Just Like Old Times

Hello everybody!

I feel somewhat lucky I am able to write this letter today. This day has been quite a fiasco. To start off we went to our main place where we always go but for whatever reason "myldsmail.net" would just not load. So after 30 minutes of juggling with that we went to another place in Center which worked for about 47 seconds flat, and then out of nowhere the power went out. We planned on waiting there until the power came on but after 10 minutes of waiting the workers said that they don't know when the power will be back on and that they are closing up the store right now because it will probably be a long time. But all hope was not lost, we knew of a different place about 15 minutes away on bus that we could go to. But, that was closed due to Victory Day, a holiday that will be tomorrow. On our way to the place that was closed, we saw a different internet cafe that none of us have been to before. We went in to try it, but it was a super dark and sketchy place. And to add to that, their computers had no internet. As a last hope we came back to the 2nd place we visited and to our great pleasure the power had been turned back on and now were in business!

This has been a nostalgic week, mainly just because me and Elder De Sandre were on splits and he made pizza. He has a gift! We met up with a man named Ivan who I met at a bus stop a week or two ago. We met near a church and started talking to him and an older guy comes up to us and says "Mormons?" and then tells us he knows a lady that goes to our church. After he left we looked around and Ivan was nowhere in sight. We went searching for him, he simple disappeared. No longer having plans, we decided to go to a soccer field to see if anyone was playing. We went up to about four teenage kids and they said we could play with them. My soccer skills are not up to par.  We were having a great time laughing while we tried to play. After the game we got their numbers and planned to meet up again. 

On Thursday to Saturday I was on splits again but this time with Elder Barr. We had a really good time. His investigator, V, took us to a lighthouse! It was super small, I took some pictures and I will send them next week. He is very interested in the gospel and a really nice guy! And on Friday we had to set up a projector for a "Joseph Smith Prophet of the Restoration" movie night. It was a lot of what happened today trying to write. Running there and back and then to another place. The activity went good! And on Saturday we had a picnic with the branch! It was a little windy you could say. That is actually a huge understatement. The wind was incredible. Also, it was a miracle because when we started the picnic, the weather was rainy and cold but we decided to hope for the best and have it anyway and despite the wind it was really nice weather.

Another miracle: on our way to the picnic an 18 yr old girl comes up to us and asks, "You're Mormons right?" (now that the coats are off we are getting recognized a lot). We affirmatively responded and she told us that she goes to the ДВФУ (the college in Vlad) and is studying Mormons. She told us that there is a lot of negative info about us and wants to do a report showing that we are good normal people. What? This never happens! She was way cool too! 

Well, it has been a fast week. I have been getting a lot of sun and my arms are feeling it. 

Have a fantastic Victory Day! 

Elder Wilding

Sakhalin State of Mind

My dear family and friends,

I am delighted once again at the opportunity to write to you.  I'm greatly blessed by all your prayers and letters for which I am truly grateful.   Also thanks for the package Mom and Dad.  I was informed that I couldn't open it until Christmas so it has been sitting in a corner for a week now but thanks to the use of modern technology, I have been found that I have been living underneath my privileges and actually can open them.  How lucky we are to have email.

I am pleased to say that I am the owner of a fox pelt.  Bought off the Renik for not too much.  She is a beautiful orange color.  I also bought a Shopka that makes it so that my ears will never be cold again.  But I can't wear it outside yet because I would get some strange looks.  It isn't cold enough yet.

We set up for the branch Halloween party but weren't able to attend due to a lot of things I don't want to get into.  We had some awesome snow storms when it was just pouring on us and we thought within a few hours it would be above our heads.  That isn't exactly what happened but maybe sometime soon!  Turns out there is a chess club on Sakhalin and when we went it it was only filled with guys 60 and up.  And when we sat down a man said to his friend, "I thought you said the youth don't play.",  and he may be right in my case because I got destroyed.

We had a cool experience where we went to visit a less active but had no way into her apartment building but on our way there one of our friends who lives there saw us and let us in.  The Lord prepares a way!  She wasn't home unfortunately, but we left a Liahona with an Asian man who opened the door.

While getting haircuts at our members hair cutting studio, her co-worker was there and we started to talk to her.  She was very interested in why we were here and what church we are from  and because a member of the church was there she was able to explain the things that we couldn't!  We are seeing miracles everyday!  Also a miracle we did a service project a little while ago at an orphanage called House of Hope.  While on the streets we met a man we met there who said that ever since that night he couldn't stop thinking about us and was so sad we didn't switch numbers!

And on Sunday we had a marvelous fast and testimony meeting.  A family who has been in America for about a month and a half just returned (they were even in Brigham City) and they all bore their testimonies of the temple becasue they went to many in America.  And the mother said that in the scriptures you read how America is a holy land but when she got there everything was the same as Russia she said.  But she noticed that everyone smiled and that there were a lot of believing people and that she absolutely loved that.

