Week 23

This week was a lot more mellow than last week. It made it seem like it was forever ago that I was off on adventures in Lithuania. On Monday we didn't do much. I sat and listened to very funny Latvian pop songs for an hour and a half while Sister Ferrin got a pedicure. She really liked it and it made her happy. The cepelini from Cepelini did not make us as happy forever. We were quite excited to try this Lithuanian dish of meat in a potato shell with sauce after our excursion there but it wasn't very good. I'm sure it lives up to its reputation in Lithuania though. We did some shopping and I found a pretty awesome Vera Mode cardigan (for all you people who have been to Europe) for $1.50 which is quite the steal. It was definitely the highlight of my day. (That and that the color is, and I quote, "shark blue.") We did lots of calling in the evening (to be continued....)

Tuesday we went and visited former investigator Astride. She is an older lady that I called on Monday. She is sick and lonely and wanted us to come over right then. I told her that we couldn't Monday night, but that we could the next day so she said, "In the morning!" She is a sweet lady who has back problems and is going blind. She can't read but her kids bought her a plane ticket to England and she is going to get a laser eye operation there. We enjoyed visiting with her. She was pretty great. She wants to come to our church once she is back and she told us that we have beautiful teeth and that we need to get married. She also couldn't believe that we had to be in at 9pm. "That is the best time for dating! You should go out. No one would know." This was later followed by, "Latvian men are awful. They all drink and smoke." We visited with less active Ena who is still less active. At least she knows what she should be doing, that is always a good start. We taught her about Jesus Christ. I really like how frank she is. "No I didn't read the Book of Mormon. I could have, I had time, but I watched this new serial on TV instead even though I should be reading." We also met with Oskars and taught him about becoming gods (he asked for it!). It went much better than we were expecting and then we met with the Frolovi and trying to control Uldis, the dad, and Eriks, the son. We were talking about the armor of God. "I'd rather have a tree!" interrupted Eriks. And then in English Uldis starts, "Do you know what super hero is more powerful than spiderman? What is the word for cibas in English? Ah yes, slippers. Slipperman!" Oh goodness!

We feasted on homemade pizza on Wednesday and visited with Rita. She is still doing well and then we had sports night with the youth, which mostly consisted of Rita throwing a volleyball as hard as she could at Sandijs and vice versa. Madara went with us contacting. She is hopefully going to serve a mini-mission so we are pretty excited for her. The hooligans that are normally at the church were out where we were knocking. One of them has a crush on Sister Ferrin (he is maybe 12) and his older friend came into the apartment we were knocking and yelled, "We love you sisters!" while we were talking to this lady at her door. Jinkies!

Thursday was quite the day (conclusion of Monday). I called a potential investigator, Vineta, on Monday and she wanted to meet. Even more of a miracle was that she actually showed up, and with her two adorable kids. Her girl is probably around 4 or 5. "You speak Latvian bad. It sounds like Russian." "Well we aren't from Latvia." "Oh, that makes sense." Her little boy was a very big two year old who loved to play with the lights. So we were attempting to teach Vineta a first with all this excitement going on and watch The Restoration film. "I've seen this film before with other sisters. They came to my house and we watched it." Later on, "I have that book (pointing to The Book of Mormon) but it is black and it is bigger." "Does it have The Pearl of Great Price? Are you a member?" She was! It turns out that Vineta is this inactive member that has been missing for several years. How insane is that?!!? She doesn't have a correct address on the ward list and the phone number is wrong, so no one could ever find her. Her cell phone number was on a potential investigator list though. I love finding lost sheep! It is so sad that they get lost though. On Friday I went through the ward member sheets to try to find hers. It was sad to see how many lost sheep there are. About 2/3 of the teaching records are people who are no longer on the ward list because no one could contact them.

After our mind boggling appointment with Vineta we went to the new Relief Society President's home. Ruta had yummy "bab food" as Elder Lynch calls it. Zelma, another member had come over for a visit so we taught both of them the importance of visiting teaching. "It is summer. We don't do that here during the summer! No time!" Jinkies! We gave her a list of all the women in Relief Society so she can make assignments. She and Zelma were looking at it and started telling us all the info on everyone. It is sad how many people don't come to church because of a miscommunication that offended them. Santa's meeting was eventful as usual. We were talking about the ten commandments. "Oh! I know those! Word of Wisdom, go to church, give talks, celibacy..." "It is the law of chastity Santa, you can get married and stuff." "Yeah, yeah, celibacy." We then taught her the real ten commandments, but I won't lie, I really liked hers. Thursday we also went to try to find the referral that Uldis gave us. Problem is he lives in a large apartment building and we don't know his apartment number, nor his native language, Russian. It should be quite the adventure trying to find him!

Friday was my name day! (My real one, not in April like we thought). Happy name day to me! I made myself cupcakes. We met with Astride again. She was so much happier and looking better. She still wants us to go with her and take her to the airport and live with her though. I'm worried that if we did she would lock us out and make us go out and party in the evenings. We had a neat district meeting. We learned some of the new mission rules. First rule: smile once each day. (tangent: I'm kind of sad it is only once a day. I'm just going to pretend that it means wake up and smile and keep it on until the end of the day!) The other is more news. 1. We are all getting DVD players for our apartments. We will be able to watch The District, The Restoration, and one or two other church films. Moscow mission is getting to do the pilot programs with ipads. I am so jealous! They are going to do area book work online so that the mission president and stake presidents, etc. can have access to it as well. I hope that happens for everyone soon. I think we youngsters would keep a lot better track of people if it was on a computers [and save the trees!]. We learned that a new focus we will have is having good studies. I really like President Boswell's focus on Preach My Gospel. It is such a great resource we all have as members of the church.

Saturday we got to go out running again (after a very long period of not running which caused much sadness in my land) and so naturally something interesting happened. There is a huge music festival and so there were many drunk young persons roaming around the streets at 6:30am. And pretty much all weekend. English class was only Santa and Viktoria again. They are a fun little class. We went and visited Lidija, a member in the evening. She fell in her kitchen "Like a ball! I've never fallen like that in my life. I don't know how I did it. Ha ha ha." She was pretty epic in the best sense of the word. Her head was still hurting so she tried lying on different pillows and then wrapping a scarf around her head. At that point Sister F. just burst out laughing. By the end of our visit she had born a sweet testimony and her head was feeling better. So neat!

Sunday was good. No surprises. Church was fine and dinner was lovely, naturally (cous cous with carrots and carmelized onions if you were wondering). We went out contacting. No one too interesting to report on.

I love you all! The church is true!

Bisous!
Soeur Lindstrom