They say it's your birthday.

Hello everyone! Thank you for your wonderful emails. I'm so glad that all is going well with y'all and that conference was great. I'm excited to watch it. He's a recap of the week. Tuesday we had district meeting in Kolpino. I really like the District leader there, he's a young missionay who is awesome and will do great things. After we emailed you last week, we had a little activity with the young men at the church building. We made pizzas with them and asked them what they were doing now to prepare for missions. It was a really good one. That night I got a call that we would be going back to Pskov the next morning, but I hadn't been informed of this and was an hour away from the city. They wanted to leave really early, but couldn't because I wasn't there. So about 11 Wednesday morning we hopped in a van and drove down to pskov. The senior couple that is there right now is going to be changed out for another in a week. So we reunpacked all of our stuff and got some food and had a good day. Thursday we hit the ground running and had a ton of meetings, all with members. A few of them were confidential that I couldn't be at (just about welfare help) so I practiced piano and such during those times. I'm now the branch pianist. Hoorah. The branch building is really unorganized, and in the last audit we were told that we should try and do something about it. So we spent a lot of time on Friday after a lesson with one of our progressing investigators (that went really well) just organizing and cleaning the building. That evening we went on a walk with one of our not so progressing invesigators. He's really into philosophy and it's hard to work with him. Saturday we had a birthday party for one of our members at the building. She cooked us some good food and we played some fun games that I'll teach ya'll later. Also on Saturday we usually clean the floors of the branch, so we did that too. Yesterday was great. Maybe the best block of meetins that I've been at in pskov. All of the testimonies were short, meaningful, and it was great! A couple from St. Petersburg moved here during the week, they're going to be a huge support in the branch. He taught gospel principles, it was one of the best sunday school lessons of my mission! Basically it was a great week! We also did some finance work after the meetings were over, I don't know how clerks do in in wards of 400 members, it's hard for me to understand what's going on in a ward of 5 active members.

Yesterday I read Helaman 4. Verses 11-13 really stuck out to me, as I've been studying this week about humility. If we're going to have pride and swim in iniquity, we will be left in our own strength, so without the strenght of the Lord. All of the war stories where the nephites are victorious usually include "in the strength of the Lord". This of course doesn't just apply to war, but to our spiritual, moral, daily battles as well. I'm glad that a few of the speakers (or many) talked about the Atonement. Without the enabling strength of the Atonement, we are left on our own. We can't do much. We really do rely so much on the Savior and Heavenly Father for everything that we have, can do, etc. As we are more thankful in our prayers we will begin to recognize that. I've been on a slump with my prayers lately, but that and an article by Elder Christofferson really helped me this week to amp it up. I challenge you all to do the same. Have a good week!

Andrew