Spring is Almost Here

What a fast week. 

Things are starting to warm up. You can walk outside without a coat and feel pretty safe that a babushka won't yell at you for not dressing warm enough. Mornings are still cold though so I still go out with a coat. 

Sorry for not sending photos.  At the place which we email it is a little hard to send them but I should have a lot for you coming next week.

We are starting to get a feel of the work now. We meet with an old investigator from our phone (who I actually met a year ago while on splits in Vlad) and just walked around the city with him and talked. He has been investigating for several years now. Our meeting went pretty good. We agreed that we would read the Book of Mormon together and then play chess after. I am on the lookout for a chess club in Vlad. We met S from that in Sakhalin and it is a great place to meet people. The only catch is that when you play chess you usually think more and talk less. V (a friend we met at family night) is a complete master at the piano. He has memorized so many classical music songs from the great composers like Mozart and Bach and Beethoven. We met with him this week, we were hoping that he would be interested in hearing about what we believe but after talking to him it seems like no. It's too bad he is a great kid.

I gave a talk in church. My topic was the Holy Ghost. I told of story where we were removing bushes out of the yard and Dad had a feeling to tell Taylor to move from where he was and then when we started and the chain came untied and flew to the place that Taylor was at just seconds earlier. My talk went well!

On Saturday night Elder Barr and Elder De Sandre performed a concert in the church. They played a lot of different stuff like Imagine Dragons and Mumford and Sons and stuff like that. We had like 70 people show up! They did great performing! I was really impressed. They had a a few other people help them out. They had a violin, a piano, drums and a guitar. Me and Elder Bacon made banana bread for it. A group of 16-19 olds showed up at the end. They were nice.  Whenever they would talk about something and want to say that it is cool they would say "that is a beautiful topic" haha. It was a good way to meet people.  It almost makes me wish that I knew how to play an instrument... almost.

Zone Conference is on my birthday. I hope you all have a great week!

Love

Elder Wilding 

Churikinhood Living

At the start of this week I said all of my goodbyes and wrote in a few members transfer journals.  We went over to a sweet families house on Monday for FHE and gave them one of my name-tags.  The mother has a tree that she made out of name-tags with probably already around 20-30 names.  I was honored to leave it there.  That leaves me down to my last and final name-tag that is magnetic.  I don't know what happened to my others, but maybe they will turn up one day.  Then the next day we taught R the Plan of Salvation (which went good) and ended up going to another family's house for dinner.  I played one of the kids in chess that almost feels like a little brother to me and he beat me, it wasn't even close.  I beat him last time and was planning on leaving with that winning streak but he insisted we played.  Serving with Elder Lawrence these last 2 transfers I consider some of the funnest of my whole mission.  It never really hit me that I was leaving until I was already gone.  I really miss Sakhalin.  

We flew in to Artyom on Wednesday day and traveled to Vlad to try and meet with a man that Elder Lawrence met on his plane to Russia.  He wasn't there unfortunately but we had Sharma so I was happy.  Then we flew to Korea the next morning and were able to get into two sessions and perform baptisms and confirmations. Actually, that was the first time I have ever baptized anyone. It was excellent being in the temple. It always gets me ready for what is coming next.  It is a great feeling.  The next morning the Nielsons (senior missionaries there who are from Brigham City) took us up to a little outside work out area.  It was a great trip!

We made it back the next day to the motherland safe and sound.  We finally made it to our apartment Thursday night.  We are in the area of Churkin also now as Churkinhood.  It is a good place.  Kinda away from the center of town.  It takes 40 min. by bus to drive to the church. The city is HUGE.  We take a lot of buses and a lot of our money goes to those bus drivers.  The city is super hilly and extremely windy.  I get sore just from walking around and it is much colder than Sakhalin.  The branch is amazing!  So many cool and nice people live here.  Apparently the activities we have get huge attendance.  I have heard a lot about his city and whether or not they are true only time will tell.  I'm happy to be here.  Being whitewashed is a little bit of a struggle.  We don't know any of the members or investigators and sometimes when we call they are a little confused.  Getting to know the city is a fun adventure.  We haven't got lost yet! Elder Bacon is great!  He is from Arizona and has been on the mission a little over a year.  He is a wiz with directions and only needs to be somewhere once in order to know how to get there again.  It is 100% thanks to him that we haven't got lost yet.

I love you guys!  

Elder Wilding

***The photos below are from McKay's Mission President's wife along with this note:

Here is our new Vladivostok District: Chapman, Gee, Barr, Carlson, Jameson, Wilding, DeSandre, Williams, Burningham and Bacon. 

We want to thank you for your part in preparing Elder Wilding to serve the Lord here with us! 

He is a good Elder and is now serving as the District Leader here. 

We thank you for your many prayers in our behalf! 

*(2nd photo)-Saturday we discovered a little secret! Several Vladivostok Priesthood Brethren were gathered at the church doing 

some secret crafts! We are not sure what they are for, but we have a hunch because in Russia "Women's Day" is soon!

Sincerely,
President and Sister Perkinson
Vladivostok Russia

These are from McKay: 

*I had to crop out the Russian

Russians, Chess, Boots, Parable Plays, and Transfers

Where to start....

