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