Sunday, November 13, 2016

Dear Family,

This week was pretty eventful with zone training and visa trips. Monday was snowing heavily and Dad and I bundled up to walk to work. The rest of the week warmed up and all the snow melted which made for rivers and lakes all over the place, (thank heaven for boots).

Part of our zone training was some instruction from the Elder and Sister Reed (from Moscow) on addiction recovery. Then there was training from Elder and Sister Hancock (our mission), on Self Reliance. The Reeds ordered a ton of material for their part and Sister Hancock asked me to order the stuff they needed. She wanted a set of 3 booklets and 2 pamphlets for each volunteer. Plus she wanted me to make sure I had enough to give the new volunteers. Currently we have 62 volunteers with one coming in November and 8 coming in December so I order 80 of each item. Well the majority of what I ordered was back ordered. I ended up with 19 complete sets and several partials. We needed a little more time to get them all. They gave the complete sets to the Saratov zone because they are the furthest away. When the other things come it will be easier to get them to the ones in our area.

I love these conferences because I get to see all the volunteers in our zone. Wendy you can tell your friend that I saw Elder Briggs at the training and that he was laughing a joking with the other volunteers and seems very happy and comfortable in his environment. He is doing great!

These young volunteers amaze me at the job they do. Elder’s Vandermark and Hemrick are our zone leaders and they conducted the training. Sister Howe, who is a Sister Training Leader, also took park. They gave some incredible insights. Some of the topics of discussion were in making your prayers more meaningful.  How you should not only pray to overcome your weaknesses but recognize and thank your Father in Heaven for your strengths. It’s often easier to look at what’s wrong rather than what’s right. Trust that if your plans fall through it might be because God has something better for you out there.

OK, so one of our AP’s is a passionate Patriots and Tom Brady fan. He was raised from birth to love the Patriots. Well on his desk he has, what we term, a Tom Brady doll. He calls it an action figure. One of our Avrora Elders took it off Elder Buchanan’s desk and put in a vat of Jell-O. So at the zone training, when we had a break for lunch, he came in and saw his Doll sitting on the table in orange Jell-O. I think he wanted to rant and rave but managed to keep it together. He was utterly speechless. He just turned around and walked out.

After eating we went back to the training. Elder Buchanan called and told Dad and I that we needed to come back to the office to sign something for our Visa’s and we had to be back before 3:00 pm. We decided to just leave then because they were trying to get a video to work. I walked into the office and saw Elder Buchanan, not at the training, and this is how it went down:

Me, “Elder Buchanan, I hope you just didn’t get mad, take your toys and go home!”

Him, “No, no, I had to come back and do some things. But did you see, they turned Tom Brady orange.”

Me, “You’ve never pulled any pranks on anyone while here?”

Him, “Nothing like that.”

Me, “So you did get mad and go home.”

Him, “No, I wasn’t mad.”

I just gave him a disbelieving look and Dad told him that the Jell-O would wash off. So not only are these Volunteers amazingly mature but are also amazingly just like 18 to 20 year olds. I know what Janet is thinking right now, that she would have gotten mad too!!

So when you go on a visa trip you bring some food and beverages. I decided not to pack sandwiches because we figured we’d be back at the office by 1:00 pm. The bus was supposed to leave the office at 5:15 am but the sisters from Bezi were late. Well they were ready but they didn’t see the bus. I guess he’d been waiting about ½ hour. Anyway we finally got on the road. It was foggy outside and dark so most of the volunteers went to sleep. I read for a while. No problems getting to the boarder. We went through and we didn’t get interviewed this time all except for Elder Johnston. When we were coming back into Russia we weren’t given immigration papers. They told our driver to just go ahead and go and if we get stopped to tell them we lost them.

Elder Johnston called President Blinkov who told our driver not to leave until we get those papers. We leave the guard station in the bus but then parked. We didn’t want to leave without those papers. We learned that apparently they were out of them. They had a truck that would deliver them each day and it hadn’t arrived yet. The papers came from Orenburg which is about 8 hours away. Didn’t know if they were just messing with us or not but we didn’t dare leave. Elder Johnston said when he was up at the guard station he heard them tell someone else that they didn’t have immigration forms.

We sat on the bus for several hours waiting and I shared my Almonds and dried pineapple mix and popcorn. I was wishing I had made those sandwiches. I drink very little on these trips because the bathrooms are limited (they’ve been known to use bushes). We finally made it back to the office at about 5:00 PM.

