Hello y'all

It was a good week! Here we go. Monday after we emailed.. I gave myself a haircut! It was a fun ordeal. We found clippers at the branch building and so I just decided to go for it. Because of the strength of the ruble right now, we're tight on money. So I decided to save ten dollars. I started off by just doing a part of it then showing my companion. He was just reading the scriptures and I got him pretty good. Tuesday we went out to a member who lives in a small town just outside Pskov. Actually two members. They're a couple who just moved here from St. Petersburg. He was born there, she here, and I guess she won the battle. He got really sick towards the end of last week so we went over there to give a blessing. That night we had a double lesson. One with a less active, and an investigator. Wednesday we did a lot of things. We first had a lesson with the father of the old branch president. We've been teaching him for a while. He just kinda laid down all of his concerns and questions, most of which are not all that serious just kinda menial things. I tried to tell him that I don't know everything, we all have questions etc. but he just wanted to talk. SO yeah. Kinda a bummer. A member with some problems was supposed to have a meeting over skype with President Childs, but he dogged us. Thursday we took a bus to Saint Petersburg. We had splits with the zone leaders. Also that night the senior couple moved here! Hooray! We were alone here but now we have a high energy senior couple! The Carters are awesome. They're almost done with their mission, but they're here to work. Friday I had to go to the office with some recipts and such for the financial secretary, then we had a lesson with a man who is more interested in English than the Gospel. We had a pretty heated lesson with him because he understood the Holy Ghost as something else. That night in the city there was a seminar for strenghening families that we got to go to. It was a good seminar put on by President and Sister Childs. Saturday morning we took a bus back to Pskov, had a quick meal then met with two very intense investigators at the same time with a member of the mission presidency that came down for the weekend. We talked a little bit about everything with them and didn't get anywhere. We were supposed to have a meeting with taht same member who dogged us on the Skype, and he did it again! Dang. But then another investigator called and was able to meet right then, so we did. He was ready to get baptized a while ago but then moved to a different place, and he just appeared again. Cool. He's forgotten a lot and is more worried this time about what his friends and family will say. We'll work with him. Sunday was good. WE had a meeting with the carters before church started just to kind of fill them in on what's going on in pskov. I spoke during sacrament meeting about the Word of Wisdom. It's a pretty simple commandment, so I mostly focused on the blessings that we receive. We have a few investigators and members who have a really hard time with this, and they were there, so it was good. We then watched the priesthood session for the second and third hours. We had a lesson with a less active at the Carter's apartment! It was great. The Carters are going to do so much good here in their two months left. He already loves them and is feeling better about the church. We then ran over to a semi active member's apartment and taught him a great lesson. It was just a good day! He served on a mission from 2006-08 and just told us some of his favorite stories and it was fun. Great end to the week.

This week I've been listening a lot to general conference in english. I LOVE LOVE LOVED Elder Bednar's talk about fear. Someday in the near future, I'll be studying fear. It was great. I also learned this week that you need to really prepare for talks and think about them and read scriptures and pray to get your message accross. I had 2 four hour bus rides to think and read and pray... so I did. It was a good talk, I think. Be prepared, right? Boy Scouts. Have a good week!

Andrew