This week in an email

Hey! It was a great week. I'll get right into it as usual. Last p-day was cool, I went shopping for Christmas for myself and a few other people :) and it's safe to say that I'll have the coolest camera in America when I get back. And I'll be labeled as a hipster. Anyways, we just did some shopping before the price hikes hit. We don't know when that will be. We had 2 meetings set up for that night, but the less active member showed up a little late and the investigator showed up a little early, so we just had the meeting together. Wow. That was maybe the biggest fail of my mission. This less active was just this crazy guy who can't see out of one eye and can't really hear, he had just come to church randomly and wanted to start meeting with us weekly. He may be one of the biggest liars I have ever met in my life. He told us so many lies I can't even list them all. Here's a short one: He says that he's the captiain of the handicapped basketball team of St. Petersburg and that he was asked to play for the Russian National Team with able bodied players, but he said no because he is humble. He can imitate any singing voice, including Susan Boyle (or whatever her last name is). He has died and been resurrected, not revived, twice. In his dreams every night he visits heaven and he's on a first name basis with the angels there. He has a schedule for world famous doctors of the brain to talk to him that requires someone to wait a year and a half because he has so many requests. He has been clinically dead for 6 hours. He has had BBC come to his door to get interviews, but he rejects them. I'll finish with this one: He's been resurrected, therefore, he is not bound by the gospel laws that we mortals are. He lives an even higher law. Our poor investigator. Tuesday we had district meeting and lots of coordination for those missionaries who were in Estonia. We spent all day and all night on that. They came back that night and we had to get copies of their passports and things like that. Wednesday was also good, we had a ton of missionaries at our apartment. We spent the day shooing them out so that they'd get home before six. As you remember from last year, we didn't go out on this night. This year we just listened to our music and wrote in our journals and watched fireworks and things like that. It was a good night. The next day the city was absolutely dead. I mean dead. We had Hermitage service in the morning, we didn't know that it was closed so we walked around a little and took pictures of the empty streets. That night we met with a young member couple, both return missionaries, one active. The wife works on Sundays but I expect more than just work. It was maybe one of the best member meetings of my mission. We talked to them about how putting God first in our lives will bring blessings without number. I shared the example of learning Russian, and how most missionaries learn really quickly. Then I told them that they were the pioneers of this country and that in 20 years people will look to them for an example of having faith in all circumstances. And I tried 3 new foods! Salmon eggs (salty), this thing called Sala (frozen pig fat. Yes. Really really salty), and a black tomato. It's a different variety and it's a little sweeter than normal tomatoes. It was a great day. Friday we did weekly planning. A real weekly planning, the first one in a long while. Then english group that night. It was good, not as many people as usual because of the holidays, but it was good. Saturday afternoon we headed to Pskov and went on splits that night. I was with Elder Williams, a new missionary. I was so proud of Elder Wilkins who is training this new missionary. It is really a night and day contrast from Avtovo. He's so confident now and is doing a great job. Sunday we did the devotional again after church and then drove home. That was the week in a nutshell.

At english group I had the chance to defend the Savior and His divine mission to a man who has a very "modern" interpretation of the scriptures and said that Christ was just a great leader who got lots of people to follow him. I was able to quote lots of Bible scriptures and suprised myself with my testimony of the fact that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. It was a great experience for me. Christ is the Savior. He knows us. He loves us. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Now get ready for a bombing of pictures.

Andrew

My Christmas present. 1990 Smena camera, working.

Fireworks from our window

The gang on new years night

Nobody on the metro

my favorite nativity

Downtown, nobody.