I am so lucky to be serving right now!  I love my time out here and am beyond blessed.

Love Elder Wilding

Snow Is Upon Us

Dearest family and friends,

Snow is on the ground!  And that means that we are just that much closer until it is covering the cars.  We talked to a woman today that said you can go to sleep with not much snow out and then wake up and open your front door and only see white.  And then she proceeded to do swimming motions showing how see gets to work when it's that bad.

Transfers came and went without any changes on our end.  Me and the King are together another six.  I was nothing but glad.  I don't really have any desire to leave this place and am hoping to spend as much time here as possible.  The sisters stayed as well.  

We took a hike on Monday in a thick fog.  We didn't have much of a view when we reached the top.  You could say we were in the clouds.  I wish I would have had a jar on me to catch a cloud in.  I've always wanted to do that ever since I was a little kid.  We climbed to see an old crashed USSR airplane which everyone had heard about but no one had seen.  That remains the same to this day.  We couldn't find the thing.  It was a shame but alas, we had a good time.

In the coming week we may be participating in an English club at our local library.  We'll see where that goes, we might have to make some kind of power point.  I don't know. Anyways, my sisters that where in the MTC with me go home at the end of this transfer.  Talk about time flying.

A large part of our week was spent working on less active work and making lists and seeing who we can go visit and whose info is correct and whose isn't and so forth.  We got into 2 houses with positive people inside.  We are hoping to bring them back to the fold and I think we have a really good chance with one of them.  The work of this next week will be largely spent on going out to more people.

I taught priesthood in church.  We had a home teaching appointment.  We made a huge batch of chum chum that lasted us more than half the week.  President has us send him every night a miracle we saw that day.  We are truly blessed.   I would invite you do do the same.  Expect and record the miracles you see.  If you don't expect them they won't happen consistently.

Life is good!  I love the members and love it here.  

Elder Wilding

King's coat inside out

With statue of Lennin

That says Utah smoke, Soback

What a beauty - Sakhalin temple

What we built, smile rock, fog

 

Zone Conference

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Let me start this email with a disclaimer: due to my allergies which have for some reason taken over me today I took a Benadryl which has weakened my capacity to think clear becasue of how tired I am now.  Nevertheless I will strive to write you all a report of what has happened in this past week with as many details as I can remember.

Might as well start of with our amazing zone conference which was presided over by Elder Martino of the 70.  What an outstanding teacher!  He was if not the most powerful teacher I have ever witnessed in person, at least the second.  We learned so much from his teachings on revelation and other important topics.  He opened up the scriptures to us, he encouraged us to be more sincere and to think outside of the box so far that no one has ever tried the approach we choose to take.  I was quite uplifted by his presence.  I have noticed from the general authorities that have come and taught us that their remarks and their general conference talks usually are a part of what they teach to us.  But I don't realize that until after they come when I read their talks.

We also experienced an amazing miracle while looking for service.  We heard that other volunteers have had some success with talking with other churches and serving with them, so we decided to give it  a try.  We first went to the Russian Orthodox church and asked the nice lady in their store outside the temple if we could serve with them.  She kindly told us that in order to serve with them we would need to be baptized in their faith and she even agreed to arrange the whole thing with one of their priests at no charge to us.  Thanks but no.  The next church we went to was the Bible church which was remarkably hard to get to and the entrance to the church was covered with overgrown grape vines and we even thought that maybe it wasn't a church anymore because we saw wet laundry drying on the grounds.  We yelled "allo" and a very nice Korean lady came out and said that yes indeed they are still a church but no indeed they have no service.  2 strikes.  We started our next task of finding the Korean church of the Peace Church.  We asked around and were led down many wrong paths until a large man who we saw earlier that day told us where the Peace Church was.  And this is when the miracle begins.  We walked in and immediately comes a 25-30 year old man down the stairs of the upper building and asked if he could help us.  We told what we wanted and he said follow me.  We went to the back of the church and there was four tables covered with people eating plove (Russian dish with rice and pork) all laughing and enjoying themselves.  We come in and he introduces us and sits us down and offers us food (which we turned down becasue we had just barely eaten) and started asking us a million questions and the whole time everyone was laughing and cracking jokes.  They are the nicest people and as fate would have it they had service planned that exact day in 30 minutes.  We talked to them for a little while longer and then a man who teaches karate to children came and picked us up (me and Staiger with a few members of their church) and we went and washed mats that his students play karate on.  There were endless piles of these mats and we had to leave after about 3 hours and probably didn't even get halfway done.  When people ask about the church and we can't tell them, it's sad because we know this message can change their life.  Like for example the dude that took us to the back when we first got there asked us after learning that we were Mormons how we know that our church is true.  I wanted to testify that moment about the Book of Mormon.  So there are some challenges with the new law but we are actually making better friendships now and before the law there is no way we would have gone to those churches to look for service.  There's good and bad.

