An American, a German, and a Russia walk in to a ba...... Church

My Dearest Family,

Quite a week I have had.  The sun seems to be focusing all of it's energy on Russia judging by how hot it is.  The Russian seems to be falling into place.  Of a truth, whenever I learn a new word I hear it everywhere with everyone with whom I conversate.  And I always am amazed how I never heard it before.   Be diligent and persistent is so so important in learning a language.  Some things I could study for hours and never understand and then one day for some weird reason I hear something and it all clicks and it is stuck in my brain forever.  But that never happens if you stop.

Update on the new apartment:  The moisture in the air has been thinning and we have been removing the gross sometimes moldy pillows and other items out and it is smelling and feeling better!  It actually is a really nice place once you clean it up!  

Yesterday in church we had 3 speakers planned to speak.  All 3 showed up and gave fantastic talks.  The only thing was that they were a little too short and seeing that we had 16 minutes left on the clock I stood up once again and gave a talk before the congregation without foreknowledge of the event.  And it went so well!  I gave my memorized "restoration lesson" lesson and turned it into a talk.  I said the first vision over the pulpit and it was sweet!  When I was talking about prophets, V comes in and yells "I'm a prophet" haha.  Next time though I am probably making Elder Staiger give one becasue it seems like it is always me.  Or maybe Sister Blonkquist!  (it is her second week)

The Testaments was the movie we decided to share at movie night.  We bought a huge block of ice cream (they come in a bag) for the film.  Not a big turn out so the people that were there got loads of ice cream each!  Sad thing was that a sister in the ward showed up about 15 minutes late or so and all the ice cream was gone but she saw our empty dishes.  But I guess as the saying goes, the early bird eats the ice cream.

We had a sick lesson with the other elders old investigator Zh on the 10 commandments!  We taught him the signs you can make with your hands in order to remember.  And also created a Book of Mormon Characters bingo!  Every week after we'll be playing!  Sister P made some dang good blini and the stuff we put on it was egg whites and sugar blended together.  I don't remember what it is called I only remember how it tastes.  как нельзя лучше.

We took the sacrament to this sweet babushka who has a little problem with her memory and is so funny!  Most times she tells us the same life stories she has told us a lot of times and this week she found out that Elder Staiger is from Germany.  She raised her arm and shouted "Heil Hitler" a few times haha.  She always does something like that which makes all of us laugh!

We went and played soccer at locomotive field with the Russians that President Z. works with.  They are good!  But this time I didn't do too shabby and Elder Staiger was showing all of them how Germans*** play.  

Fun week!  The second half goes quicker than the first unfortunately!

Love Elder Wilding

 With the prophet

Our old apartment

Without flash - with flash

One time I swept our old apartment

Purple tie

Calling

Apartment Swap

Welcome!

Might as well start off with transfers.  Elder Nielson and Hess have left the city and me and Elder Staiger are moving to their old apartment, while our sisters take our nice, freshly clean and large apartment.  Serving without sisters for 6 months definitely had some benefits. 

I don't remember if I told you or not but last week we bought a spin trimmer from the Renik.  I think I may have said how the grab broke off after only a few minutes.  The machine shakes so violently in your hands that it made one of our members hands bleed from using it after only a short time.  I tried for myself this week (with gloves) and it about shook me out of those gloves.  It cannot be adequately described in words how forceful it shakes. Just thinking about it amazes me.  

Elder Hess asked me to speak in sacrament again.  Only strange thing about it was that he didn't give me any topic to speak on. And that he let me know about it 5 seconds before I should speak.  It happened again, asked to speak in sacrament meeting over the pulpit.  My mind went searching once again for a topic, anything that I could speak about and I didn't really get much back from my that search.  I could only remember what I had studied that morning.  Which was a talk in the Liahona by Elder Bednar which by the way is an amazing talk.  I spoke a little bit about Tyson and I think I took around 10 minutes again.  It went well with a lot of Russian mistakes.

We deep cleaned our apartment.  We thought we were having sisters moving in on Thursday so we packed up all of our books and I shrink wrapped my clothes and was about ready to go to the other apartment when we found out that the sisters would only be there for one night less than 14 hours and that we could have just left all of our stuff there with out shrink wrapping anything.  That's just life.

We have taught Mr. W everyday for about 10 days and he is progressing marvelously!  The Chinese pamphlets came and it is much easier to teach him now!  He always works on Sundays so it is hard to get him to church.  And he goes back to a city 3 hours out of town in 1 day.  We can't call him and teach him due to the new laws.  It is just a minor setback.  He will be baptized eventually of that I know.

Well that just about fills you in.  It was good to read all the emails and hear everything is going good.  I'm glad to be staying here with Elder Staiger!  I love you all!

 Elder Wilding