Hello Y'all

Hello! Let's get to the week, shall we? Tuesday was good, we had district meeting and language practice with the BYU-I professor after that. I really like the language practice, we learn some good words and phrases that we would never learn otherwise. Mostly stuff that we don't ever need to use, but it will be fun to hear. Not bad words or anything like that though. That night we went on splits with the other elders in our district to help them out. They had two lessons planned, and we came to the rescue after our lesson fell through. It was really fun. We taught our lesson in English which was really strange... it's really tough to teach when you know all the gospel words and phrases and you are fluent to describe what is going on and define words. I'll stick to my basic Russian vocabulary. The lesson went well, we had it at a member's house and they knew english as well, so it was great fun had by all. On Wednesday we went to the Hermitage... nothing too crazy to report there. I had to go to the office to get my new registration to live in Russia legally after my visa trip nullified the old one, and it wasn't there. So that was awkward. We had english group that night and it was probably the most effective one yet. Effective as a missionary tool I mean. It was great. There were members and non-members, so it was a good mix and there were a few teaching opportunities at the end. Thursday morning we went to Novgorod to do Zone Training. We taught, and all went well. We did splits with the elders down there. I was with a new missionary who is just a stud. It was really great to be with him and to see his level of dedication. That night there too they had gamenight, which is a thing they have to get investigators and members talking together. It's at the senior couple's appartment. We even got to watch the little segment about those sister missionaries from our mission. That was cool to see. Did you know that Emily Winder's sister was in that program too? I just caught a glimpse of Emily and her sister at the airport.. also the Childs know the Winders... small world. That was really fun, there were lots of people there. The next day we were still in Novgorod. It was raining really really hard. We went out to meet this woman, but we forgot that we needed to bring a male with us... so we just had to go to the door and give her a Book of Mormon. That was a bummer. Then we hopped on a train for home. Saturday was general conference day part one. We spent almost all day up at the stake center watching conference. I watched in English. I'm glad I did. That night we went to a less-active's that we have been meeting with for a long time and taught a good lesson about prayer and read some scriptures about it. Sunday we were at the stake center literally all day and our less-active came! Two transfers of weekly lesson, and he finally came! It was great to have that happen. In between the afternoon and priesthood sessions (we watch priesthood on Sunday here) there was a pot-luck dinner with all the missionaries in the city. We brought fruit salad, and it was about the only choice that didn't include meat or potato chips. It was really fun. I caught up with Elder Jaynes there. I guess Elder Kartchner is having a tough time in Petro, he's the district leader there now. Lots of drama.

Well that is about it for the week. Now for conference highlights. I really liked Elder Ballard's talk about the old ship Zion. It was a great talk. I especially love it when the speakers give lists so that at least one of the applications to the talk is handed to me. I could relate to the story about the rafting, I was thinking about my experience with Tyler that whole talk. Another one I really liked was Elder Christofferson's about goals and having direction. It was cool that he said that God can't help us become someone if we haven't decided who we want to become and how he won't compell us to make a decision. We just need to make a choice and go for it! God will help us. It was a great conference. Love ya!

Elder Gwilliam

A few weeks ago

Train station at 5 a.m.