We went to work on Friday and stayed pretty busy. Elder Johnston, one of our AP’s, is getting transferred and leaving for Kazan on Tuesday. He is in his last cycle (6 weeks) and will leave for home on December 29^th. He is actually your Dad’s father!! The Volunteers call their trainer their father or mother as the case may be and their descendants go on and on. If Dad trains the couple who comes to replace us then Elder Johnston will become a grandfather. Whoever is in their last cycle is said to be dying. The companion of a volunteer in their last cycle is the one killing them.

We are going to miss Elder Johnston so much, we’ve spent a lot of time with him. We wanted to take him and his companion, Elder Buchanan, out to dinner on Saturday. We were going to meet them at the office at 5:00 pm. They called and changed it to 6:00 pm. We got there and they and the zone leaders surprised us by making us dinner. It was a rice, pineapple and chicken concoction. I kind of groaned to myself because you all know I dislike rice. But it actually tasted pretty good as long as I had either pineapple or chicken with my bite of rice.

So we were all sitting around talking after we finished eating and I brought up that my daughter, Kelly, talked a lot when she was young. If fact I would play a game with her and tell her that I bet she couldn’t be quiet for 5 minutes. She would challenge that assumption and the game would be on. After I finished telling them this every eye turned to Elder Buchanan, whom I believe has the same problem. He just got this look on his face and said:

Elder Buchanan, “What, you don’t think I can do it?”

The rest of us, “No, you can’t.”

EB, falling into our trap, “I can do it.”

TROU, “Okay, you are on.”

Elder Hemrick, “Time starts now.”

EB, “Wait, can I cough? Does that count?”

TROU, “Yes you can cough.”

EH, “The time starts now.”

Elder Johnston whips out his phone and calls Elder Wilde. Elder Wilde and Elder Buchanan have an ongoing feud about the best football team and the best quarterback. So Elder Wilde impresses me because he we on for five minutes telling Elder Buchanan why Peyton Manning was the best quarterback ever. Elder Buchanan was biting his lip and you could see his rebuttal right there on the tip of his tongue.

I was awed because Elder Buchanan made it the whole 5 minutes. Just as soon and the pending time made it to zero he grabbed the phone from Elder Johnston and started arguing. Elder Johnston swooped in and took the phone and hung it up. It was all pretty funny, but he kept quiet through it all.

Our NovoK Elders are getting transferred to new locations this week. I’m going to miss them. We are going to have Elders Lee and Miller. We’ve had Elder Lee before but elder Miller is new to NovoK. They both play the piano so that will be great. We’ve been singing without a piano accompaniment and sometimes it gets pretty bad. On one occasion, at least, I couldn’t figure out what the song was they were trying to sing.

We had the Avrora Elders and Sisters over for Sunday dinner. They brought their investigator, Johnathan with them. He is from Peru and is here on a scholarship studying Aeronautical engineering. He speaks very good English and will be baptized on December 3^rd. Since none of them have been to dinner before I made them my usual roast dinner and they were all in heaven.

In President’s letter this week he had some good advice for us:

If you are looking for answers from God, there is a special prayer you can offer.

President Eyring tells us that there is a special kind of prayer that can get an immediate answer from God. He says there are 2 questions he asks in his daily prayers that will always generate an immediate response. The first is, ‘‘Whom can I help?" ---and the second is, "What blessings do I have that I am not aware of?". He says that those questions are always answered for him.

Here are 2 invitations for you:

1. May I specifically invite you to try this following very simple, sincere prayer: “Whom can I help now?”. I promise you that at least one face will come immediately to your mind. It could be a member, or a Russian friend you have made here, or a companion, or even a family member at home. I have put this to the test, and it works. Your mission here is to bless. You are here to help others. I don't think God is going to make you wait a week or a month for you to first learn something particular before answering this kind of prayer.

2. May I also specifically invite you to ask the Lord in prayer to show you blessings you haven't seen yet --or may have forgotten? The answers you get to this one may startle you. I believe it will be sweet. I predict your mind will fill with amazing realizations of blessings you now take for granted. You will feel humility and love ---and gratitude will rush into your heart.

May the Lord bless you in this effort.  I am excited for you!

Love you all,

Mom