Sunday, April 30, 2017

Service With the Nuns!

Gracious Greetings!

I actually took notes in my planner this week of what happened so now I don't have the excuse that I don't know what happened. I wish I would have done this sooner, it takes like 2 minutes to do it but it is the difference if I will remember my mission or not. Also because of this my journal writing has gotten better! What a awesome week we just had. 

To start it off we had a radical family home evening with a recently married couple who has a frenzy for Farkle. We discussed the beautifully simple truths of the doctrine of Christ and they feed us some tasty pastries. Later in the week they called us over to help them do a pemont (repair) on their house. We pulled up the roll out floor lining in one room and then helped them lay down a new floor. My allergies were going nuts the whole time. Speaking of service we officially are out of the old church building. We had one last sweep of the building. After that we were asked to transport around 30-40 suitcases from the 4th floor to an apartment that is just a block or two away.  The suitcases belong to all the elders and sisters who brought two to their mission (you usually have one and keep one in storage). It went fast because all 9 of the volunteers was there to help.

On Tuesday we helped our investigator K get started on his family history. Before we started he showed me pictures of the outside of a zoo that he went to. He let his kids go in but he wouldn't go. He said it was because it was too dangerous haha. Then on the way home that night on the bus I got a phone call from an Elder in Artyom and two 30 year old women got very excited when they heard me speaking English. They always think that we're Brits!

On Wednesday we met with a tall less active that is involved in a pyramid scheme. I spent basically the whole time trying to convince him that he was in pyramid scheme to no avail. Poor guy. And Elder Bacon found this guy from San Diego in the same cafe we were in. After that we went and met with our friend J from Zambia and he had with him his friend from South Africa. They showed us their campus and we saw how cool it was. 

We had service with the nun's! There are two nun's living in Vladivostok who are from America and they called us up to see if we could come and help them clear out their attic. The house they live in used to belong to someone else and there was SO much junk in there. Let me list a few of the things we found: a dog's skull, a mouse caught in a trap who had been there for probably 5 years already and so many fish movies. I was on the wheel barrow the whole time and when they brought things down from the attic, I wheeled it over to the dump that was a football field away. We moved a lot of stuff and put some of the things in the wrong area and had to move it again. Then nun's also fed us lunch! We had chicken with rice with some amazing jam! We were able to hear what they believe and we told them what we believe. 

I love this work! Hopefully we can start teaching more in the future!

Elder Wilding

Dear Brother and Sister Wilding

It truly is a blessing to serve The Lord and His children here in Vladivostok where the Church is stronger and the people are so friendly! The opportunity to meet together as a Vladivostok District once a week and review names and talk about spiritual matters is a wonderful blessing! 
We welcome Sister Jossie from the West and realize that this is her last transfer before her 18 months come to an end. We also welcome Elders Gee and Elder Barr from Artyom who travel far to get here and are always welcome. Elder Wilding invited us to prepare for Zone Conference with the Martino's by reading Alma 4-7.  Elder DeSandre offered a prayer and led us in the Mission Statement. 
Our topic of spiritual discussion was from the Preach My Gospel, chapter 3, lesson 2 second half of the lesson where it talks about the Atonement of Jesus Christ for as we rely on the Atonement of Jesus Christ, He can help us endure our trials, sicknesses, and pain. We can be filled with joy, peace, and consolation. All that is unfair about life can be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. We talked about the spirit world and judgement day and the three degrees of glory and how we are truly blessed to have this knowledge! It gives us even more reason to be urgent and diligent in our desires to share this Gospel of Jesus Christ!
We humbly kneel together as a District before the Lord to plead to know how best we can accomplish His work among His people. We are grateful for your prayers and support as we strive to do our best daily.

Sincerely,
President & Sister Perkinson
Vladivostok Russia

Monday, April 24, 2017

Workin in Churkin

Morning good everyone! (You can say it such in Russian)

It is now time for my mind to pull up all of its hatches so that my memory of this last weeks events can come back so that I can give at least a decent report of what has been learned and what has happened these last few days. It has been said that you never learn something until it is taught to you 7 times in 7 different ways, that appears to be true. 

