It was a great week! Here we go: On Monday we went to the Nutcracker. It was sooo great. It was the classiest experience of my life. I was really almost crying because it was so cool. The live music, the live dancers, the theater, everything. The cultured people that surrounded me were great too. Oh it was so fun. I've made it a goal to attend 3 cultural performances every year for the rest of my life. After that we went to a little antique store (you know I love those things) and got some fun soviet items. We had FHE at the Child's apartment that night, we were there because the other family that came didn't know english that well, so we just translated. We also got to participate, that was really really fun. Tuesday morning we went over to President's apartment again to plan for the Mission Leadership Conference. WE just assigned topics and had a good chat about the next year and goals and things like that. That took up a good chunk of the day. Wednesday was another day of meetings, we first had staff meeting then we had another meeting about transfers with President. This is going to be a big one. I'm going to stay for sure though, and my companion will probably stay too. That means I'm most likely in it for the long haul here, maybe until summer starts. It'll be interesting to see. We had a choir practice of the missionaries in the stake in preparation for the Christmas devotional that we put on that night. Right after the devotional ended, a member grabbed president and sister Childs and Elder Doxey to translate and just wanted to have a talk. So that left me in charge. They talked for close to an hour. I was pretty proud, we were all packed up and ready to go by the time they were done thanks to help from other missionaries. Thursday was another meeting day. We had MLC, that lasted pretty much the whole day. That night for dinner we met with a new convert, Eric (I can tell first names now, hooray!), who is not Russian. We had dinner at and had a chat about life. He's 21 and just a kid who wants to have fun. We talked a lot about him getting a Patriarchal Blessing. He's willing and we hope ready. Friday we had another day of meetings. We had Zone training, basically a copy of MLC to the members of the zone. That night we had a great english group about the restoration. I really enjoyed it and felt the spirit pretty good. Saturday we spent the whole day in Novgorod. Drove there in the morning, had a great lunch, set up for the last devotional, had the last devotional, then cleaned up and came home. There were a lot of people in Novgorod and a great feel there, the branch president has really kicked it up a notch. that was fun. Sunday was good. We had a totally uneffective ward council before church, then a great time at church with our few member friends. I really like our ward and wish we were here more often. I found out some interesting information. While I was in Nevsky, I would often wake up with some bites on me or scratchy places. They never went away until I left. Elder Kartchner is there now and had the same itches. He did some searching and found BIG OLE BEDBUGS! THEY'RE REAL AND THEY'LL EAT YOU ALIVE! So be careful. That was about the week. As you see, lots of meetings.
A cool lesson I learned this week was that as we all work together and listen to the one in charge who knows what to do, it will all go well and we'll all be happy. It doesn't make any sense to argue and complain. If it can be done better, make a suggestion. If things don't change, just go with it! Ok now time for pictures.
Andrew
The cast of the Ballet
Me at the ballet
Nevsky Prospect at night
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