What week wow

It was great to talk to you all on Christmas! That was really fun. It'll only be a few short months until Mother's day! Fun fun! Here's the week. So on Monday night we went to a new convert's house and just got to know him. He's a 21 year old guy from Ajerbayjan (I don't know how to spell that one) and he's planning on BYU I or BYU Provo. He knows english perfectly, he's just saving money. Plans on starting August 2015. Anyways, we just met him and had a good chat. He's got a lot of family problems and just wants to get away from this place. His dad died when he was younger and ever since he's lived here and not liked it at all. He's a really fun immaturish boy. We talked to him about church and how he felt about it all, he's starting to not come to church and that's bad. So we're trying to help him out there. Tuesday we had district meeting, the first one with our new district. Went and got some contact solution, I ran out. Then we went to a few addresses that night and there was a drunk man blocking the door of one of the apartments with his unconsious body. That was interesting to see so early in the season. We'll see more of those on Thursday. Wednesday was really fun. We had our staff meeting with the office missionaries, we had a lot of issues. President Childs has kinda been out of the loop on a lot of problems and we let him know of a few that had boiled over, so he did some digging and we have lots of problems with the area workers in our office that we're going to be working out. We had a meeting with a return missionary that night, he served in our mission then moved here. He's married and has a kid now but there are lots of problems, or there seem to be, but he won't talk about them. It was really really fun to just talk with him though. He asked about people from all over the mission. He got on his computer and showed us lots of his pictures. It was fun. Thursday was Christmas! We had that cool experience in the Hermitage that morning for service. We went and were grabbed by the head of the volunteers and he took us to a kind of chapel inside the hermitage that was restored a few weeks ago. Inside they were having a prayer service and kinda dedicating the room or something. It was really cool to hear them sing. We got a treat. Then we were leaving and we got taken into another room where we heard a military band and got to see some marching and old artifacts from the Napoleonic wars here in Russia. A museum in Paris was giving the Hermitage some old flags that were taken by the French as they left Russia (on Dec. 25, 200 years ago). It was great to see. We came home and had lunch with the Childs at their apartment, it was great to have a fun celebration with them. We had some goose and potato goodness and sugary cake... as close to America as I've gotten. Then we took a gift box with some food from the Childs to a new convert in our ward and doorbell ditched them. It was great. Then we hustled back and got to talk to you! That was great! Friday was pretty quiet. We had to translate some documents into russian, so we were in the office for a lot of the day. Then we went on splits with a few of the zone leaders. I was with Elder Kartchner and it was really fun. We taught a lesson to a cool guy I knew in Nevsky who is going to be baptized in January. He's just having a hard time quitting smoking. We answered his questions about tithing and why we don't use the bible so much... haha that was a funny question. Saturday was nuts... there was a visa trip of people that hadn't gotten their second passports yet, so they were told that they were going to drive to Talin and get their passports and come back. Turns out.. the passports were in Moscow... so they're been in Talin ever since and will be there at least until tuesday. So I just went into my OCD mode that I discovered on my mission and made plans for the EIGHT MISSIONARIES who were left in our apartment without companions to go meet up with other missionaries and do splits and so they've been there for a few days now, and they'll be there for a few days. That took the whole day, people just need to listen and do what I say and go to where I say. It should've taken an hour, but people were gong crazy. Yesterday was good. We had ward council, the bishop told us the area goals for this year and we didn't say one word about how we would accomplish them in our ward, we'll talk about that next year. We don't need to worry about that now... silly ward council. Anyways, then I was in my ward for the second time in 2 months and it was good. I really like our ward, we have lots of really nice, open, and strong members. Lots of youth too which is cool. Then we went by a few addresses to no avail. It was a great week.

Dad, thanks for sending me that quote about leaders leading by example and how there's no other way to go! I've been noticing a lot of that going on here ever since you sent me that email, and I've been trying to do a better job of it myself. Be good examples! Even if you aren't a leader, somebody out there is watching you. Love ya!

Have a good week!

Andrew

Skype with the Fam!!

Flashback to Kizhi

Flashback to Manifesta

Ё МОЁ!