This week was great! Everything is good in Vladivostok. We still are experiencing a drought of new investigators but we have a good likely candidate in a 26 year old college student from Zambia. He is a 7th day Adventist, speaks great English and Russian and hopefully with fill the truth of the gospel message. We were going to meet on Sunday but he said it was too cold for him to wait until we make it to center (40 min. bus ride) so we are meeting this Wednesday after Russian practice.

Also we have been working with some promising less actives. One, Hope, who is a mother of 3 children, was so happy to hear us when we called. We talked about repentance on our lesson and it went great. Another less active we are working with is named K and he is a way tall and pretty funny member who said himself that he wants to come back but doesn't see it as a huge priority yet. We are going to keep on working with them and keeping on going through our area.  We don't have a ton of actives in Churkin and therefore we have a lot that we can work with.

I gave a talk on Sunday. It went good, Sister Jossie who goes home at the end our this transfer and Sister Thomas both bore their testimonies because they are new to the branch. It is still fun having church in a 5 star hotel. The staff always brings in like 50-60 water bottles and 4 microphones and has everything set up like we were having a huge conference. I think sometimes the workers are surprised at the little kids running out in the halls haha. 

The gospel is true, the doctrine of Christ is the means by which we can make it back into God's presence. The weather has been warm lately with a few cold days.

Love,

Elder Wilding

Sunday, April 16, 2017

Easter!!!

Happy Easter! 

Russia celebrated this marvelous holiday on the same day that you all did in America, which is a rarity. We celebrated the holiday in remembrance of the Savior and His resurrection. The members brought us boiled eggs and candies and even cupcakes which were gladly received. They have a special greeting in Russia that I talked about last year where you say, Jesus is risen and the person you say it to responds with, truly He is risen. It is a great tradition they bring with them from their Orthodox church. Although I heard it a lot less this year than last. We are lucky to have knowledge of the Savior and his atoning sacrifice and have the hope that that brings! 

We live like 40 min. away from the center of the town where we usually meet with people and don't make it home for dinner a lot so we have been eating out a lot. The "burritos" food stand is a favorite for dinner, where they sell Sharma. I haven't had Chum Chum in the longest time because at the grocery store where we shop they don't have any of the sauce packets. I have been eating good lately though....he senior couple fed us right after a lesson we had at their house.

On Saturday we had a picnic on Russian Island! We played Frisbee and roasted hot dogs and explored the place we were at. It was a good activity! Me and Elder Bacon had to leave before the activity ended to make it to a piano recital of one of our friends. He is a talented man.  He said he practices (based on how he feels), like 2-6 hours everyday. He did well and at the end this funny Korean man ran up and gave him flowers.

We met with a new man named D that was just in our phone and we finally got a hold of him. He didn't smoke or drink and was a really tall nice man. The day after we meet with him though he texted us that he is moving back to his home town way far away that very day at 5:30 and then after that he was going to work on the sea for a year. It is too bad, but he brought one of his friends who we can meet with in the future!

Church in the Hyundai went great again! We had the huge room this time and it is really really nice.

It was another fast week! We have the commandments for our good, to keep us from regrets and sorrow! The more I am out here the more and more that becomes clearer.

Love,

Elder Wilding

Sunday, April 9, 2017

The Work Goes On

Transfers came and I'm staying in Vlad! Home of the best Sharma I have ever tasted. Me and Elder Bacon will be serving together once more. This transfer was weird, almost everything stayed the same, and the only change in our district is that one of our sisters is leaving. Plus 2 other sisters are coming.  And the work goes on as it always seems to do.

I still have not yet watched conference in English. I have watched all the sessions except for the priesthood session in Russia, and from what I got out of it we had a really awesome general conference! It was great to hear the words of our living prophet and his invitation to read the Book of Mormon everyday. One of our investigators who we met with after asked us what the Prophet said, we of course excitedly told him!

We have officially moved out of our old church building and are in the Hyundai Hotel, a 5 star hotel. It is a really nice place. The first time I walked in it I heard the obviously not Russian people all speaking English to each other which is not a common site in Russia. We have two fairly same rooms constantly that we have if we need to teach lessons or hold district meeting or other stuff like that, but on Sundays we have a large hall that holds 250 people (way more that we need) for 5 hours.  So it turns out that sacrament meeting will be in the big hall and then after that the primary and other groups will go to the two smaller rooms and have their classes there while the rest of us stay in the large hall.  We watched conference there last Sunday as a branch and it went well! 

