Elder Andrew Gwilliam: Hello!

Hey! It was a great week! I hope you all had a good one. Here goes! Tuesday we had our district meeting and that went well. We had to cut it short because we had a meeting with President Childs that afternoon to talk about transfers and the upcoming MLC. We ended up getting stuck in the office all day because of some problems with the police in Pskov. We had to stay in contact with the missionaries there and let the office workers know what was going on. So that's pretty much all that went on on Tuesday. Just busy work at the office waiting for news. Everything ended up being fine after all, and we slept well that night. Wednesday was another day in the office, we actually were in more meetings with President. We talked about the upcoming Christmas Devotionals that we will be holding in all of the Mission Branches in December. Here's the Schedule: This weekend to Kaliningrad again, the next to Petrozavodsk. Then to Vyborg. The next weekend (right after Christmas) we will stay in the city and put on a devotional for the stake members. The weekend after that we'll go to Novgorod on Saturday and Pskov on Sunday. Then we'll be done with traveling for a while (I hope). All of December will be crazy, we'll have 2 or 3 major events every single week. It'll be nuts. Anyways, the devotional will be about the church initiative "He is the gift" and it'll be great I think. I'm really looking forward to it. After our meetings and business, we went on splits with the Nevsky Zone leaders. It was really fun to be with them, the four of us get along really really well. I was with the older of the two, and we went to the Institute building to teach one of our investigators. We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we've been really focusing on that as a mission. The Gospel and why it's so important. Thursday was a blast! Dad, even though you didn't participate in a Turkey Bowl this year, I did! We played in the small cultural hall at the stake center right by our house. There were 6 of us and it was so fun. I did learn however, that you can't go 100% and smack into people and dive for touchdowns on hardwood floor without feeling the pain the next day. Let me say... it felt SO good to be all beat up after a nice bout with some other big elders. I miss that. Then we had MLC and it was great. Elder Doxey and I taught the Doctrine of Christ to the Zone Leaders, it was really great to study that for myself. One of my former companions didn't like to study it because he didn't feel that he ever learned anything new about those 5 points (Faith in Jesus Christ, Repentance, Baptism, Gift of the Holy Ghost, and Endure to the end). I love studying it because I learn something new every time. This time I realized why we invite people to be baptized. We are all able to gain a testimony of Christ and feel guilt and repent of the sins that we have committed, but we cannot be baptized by the Light of Christ. We practice the baptismal invitation in conjunction with the Doctrine of Christ because we hold the key to allow people to accomplish all the steps that we need in order to receive salvation. Anyways, that was good. We ate dinner with the office elders, who are also our next door neighbors. That was fun. Then Friday we had a zone training, and it was nice to just be a listener at that meeting and not a teacher. We then went to the Hermitage with Pres. and Sister Childs to meet the head of the volunteers there. We know him well, but the Childs wanted to get to know him. He's a really interesting man. We found out that missionaries about 10 years ago actually organized the whole volunteer organization at the Hermitage. Cool fun fact. Saturday we drove to Novgorod and they had an open house for their new building. It was really neat to see the changes that they made from a few months ago, it looks so nice now. Sunday we stayed for church services. Actually, my companion and I stood by the door (inside thankfully) for 3 hours and guarded the coats, because the door has no lock yet. Then we had a fun lunch with the missionaries there and had a grand ole time on the drive back. Dad, I now have a connection with a senior couple who lives in Sandy but owns a house and a small apartment in Whale's Pass, Alaska. We'll go up there and fish sometime. They rent out their apartment to fishermen and I think you'd really like the guy. That's about it. It was a great week! I'm so happy to be where I am, I learn so much every day! Love ya all!

Andrew