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

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