Many Are Called But Few Are Frozen

Dear family and friends,

I've got my salmon colored tie on with a red pen in my shirt pocket and am ready to write this thing.

To increase my effectiveness in the mornings and nights I made a schedule of all the things I would do in that set time and set the time of how long they would all take and I planned it out perfectly. They first test that came was the next morning when I woke up and completely didn't follow the schedule at all. Well at least I tried but by the second day it is as if I never made one. Planning is fun and easy, but doing that is much harder.

This week started with me seeing the beautiful streak of lightning across the sky. Marking my first lightning seeing in the large kingdom of Russia and also the quickest rain storm in all of history. It was awesome! I just had told Sister P the day earlier that I wished it would thunder and lightning here because it never does and then was blessed with that. But it did end amazingly quick. We went out with our heaviest coats and then regretted the decision 5 minutes later. We played basketball again with Ev and his friend from China came this time. A, our neighbor, and the other Elder's investigator is going to a boat show in Vlad soon. Apparently there are going to be boats from all around the world.

We had an outstanding lesson with G. I met him with Elder Crabb but it has been hard meeting with him so this was our first official lesson with him. We taught the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It was great! Sister P was on it and she really helped us out so much. That lesson was completely changed by the fact that she was there. Members are so great! We had some good conversations with people on the streets in the short time we were able to be on the streets. I saw a girl that looked just like a girl I went to high school with just a little more Russian.

At C's house we didn't get to do any service because he took us around his green fields and showed us this little pond and this big tree that we all climbed on. Unfortunately we had to leave a little early because we had lessons to go to. He just got a fresh load of logs just waiting to be cut. Next week!

Sports Night began this last week. We planned on having a ton of people show but we ended up only having about 8. But that was ok because me and Elder Sieboch went and played soccer with Muslims from many different countries who spoke many different dialects. I don't know about he others, but one of them spoke 7 languages including English. He was from Kazakhstan. They were pretty good and some were wearing Real Madrid jerseys. I had the ball one time and tried to do a cross to my fellow team mates for them to head it in but the ball just ended up going through the goal instead haha!

Church was good. A couple of our speakers showed up late. So you know what that means. Yep you guessed it that means that the missionaries get to speak. Elder Hess got up first and gave a talk on humility. I thought I was safe because I was the farthest Elder away from the stand and that distance gave me comfort. But after Elder Hess's remarks we sang a hymn and I am the branch's conductor. So I come up and conduct the song and then on the way back to my seat I see that it would be difficult to make it back so I sit on one of the empty chairs on the 2nd row. Big mistake. Elder Hess then gets up and announces that I would be the next speaker. I had about 3 seconds from the time I found out I was to speak and the actual speaking part. I decided to speak on service. It went a lot better than expected and I think I took about 10 minutes or so. I was amazed how most of the Russian seems to come out. So all in all it was a great experience. I was actually thinking the other day that something like this hasn't happened to me on my mission yet and then it happened.

Me and Elder Roosa were taking the trash out of the church and on our way to the trash can we heard and saw this little red thing hit the ground. Somebody threw a strawberry at us and failed to hit their target. We looked up and saw somebody draw away from the window. Me and Elder Roosa both wish that it would have hit us and that it would have been more than one strawberry, but what do you do?

At home in our kitchen the stove that we have is an elements stove which means it doesn't have an open flame, it's like Grandpa and Grandma Jo's. Well Saturday morning that element stove top became a fire burning stove. I woke up and went and threw some eggs on the frying pan and made way nice eggs I took the pan off the stove to wash it and I hear the sound of a flame. I look behind me and the stove top is on fire. The flame is about as tall as 2 or 3 pencils stacked on each other. Luckily, it went out super quick but I was prepared, I got a wet rag and threw it over the stove. Elder Roosa made french fries the night before and I didn't even realize that there was still oil all over the stove. Crisis averted.

Last story, my allergies have been going off like never before on my mission. I sneezed probably 200 times in one day or more and it was awful. At game night a sister in the ward asked if she could help me. I wasn't sure what to expect but said yes. She put her hand on my shoulder and starred at me in the eyes and as I started to walk away after a little bit, she took her and off and said that soon I would be better. Haha it has been a pretty crazy week!

Love,

Elder Wilding