Hello everybody! Thanks for the great emails. Like always, I can tell that all is well in the US of A. It was a good week here for us. We were very very busy, we were busy inside the Childs apartment and not out in the rain, so it wasn't so bad. We started off with the North Zone conference on Tuesday. So actually we had North then Center (my zone) then South all back to back to back. We were at all of them because we had 25 minute teaching portions. So I'll just run you through the schedule of the Zone Conferences once instead of 3 times. So we started off with President Childs teaching and testifying of Christ to invite the Spirit to the  meeting. Then we handed out flash drives for all the missionaries as the gift from the mission. Then President spent some time talking about a few area rules and the spirit of the rules and commandments and things like that. Then Elder Doxey spoke for a while about How to Begin teaching. We then had a short break and then I spoke about teaching clearly and effectively. It was really fun to use the last week to study this topic. I'll give a recap about what I found at the end. Then Sister Childs spoke about proper Elder and Sister relations (DON'T FLIRT) and other such good things. There was this rumor that got out that this Zone Conference was going to be a little awkward, so all thought that was the awkward part. They were wrong. We had lunch after that chat and it was good. We had some ham and funeral potatoes. Fruit salad and other goodies too. Then we separated into Elders and Sisters and had the real awkward part about the Law of Chastity. For the sake of the readers, I won't dive into that one. It wasn't really that awkward, it was just a really big surprise for us the first time. Then we had the Christmas celebration part of the Zone Conference, we watched the video of the world's largest live nativity scene that was filmed in Utah, and the Church's He is the Gift video. Then we read a Christmas story called A Christmas bell for Anya or something like that. Then we shared our testimonies and had some goodies at the end. It was really fun to have that over and over again, it never got boring or repititious. It was just fun! Tuesday was the day the ruble really took a dive. The banks had lines and they turned off their conversion boards so people couldn't see how bad it really was. It's a really sad thing. On Thursday we met with an interesting man who is very well... interesting. He always comes to english group and is an eternal investigator. He invited us over for a discussion and tried to make us rethink our beliefs using science and other secular knowledge. It was so dumb! He kept telling us that we needed to use our modern knowledge to think about the bible and how because time has changed, the bible has too. It was weird. Anyways, friday was crazy. We set up chairs for the nutcracker production of the stake members. Then we spent the rest of the day in the office working out problems. That night was the nutcracker play, we had a good time. There was a lot of confetti and I felt bad for the poor guys who had to clean that up. Saturday morning we're informed that we need to go clean up after the play... I wanted to say no, but I  knew that if we didn't nobody else would and there would be lots of problems that would need to be dealt with. So we showed up and NOTHING had been cleaned. There was confetti tracked throughout the whole building... we spend a good chunk of saturday cleaning that mess. Sunday was really fun and refreshing. We drove up to Vyborg with President and Sister Childs and there was a special guest.. their son Chandler! He's pretty cool, he went on a mission to Wisconsin and thinks that the weather is weak here. It was fun to go up there in the morning and have church then the devotional by us and then drive home. So yeah. That was the week. It was a good one!

I taught about 3 things that the Savior does as He teaches...
1. He has a knowledge of what He is teaching
2. He understands the audience
3. He has a KNOWLEDGE (testimony) about what He is teaching
So that's what I taught. I used scriptures and such to help and encourage participation. It was really fun.

Love ya! Have a great Christmas and talk to you soon!

Andrew

Russian Nativity (the birth of a collection)

Vyborg

This is an email about my week.

Hello family. You all had a fantastic week, I can tell. I also had a very good week. Here is the recap. Monday was good. We had a fun p day. I honestly forgot what we did, but it was fun. We cleaned a little I think. Tuesday was a good day as well. That started the crazy of the week. We had a meeting for the new trainers at 11 in the morning, there were two missionaries there. One that was going to start training the new missionary, the orther that was just going to finish the training of a different missionary. We just talk about the 12 week training program and answer the questions that they have. It was a good meeting. After that we had district meeting, it was the last one of the transfer. We had a good time together. After that we left for the airpoort to pick up the new missionary. We drove to the airport, met him at the gate, then Elder Doxey and I took him home using the metro and the busses while the Childs went back in the car with the luggage. It was fun to see this new missionary get his first really big gulp of Russia. He was so so overwhelmed, I'm sure we were all like that. Anyways, we were with him for the rest of the day because he was alone. He came back to the office and had some talks about money and passport and visa and blah blah blah then we went to the Childs apartment and had a nice dinner with him. It was the second or third time ever that I've had borsh, and it was really really good. It was funny to see how he thought that missionaries should act. He was really really stiff and it was kinda funny. Wednesday was a crazy one. We had breakfast with the new elder and his trainer. Then we were in the office running around like mad dogs because the office workers did not prepare the documents for transfers that they needed to. So that was crazy. Then we had transfer meeting which was a lot of fun. It was kinda a small transfer, so there weren't too many people there. But the quality of the people was good. Elder Castleton played a cool song on the piano for all of us. It was cool. After the meeting there was more business that we had to take care of in the office, and we took care of it. Lots of boring paperwork. That night for my birthday we had a fun dinner and I got a CD with some songs on it from the office elders (they are our next door neighbors). That was fun. We then had a lesson with the man who wants to become the king of Russia. It was an interesting lesson, but he's not so willing to change his religion becuase the Russian King must be Orthodox. Thursday we spend another whole day in the office preparing for Zone Conferences that will be tomorrow through thursday. Every missionary is getting a flash drive that they can use for sharing movies with people at lessons, and we loaded them up with a few movies. But we had to fill 85 of them... so we were in there for a while. It was super boring. Friday morning we drove up to Petrozavodsk. It's a six hour drive, that was no fun. Then we went out there to meet a member that we both know (we both served there) so we meet them and had a good time catching up. The guy that we really wanted to see wasn't there, but that's ok. Saturday President Childs came to our companionship study and that was interesting. We didn't have much time because we had to meet the other missionaries at lunch at the nicest KFC in the world, I swear. It's in a huge nice building. We then went to the church and prepared for the fireside that was on Saturday night. It was great, just like last time. There were quite a few people there. After the fireside, we cleaned the branch building and that was great. There were a lot of us and we cleaned fast. Sunday we woke up and went to church there, I translated the talk for President Childs. He gave me no warning. After church we had lunch with the senior couple, then we came home. The sunset began up there at 3:30 pm! That was insane. I was there on the longest day of the year, and now coming back near the shortest was so crazy.

