hello...hello hello!

Hello everyone! It sounds like you have all had a great week. Here is the update. Tuesday was a tough day. We had to give up our friend the Yamaha (we named her Ahamay, say it with a polynesian accent) electric piano to the sisters. I was using it to learn hymns and a Tchaikovsky song, but they asked for it and I thought it would be the for the best. It was a distraction to some. That night, we had a meeting with a less-active grandma in the ward with the whole Elders Quorum. That was big!!! There are some hurt feelings in our quorum due to the release of the president about a year ago, and we all got together and did some service and uplifted someone and laughed! It was great!!! On Wednesday we went back to the dreaded sauna apartment, with the hope that it would be the last time we would be there to put up wallpaper. It wasn't so hot this time, but there were other problems. We had to get all the small places that were covered by furnature, and that was tough. I was on the floor, in a wet mess, covered in wallpaper glue for about 2 hours. On top of that, we had to move the sink in order to get up to a part of the wall and the sink didn't want to go back to where it was before... the pipes seem to have magically changed. Also, it won't drain now either. I tried every trick in the book that I could think of, but to no avail. We're going back tomorrow, so I'll try one more time. Thursday we had Zone training. It was fun, we talked a lot about rules and obedience. Here's a cool thing.. WE GET TO GO TO KIZHI! Next week that's what we'll do for P-day, it's going to be super fun! I was with an Elder who was here, then went home for a transfer after being diagnosed with diabetes, and then came back. This is his last transfer, and it was fun to spend some time with him. We did some good work. That night we had english group, where one of the investigators of the sisters came.. but the sisters weren't there. We know about what's he's thinking and feeling, so we took the chance to teach him a lesson after english. We talked about the book of mormon. He's read things online and just has a hard time changing from what his parents taught him about religion. It was a good lesson. On Friday we had a meeting with our Branch President to talk business, but he forgot and didn't come. Bummer. So we ended up setting up a meeting for that night, and we showed up and he handed us a mop, said get to work, and left. So that was no fun. We are trying to meet with him and just talk, have a good chat about needs in the branch, but he doesn't seem to want to. We tried to go find a new convert, who is our new ward mission leader, to teach him about his responsibilities, but we got on the wrong bus, and we ended up so far away. We eventually got to his house, but we didn't have too much time to teach. On Saturday we practiced Russian in the morning with the russian, and we did weekly planning. It was good to have a solid weekly planning session without breaks or meltdowns or naps. That was good. Sunday was fun. We heard a talk about our language and how important it really is, even if we don't think it is. After the talk, I went home and read James 3. It's so true, all that is written there about our language. It's so insane! I love the imagery that he uses. Our mouths really are the most powerful tools that we have, and we need to use them wisely and appropriately and cultured-like. We praise God with our mouths, but they can also be used to say vile curses. We need to watch our mouths! That was a good message for some of the people in the congregation to hear, and we all learned from it! Love you all. Have a great week.

Andrew