seek, Knock means more than Pray, Pray Pray. Or at least that's how I understood it. We need to ask (pray), seek (be worthy and want the Spirit), and knock (act when we get a prompting or opportunity to serve). That's the process as I understand it. It was a great week!

Love you all!

Andrew