It was a good week. The lesson I found out that I needed to learn is patience with everyone. In the office all the mistakes/messes/problems are blamed on whichever missionaries happen to be in the office, and the workers sometimes treat us like we're dumb and that we are just the worst. It kinda irks me sometimes, but I'm working it. That's all for the week! Love ya!

Andrew

birthday dinner

the cake

for Sam

Oh My Travel

Let me just start out by saying that travel really really wears me out. I've never felt so tired before... I'm sure that I have been, but being in new places all the time just really does it to me. Anyways, that's just how I'm feeling right now. The week: Tuesday was good. We were made aware of a showing of the Nutcracker at Mariinsky Theater on January 5 and we immediately bought tickets... later in the week when word got out so did all the missionaries in St. Petersburg. We were very excited about this because it's on a Monday afternoon, and that's our P day. In other missions they are allowed every once in a while as a mission to go to a cultural event at night because they are rarely during the day. So that's why it was so cool for us. Anyways, we got our tickets for that and then had district meeting. It was good, one of the sisters in our district is getting transferred so it was our last one together. Then we were supposed to have a stake missionary coordination meeting but the stake guys didn't show up because the meeting was moved to Wednesday. So, we just met with President for a few hours and talked out our mission. Wednesday was another day of meetings. We had a meeting with the office staff to go over the logistics of transfers on wednesday, then we had a short meeting with president and sister childs to go over a few things for the upcoming christmas zone conferences, and then didn't actually ever talk about them. They're going to be next week, so we'll have to really get going on them this week. So that night we had the stake meeting with the stake leaders. It was a good meeing, and they were asking for a lot of suggestions and President Childs was giving them. He mostly tried to help them know how to run a meeting and how to make it more worthwhile for people to come, because in general here it's hard to get people to come to meetings. Thursday morning was really really fun. We made transfer calls, so we called all the companionships in the mission, and President told them their transfers. After that we went to the office and just did some organizing for the upcoming month of craziness. We planned out the dates of when we will do what and where we will be and all that jazz. That night we walked out to see the Mariinsky Theater, it is really cool. It will be really fun. Friday was really cool as well. It was the international day of volunteers at the Hermitage, so we got to go have a little celebration there. It wasn't anything super huge, we just went and got a letter of thanks. The cool part was that yesterday was the 250th anniversary of the Hermitage! We got some really cool gifts from that. We didn't get to go because we were in Kaliningrad, but I feel like I was a part of it. I helped set up chairs. That night we had another great english group. I think I said this already, but we switched the english groups so that we are teaching the lessons in english and I really love it. It's so much better than the other group was. I love it. Saturday morning we flew to Kaliningrad. During the day we had a great little activity put on by the missionaries there, a mini MTC for the youth. There were about 8 that came, 2 of them are not members (yet). So it was really cool to see the youth getting excited there. I don't know what it is, Kaliningrad is just the best. That night I went out with Elder Saxton for a while and we talked to this cool lady selling flowers. He bought a cactus. The next day we went to church. It was great, it's probably the biggest branch in the mission. After that we set up for the Christmas Fireside that we came to put on. I was the Emcee. It was fun to have a go at it this first time and see how the people liked the songs and displays. I think it went well. We'll be going to all the mission branches and doing one devotional for the stake. It's going to be an every weekend sort of deal. Anyways, this morning we flew back and now we're here.