I bought a miniature dolphin ice globe when we went to that dolphin show with Elder Roosa and I brought it to Vlad to put it in storage but I forgot to take it out of my bag and on the way home it broke and the water inside destroyed my planner.  What are you going to do?

I might take a nap until P-day is over.  Word of advice, never take a Benadryl in the morning.

 

I love you all so much!

Elder Wilding

Area Presidency President Martino.

From President and Sister Perkinson:

Dear Brother and Sister Wilding,

We want to share with you a little bit about our East Zone Conference.

The East Zone met together on Saturday August 27, 2016 with Our new Area Presidency member President and Sister Martino. 

It is always exciting to come together and prepare to exchange ideas and be spiritually uplifted! The counseling comes to each of us especially from the spirit! 

Our topic for this conference was on personal revelation and many were assigned to study and prepare to teach one another. 

It was a wonderful day together with the Volunteers from Sakhalin, Khabarovsk, Ussuriysk, Nakhodka, Artyom and Vladivostok!

We are grateful for the opportunity to serve the Lord and His children here. We are grateful for the power that come thru the many prayers in our behalf. We sincerely thank you for your support of love and faith!

Sincerely,

President and Sister Perkinson

Vladivostok Russia

The Sweeter the Oats the More Pitiful the Deadman

Hello family and friends!  I am delighted to be able to write you!  I love to read your letters and learn of you!  This week was exciting as ever.  One of my favorite quotes I have ever heard about Russia is this: "Things that just don't happen, happen in Russia" and that is how it often seems haha!

So I am very distraught to announce that I have not yet seen conference.  For some reason in Ussuriysk they had planned to watch it on the 25th or around there.  When I tried to change it it didn't work so I will be going through a least one more time of writing you before I hear the "pleasing word of God".  Although there is a loop hole.  We have already downloaded them all on the computer so I have already watched the women's conference and Saturday morning conference during dinner and after 9:30.  Although that is good, I am sad to say that my journal is lacking because of the conference watching.  But I am recommitted and I am only a few days behind.

We had a miracle and received a new investigator named Sergei.  Maybe I talked about him last letter but he just showed up at church and said he is looking for the truth.  The news for him is that he believes it and wants to get baptized!  We set a date for the 23rd of April but he called yesterday and said he couldn't come to church due to him being really busy.  So we will move that back but our hope and faith is still high and we love him!  He is honestly searching for the truth.  And we promised him he would find it.  He speaks English and I want to say he speaks fluently but he doesn't have the grammar down completely and always says "in the" before everything but he uses the biggest most abstract words that we have no idea how he knows what they mean let alone knows how to use them in a sentence.  Also another miracle about him is that when we met him on Sunday, I lost his number.  And I was in the galls of bitterness because of my stupidity.  But he came to English practice and everything worked out!  We were reading the Book of Mormon with him in English and the part where it says "600 B.C" he read as "600 years before Christmas" haha!  I guess he wasn't actually wrong, but it was hard to not laugh haha.  And when we asked him to get baptized and explained how it would be he said, "You are going to give me a dip haha".

So the title of my email is an intriguing Russian tradition.  I don't think that it is still practiced.  But how it goes is that after the funeral of a dead person everyone gets together and has a big feast.  Some traditional Russian foods are always served at these things such as blini and casha.  Or crepes and oatmeal.  And this is how it goes, if the person who died was a really really good person and everyone was sad that he died then that means that the casha (oatmeal) would be loaded with sugar.  And vice-versa.  If it was a bad guy and no one was all too sad that he had passed - the casha would taste awful due to the lack of sugar.  So the better you were, the more the sugar.  The worse you were, the less the sugar.  Therefore the sweeter the oats the more pitiful was the death of the dead man.  

Oh yeah haha, I never hung up the stuff you sent me for my birthday mom until Elder Roosa informed me that it was the 6th of April and that it was Jesus Christ's birthday.  So we hung it all up haha.  It brightens the place.  Oooh also me and Elder Roosa both have the same birthday and both had a companion in the MTC named Brower.  It is good having a new companion right out of the states.  He is shocked by how cheap everything is haha.  I guess it is something I just got used to.  

Went over to President Zaggoroni's house twice this week.  He played guitar for us both times and had us sing I am a Child of God in English for him both times.  Haha I love it!  He is such a happy man!  He is always so big on that!  You should be happy now.  Not down the road.  Not when you get to heaven but now.  I like that attitude.    