We went to our Branch President's house and brought dinner with us and ate with them. They are a hilarious family and we were laughing the whole night!  This was our first time going there and we got on a bus at a non ideal spot and we road the bus for 1:30 before we made it to our destination. And I forgot a book to read on the way! Now that I have been on my mission this long I have come to appreciate long buses. 

We had a fantastic Russian practice with one of our members who works at the large university on Russian Island and teaches Russian to foreigners. She is teaching us Russian the way the schools do it and I think I like the way I did it better.  Too much homework.  I'm on a mission, I don't got time for that!  But the lessons are fun and she can answer all of our questions.

Still on the lookout for new people to teach. We found a place designed for street basketball that was actually pretty cool! We played some basketball and made some friends. We are on the look for the elect and trying to find natural ways to meet them.

Thanks for all you do!

Love,

Elder Wilding
The Aquarium
 The City (Vlad)
 The hair cutting process
 Russian Basketball

Sunday, April 2, 2017

Sunny Days

March is already behind us with less madness than in previous years. April Fools came and went without many pranks even though they celebrate it here.  I should have done something but I kinda forgot about it. Transfers are this Thursday and I am about 99% positive that I am staying. I could see me moving to a different apartment with a different companion but I would be surprised if I left Vladivostok. We still haven't seen conference, we will watch it in the Hyundai Hotel next week. But with that let's get into what happened last week:

On Monday we had family night with a great couple who recently got married.  For the majority of the night they were just making blini. I can't complain though, Prussians make really good blini. After our spiritual thought we played Farkle and they liked it more than I thought they would which is good! Then on Tuesday it was our turn to be in charge of Culinary Night. Sister Crookston of the office couple gave us a really good recipe to make called "Dutch Oatmeal Cake".  It was super tasty and everyone got a ton because we had, lets say, less than we expected.  

We made it out to Russian Island on Wednesday to meet up with a member that I knew in Ussuriysk who was our Russian practice teacher. The Campus is amazing! It is very nice and new and has a lot of foreigners that attend. We saw one of our friends there (that we meet at Burger King) who is from India (if you saw him you would guess that he is from Africa) who is studying to become a doctor. In Russia it is only 5-6 years of study. But he doesn't speak Russian so I don't know how his studies work out. Anyways, Russian practice was good as ever but she gave us a ton of homework that we have to do before next meeting next week... It was pretty simple stuff but it is so many assignments.  Russians hold true to their saying, "Repetition is the mother of learning".

Like I said we have been playing a lot of basketball lately, honestly maybe too much but we are trying to find new ways to use our talents to find people. We found a nice free place where we can play and we have meet some cool people. Not only have we had the opportunity to play but we also got to go and watch "Spartak", the professional team of Vladivostok, play! They have a player on their team from America who is a potential investigator. They were down the first 3 quarters and most of the 4th, but came up big at the end and won with a big lead. They had this one guy that was absolutely awful until the last 4 minutes but he came out to be the hero and he was giving signatures after the game.

We were able to go an splits with the Elders in center and I got to go to their apartment. Talk about a view, they are on the 9th floor I think and they look over the bay and it is beautiful. We taught the gospel of Jesus Christ to their investigator who is close to baptism. The lesson was good.  The gospel really is true, and the meek and humble of the earth will find it.

Also a big part of this last transfer has been us moving the church out of itself. We will be moving to a temporary new location (the Hyundai Hotel), which caused us to box up everything in the church and move the chairs and whatever else was there, up to a different room that they rented. Part of this moving involved us taking down the projector screen. It seemed simple enough, unscrew the screws and it would come off but when we took them off it stayed where it was about 10-15 feet in the air.  We left to go do something else when a member goes and tries to work with it and all of a sudden it crashes to the ground, bringing part of the ceiling with it haha.  Fortunately nobody got hurt!

I love you all! I love to be out here!

Elder Wilding