I realized this week why Kaliningrad is such a magical, mystical place that everybody loves. It's because the members smile! They are nice and don't treat newcomers as rejects! Sadly, that seems to happen here a lot. People are just ok with their ward the way it is and don't want more people they have to take care of. Obviously this is a small amount of people, but when there are none of them it's just so much better! Be nice to everyone at church or anywhere for that matter. Just smile and say hello, it seems dumb and small but it makes a difference and will rub off. Anyways, cool stuff.

Love ya all! Have a good week.

Andrew

coolest sunset EVER

the post fast meal put on by the members and missionaries

Time flies

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

Open House in Novgorod

Thanksgiving dinner. We made the twice-baked potatoes.

Thanksgiving selfie

$1.50 a bottle. Elder Doxey and I are SET!

Flashback to the Summer days

Wow

It was a week. I'll just jump right into it. It's going to be a long email this week. So after we emailed, we got on a plane and went to Kaliningrad. I like it there a lot. It's really pretty. So we got in about 8 at night and had to drive an hour to the city, so it was pretty late. The Porters and Childs decided to have us eat with them, it was awesome! We ate at this really nice little restaraunt and had a great time. We were super late that night, but it's ok. We had permission. Tuesday morning we had a meeting with the missionaries there in Kaliningrad that went well. we got to talk in a really small group which made it more fun. After that we split up into a few groups and went out and made some visits, I went to meet the branch president there and give him a blessing. It was fun, my comp served in Kaliningrad for 9 months and he was just in heaven the whole time! It was fun. After that we all met up and said our goodbyes and we drove to the airport. The Porters flew back to Moscow straight from there, and we had our flight about an hour later. I sat by this young guy on the plane, he was really cool! He works off of the coast of Norway on an oil rig, he's the only Russian and so he had to learn english while he was on the rig. He loves america, the only problem is that he lives in Murmansk, so I gave him my email and told him that I'd email him in english if he wants to practice. That was a really fun time. Wednesday was the day of meetings. we had district meeting (without our district leader, who was on a visa trip) and we all just got to know each other. Then we had staff meeting, which is a meeting with the office elders, couple and the Childs to organize and get the logistics of the mission all worked out. Then we (the assistants) had a meeting with the Childs and talked about some things. We finished the next transfer already, which will be on my birthday. Then we had a few other things we had to take care of to organize Christmas things, so we were in the office for a while and then went to get some groceries. Thursday was good, we had Hermitage service in the morning. Nothing too exciting. Went on splits with the north zone leaders and had a good time. Friday was kinda our p-day. I got another pair of pants for my suit and a new white shirt. My companion got a whole new suit. Then we found some skippy's peanut butter for $1.50!!!!! We're going back today to find more, usually it costs about ten dollars here. We were so happy. that night we had english group. We just changed our english program to have it more effective, now we basically just teach the lessons in english. It's fun and it went really well! There was a woman there who had never prayed before, but she did and she actually started to cry! Saturdayy we drove down to Pskov and it took 8 HOURS. A guy that was driving with us forgot his passport so we had to go back and get it for him. Then the weather was bad and we were an hour late for the 7 pm fireside. It was ok though, all was well in the end. The whole mission presidency came down with us and it was fun to meet them. I'd never met any of them before, but now I know them. Sunday was good, I loved being back in Pskov for church. That was great! It was fun to be in a small atmosphere again. I loved it. We had lunch at the senior couple's house and then we came back and got here at 9 pm. It was a crazy crazy week and we did so much, but this email is shorter than I thought it would be. I guess maybe it just seemed busy, but whatever. 

We learned a lot of cool things from our time with Elder Porter. He's great. One of the things that stuck out to me the most was when he taught us the gospel of Jesus Christ. Especially about agency... we knew that agency would bring all the bad into this world and that by other people's choices we would be hurt... yet we fought for agency and we shouted for joy when we leared about this life. There were a lot of other things that he taught us too, but I don't have time to type them all out. Love ya! Have a good week!

Andrew

For the Christmas card :)

Church building in Kaliningrad