It rained twice this week as well.  I love the rain!  I hear it rains a lot in this city!  I am so happy!  

Roman, a potential we called out of the area book, came to church!  He calls me Elder McKay.  It is fine for right now but when we start meeting with him he will change.  

I am sure more is happening but thanks to the women's and Saturday morning session of conference and also to my own forgetfulness, that is all I remember .  

I love you all!

Elder Wilding

Dacha land

VLAD

Elder Memmott?

Elder Memmott?

Bowling with Elder Crabb

Nice...

 

Happy Easter

Dear everyone,  

This week was awesome!  It started off by me buying a way stylish hat from a store nearby.  I don't know how to describe it other then by a movie I have never seen but all the other missionaries call it this.  A "newsies" hat.  Or like a golfing hat.  It is great.  So many people wear them down here.  I got a gray one to match my suit.  Apparently it makes me look English though.  We went back to the hospital this week to try to speak with the doctor.  And when his nurse was talking to him she said that two English men want to talk to him haha.  We went in to see him and he asked us what we wanted to know and stuff.  But we were only planning on setting an appointment so that we could come back later with planned written down questions but he wanted it now so I asked how he became a doctor and he said something like 6 years of school and then something online and then he told us that until I was studying that anything he told me would be of no use to me because I wouldn't be using it and then we left.  Even though it didn't go how we planned, we learned something.  You have to go with prepared questions or they will kick you out.  We are going to try a different hospital next week.  

While going through the area book we came to a mans name and this is what it said "АКОП" but the last letter was written to look like n. And we thought it might possibly be the singer.  So I called him and said "Hello, is Akon there" haha.  Turns out his name is A_ _ _ and he is mostly from yzbakistan or something because that is not a Russian name.  There are a lot of people like that here.

Lesson with V_ _ _ _ _ _ was pretty good.  We said that God was his Heavenly Father which he kinda struggles with understanding.  And he also prayed!  But the shocker is when he arrived to church for sacrament meeting!  He came right after the sacrament was administered but he still came!  This is huge - he has never come before!  Elder Crabb called him and told him it was his last Sunday in this city.  Speaking of that we got transfers this week.  Elder Crabb is going to Vlad to be with Elder Lyman and I am staying in Ussuriyisk and will be training again.  My new Trainee's name is Elder Roosa.  I know nothing about him besides the picture that I have seen on the transfer paper.  He looks like a great guy though.  I am excited to train again but this came as a huge surprise.  I thought for sure me and Elder Crabb were going to be together another 6.  I am going to miss him.  I have been immensely blessed with great companions on my whole mission.  Training is fun but the fact that I will be the one with the most Russian is always a little daunting.  But I have learned that the Lord qualifies those he calls.  A promise that I am the uttermost thankful for.  I couldn't have made it this far without that promise.  God is good.  Elder Roosa arrives is a few days and I will take a bus down to Vlad with Elder Crabb and then he will go on his visa trip and I will spend a day or two in Artyom with Elder Gardner until Elder Roosa arrives and then I think we are going to get a ride back in a van.  Logistics for this mission are crazy.  I don't know how they do it.  

On our weekly service this week for Brother Constantine.  The other elders found 3,200 rubles on the ground in the middle of the street.  They picked it up figuring it was ours and then came and did service and then after when they realized that it wasn't ours we didn't know what to do.  So we prayed that God would inspire or give us revelation to whose money it was.  After the prayer we still didn't know, so then we knocked on doors.  We went door to door asking if anyone had lost money.  We didn't want to do this at first because we figured that everyone would just say yes and then try to guess the amount but to my surprise and pleasure everyone was honest and actually tried to help us find the right person.  It might have just been because we were four Americans in a tiny little farm land place but the word got around and people started popping out of their houses to come watch us.  We went to this Asian lady's house and rang the bell and she came out and said that she lost nothing.  So we headed back out to the street when she comes running out of the house with her son and asks how much we found and we said we wouldn't tell her and then she said was it 3,200?  And we were surprised and said yes and gave her the money.  It turns out her grandson was walking home and it fell out of his pocket.  It was a miracle for God to answer our prayer that fast and directing us where to go.  Then after on the way home we all stopped and had a prayer of gratitude for the help.

Thank you so much for the birthday package it was awesome!  Somehow I manged to wait until my birthday to open the presents.  I love the presents!  Also Sister Perkinson called me and wished me happy birthday which was so nice!  I had a great birthday.  I didn't really do anything but Elder Crabb gave me a jar of peanut butter which was much better than a cake!

Thanks for all the letters and support.  I love serving out here!  

Love,

Elder Wilding

My birthday presents

My way nice hat and birthday Panther pajamas and socks

Our way nice meal

Tiger of Ussuriysk

My district