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

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

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