Well first off I am writing to you from inside the church on a TV that we hooked a keyboard and a mouse up to.  We start p-day at 8 a.m.. We can finishing shopping in about 30 min. which leaves us with an hour and half of free time that we don't know what to do with.  The library opens at 10 and almost nothing in Russia is open before that besides flower shops (which are open 24/7 for absolutely no reason) and grocery stores.  So we decided that we would just go right to the church.  lt is a lot better idea, we should have been doing this before.  For one it's free and secondly we always have to come here anyways afterwards to send pictures (....I guess not always, sorry mom...).  So here we go.

For some reason we have been meeting so many "interesting" people lately.  I was starting to think that everybody in the city was nuts until Sister Kaprolava who is a native Russian said that before her mission she thought everybody in Russia was normal.  I guess back home I didn't go on the streets everyday trying to find someone, anyone who would listen to me. For example we met this man on the streets who seemed really cool.  We were busy at the time he wanted to meet, so the sisters met with him but we came in on the end of the lesson.  He claimed that he is the Holy Ghost and that in some of us were reptile people and then he proceeded to cast them out of us.  I probably should have thanked him for his service.  He came again on Sunday and wouldn't you believe it that the Sunday School lesson was on the Holy Ghost hahahaha!!  I'm not sure but that has to be ironic.

Also we have been meeting so many good, sincere, cool people!  For example we met S 2-3 weeks ago at a chess club, he speaks English.  When I first met him we played chess, I ended up losing but not doing too bad.  Turns out that he is a chess teacher and was just letting me do alright not to crush my feelings haha.  We went over to his place today to teach him about the plan of salvation.  He had been keeping his commitment though of reading the Book of Mormon and had so many questions about that that we didn't even have any time to teach him about the plan of salvation.  He is smart and asks good questions.  It's cool he will ask a question for example about polygamy or some other things that seem strange to those who are not members of our church, then he will attentively listen to our answer and understand and accept it and then move on to the next question.  And as a bonus after every lesson he teaches us something cool about chess!  This time he had me and Elder Lawrence play each other in chess and he would make comments on our moves whether they were weak or strong and what we could have done that would have been better.  I made a lot of dumb moves but somehow came off the victor.  He didn't make it easy though, I had to kill all his pieces before it was over.

We finally bought a USB adapter that hooks up to our TV and ever since that we have been watching Bible videos and listening to talks every night.  It is actually really really nice but crazy how much faster the time seems to fly.  Also last Monday we went bowling with the sisters.  We ended up playing 3 games.  The first I was rusty and was mediocre, the second I was on fire but ended bad and the third game I shouldn't of even played -  it was awful!  Also something fun the branch put on  production where families in the church dress up and act out parables.  We as a district had the parable of the ungrateful servant, I'll try to send some pictures it was really fun!

My beloved Alaskas (my boots) are ruined.  They are full of holes and have some paint on them from when we painted the Book of Mormon ice sculpture.  I am going to buy new shoes today hopefully for a good price at the market.  It is starting to warm up so I won't buy more boots.  I want a dress shoe that I can zip up so that I don't have to tie them.  We finished the challenge of sewing 35 blankets!  They are now all packed up and ready for delivery.  Nikolai came and helped twice before his trip to the north of Sakhalin to see his family.  He is going to be gone a month.  Transfers are this Thursday and I think I might be leaving so that might be the last time I see him in a long time.  But hey there is always Facebook!

The Argyles had us over for lunch yesterday, we had BACON!!!!  If I leave I am going to deeply miss this place.

Love,

Elder Wilding

 Completed Blankets

 Cool Russian Bible

 My Alaskas (boots)

 Cool Russian

 Car on a roof

Horses

*Moms' Note: I am adding a little excerpt from his former companion Elder King's email because it will be of interest to some of you: 

The top 10 most common words in Russian:

1) и -- particle, it means "and" in most cases. Can also be used for emphasis

2) в (во) -- "in" or "into" (preposition)

3) не -- "not"

4) на -- "on" or "onto" (preposition)

5) я -- "I"

6) он -- "he"

7) что -- "what"

8) с (со) -- "with" or "from/off" (preposition)

9) это -- "this, that, it"

10) быть -- to be (verb)

I'm not going to explain cases. I don't want to open that can of worms.

A Time of Training - A Time of Chess

So, I should be writing home a little bit early now becasue of the new change to our P-day schedule.

Good Week!  We met a lot of new people.  N came to church on Sunday and received the Aaronic priesthood.  I had the privilege of giving him that priesthood.  It was a great experience.  N has a month long vacation and in two days he will be heading up to the north of Sakhalin for about a month.  We are sad that he is leaving but will still keep talking to him on the phone.

One of our new investigators who actually is a chess teacher taught us a thing or two.  I was amazed by the amount of strategy that goes into that game.  He was showing us how we should start a game and what to do if on the board is only kings and a pawn and most importantly how to put some poor fellow in checkmate in two moves.

The branch is in the process of sewing blankets (35 to be exact) for those in need.  It is a big project and we have been able to help a little.  Besides all the new investigators, most of our other lessons have revolved around teaching the members the new goals that the area presidency put out.

The gospel is true. I am blessed to be out here.  Thanks for all your prayers!

Elder Wilding