Hello

Hello! It was a good, really fast week here. Here's an update. Monday after emailing, we hopped on a bus and went to St. Petersburg for Zone Conference on Tuesday. We rode on a really small, really hot bus. That was quite the experience. Tuesday was great. We started off the day with the last hoorah for floorball, seeing as Elder Dibble, a fellow lax bro, is leaving this transfer and most other people want to play basketball. It was fun to play again after a long time, but I remember that game every day thanks to my bruised tailbone. Man that is a really uncomfortable place to have pain. Anyways, Zone Conference was great. We talked a lot about member missionary work and what our responsibilities are compared to members. One of the problems we are seeing in our mission is that the members have become to dependant on the missionaries. In Novgorod for example, a young girl turned 8 and was baptized on Saturday. The missionaries literally did everything... it was so bad I guess that President Childs was a little upset about it (he doesn't normally get upset). So we went over our job and what we are here to do and talked about how to ease them off of their missionary addiction. One of them, as strange as this sounds, was just to refuse to do certain things. Let them kinda feel the heat from their leaders when something doesn't get done in the branch. Of course our situation is different, because my companion is the branch president and all. But it was just interesting to have that discussion. The assistants also made some magic happen and invited some members for us to practice with. One of them is from Ukraine, she's a young mom. We asked her about her baptism, what the gospel means to her, things like that and it just became a tear fest. It was better than any similar meeting I've had with members here before. She's amazing! That was the highlight of the day. That night we went to Avtovo to see some of my companion's pals from when he served there. Wednesday we woke up early and got our basketball on with the "ballers" of the missionary force. That was the best workout I've gotten in a long time and it was really fun. Elder Castleton can ball! He's awesome. We stayed for a day because my comp was supposed to go to the dentist that I went to for some work. We got there and they started doubting his insurance, so we cancelled the appointment and set it up for the next time we're in the city. Hopefully they can work out the problem before then. That afternoon we got on a bus and rode home. Thursday we had a belated FHE and it was fun. We talked about missionary work and tried to get the members all excited about it. We had some good food and played UNO as well. Friday we went bus searching. The one young woman in our ward that we have contact with decided on Monday that she wanted to go to the girl's camp that the stake was doing, so we scrambled all day to get all the forms done, to find a bus that would get her there on time, stuff like that. Saturday we went with her to the bus station to buy the ticket (you have to show your passport to buy the ticket). Before that we cleaned the branch building by ourselves (refer to what we learned in Zone Conferece :)). Sunday was great. I had a lot of realizations that I hope will stay with me. The first is that those I know here that read the Book of Mormon, and really read it, are generally more humble, in tune with the spirit, happy, friendly, and the list goes on. The Book of Mormon is key to our happiness and success and progress on the path of discipleship. I love the Bible, don't get me wrong. For the past while I've been using language study to read the Bible in Russian (I finished the Book of Mormon a few weeks ago.. yay!) and because I know the Book of Mormon better and I want to know the Bible just as well, I am reading the New Testament and adding my own footnotes that correspond with the truths we find in the Book of Mormon. There's a run on sentence for you to disect! I hope you understood. Anyways, basically read the Book of Mormon and you'll be fine!

Here's a cool thing I found in the Book of Mormon this last week about conversion. 1 Nephi 2. We start with verse 3 and see the depth of Lehi's conversion summed up in one sentence, the footnote helped me come to this realization (of course reading on will build upon the fact that he was converted). I read that and thought "dang, I want to be like that". So I read on, hoping for an answer. I found it in the beginning of Nephi's journey to conversion, his prayer to God to know if what his Dad was saying is right or not. It doesn't say that he received knowledge. It says that his heart was softened so that he could start to believe. He planted the seed, he didn't recieve a tree from Glover's Nursery. This is the beginning of his journey, and if he can start we all can. Later on we see so many examples of how this one little thing made a big difference in his life (remeber President Uchtdorf's talk "a matter of a few degrees"?). One of those examples that I read today was also in 1 Nephi. The end of chapter 3 was the angels appearing to Laman and Lemuel to tell them to knock it off, and they still don't believe and don't have much faith. Read their murmurs then read the very next verse, the beginning of chapter 4. As Elder Bednar taught us while he was in Moscow about a year ago, we too often see the division of a chapter as the division of two different events or stories. Sometimes reading past the chapter divisions is needed to see the whole picture. Anyways, that's my little Gospel talk for the week. Have a good one!

Elder Gwilliam

AMERICA! I got my russian companion to eat a bacon burger and Dr. Pepper for the 4th of July (observed) while we were in St. Petersburg. 

Flashback: This place was so cool!