Week 30

Hello hello. We should be finding out transfers later today. Everyone is so excited because there are some changes a-brewing and President Boswell was dropping hints about sending more missionaries to Liepaja, so we all want to know what is happening.

My favorite part of Monday was grocery shopping. We saw my little church neighbor best friend Maksims. Today he was wearing really old school frames (like old people ones...no offense older persons) and suspenders. I really wish that I had my camera. We went to the beach and had a picnic. We had SANDwiches. The wind started blowing and so there was sand everywhere...mmmm sandy cheese. We all had a lot of fun doing kartwheels, burying Elder Holdaway's feet in the sand, etc. etc. Rihards went with us to the Aldermani's. They didn't answer even though we set up the appointment Sunday night. We did get to meet one of the Svari brothers. The Svari family is inactive, but awesome and we have high hopes for these brothers and their families.

On Tuesday for district meeting I made "Thunder Crisp." Pretty much every elder on the mission that knows that my father's name is Thor is obsessed and anything that he cooks is the greatest thing because it must be packed with thunder. It was really yummy apple crisp with ice cream. They don't have very many different varieties of apples here. President Scerbinins helped us visit less active Tatiana. She is a really nice lady with the hugest white-lab like monster I have seen in my life; her dog was huge! It is also afraid of people, so no worries there. We watched the Restoration video with her and her daughter who was interested in the gospel. We are excited to start working with them through the Russian speaking members of our branch. We had a really neat lesson with Oskars, one of our favorite retention lesson people. We invited another member, Ludmila who has been having a bad week and we taught them from 2 Nephi 31:15-20 about what endure to the end means and what we can do to truly endure to the end. Ludmila was very grateful that we invited her to help with our lesson. Visiting inactive Velta was not as fun. She is pretty depressed and is ready to move on from this life. She was in a better mood by the end of our meeting though! Lidija is inactive now. Sad day, we had just helped her get activated. She doesn't feel like she can sacrifice the money to get herself to church.

Wednesday I had a nice little run outside. I love running; it is good stuff. We worked a lot on the Branch Directory that we are making, updating people's information and such. We also got to go help remodel at Rihard's again. I love helping! I am getting very good at ripping off wall paper. The music this time wasn't as great...Russian pop and random stuff like that. We made Sister Bonnie Jone's chicken salad for lunch which was delicious. The highlight of the night was sports. We played inside and Elder Schmidt is just ridiculous at ping pong. I ended up just sitting on the couch laughing and watching while ducking because the ping pong ball was going all over the place.

Thursday we made "Ferrin's Firehouse Chili." It isn't really Sister Ferrin's recipe, we just made it up. We found out that dried beans grow a lot. We had a LOT of beans so we shared the spice with the elders who appreciated something so spicy in Latvia. We got to go up to Rita's and go grocery shopping with her. It was fun. She doesn't like food so we enjoyed trying to guess what she would maybe eat. We settled on basic basics- yogurt, milk, cheese, bread, pasta. We got invited to Lidija L., a member's home. She has been working on the farm with her brother all summer, so we hadn't met her before then. Kirstin would like her, she milks her own cows and makes cheese from it. She used to be a nurse but she quit because she hated giving people pills and would rather help heal them spiritually. She has a super active seven year old girl Davisa who was so excited to have us over. She was waiting for us at the corner and was full of lots of hugs and did not want us to go. We had a great time with Santa Dike reading about Alma and his repentence for being a hooligan son of Mosiah going about destroying the church. She is such a great lady, goodness, we cannot get enough of her. Riksi her dog still has fleas though. Not fun. Speaking of fleas, Elder Holdaway has fleas, poor guy.

Friday consisted of more branch directorizing, planning, and helping with the apple party we had. There were all sorts of apple games; apple eating contest (little Ieva almost beat Inguss!), apple relays, apple juice sipping, blindfolded applesauce feeding, apple eating with no hands (and doused in yogurt). It was a lot of fun. Sister Ferrin and I were rubbish at the apple relays; it was almost as ridiculous as my face after she fed me applesauce blindfolded. I'm pretty sure I had more applesauce on other body parts than my head by the end. We had a pretty good turn out for our ward and we had apple desserts at the end.

Saturday we had a HUGE turn out for English class. The elders had to bring in two more tables. Cleaning took longer than normal because we got distracted talking about transfers and what could be happening. We met with Rita and taught her about hope. Poor kiddo has some rash/allergic reaction/disease and can't stop itching her rashes. The elders lost their keys on Saturday. They thought that maybe the hooligans stole it, but never fear, miracle masas are here! We prayed and then found their keys in the missionary closet! God answers prayers! Free time was spent practicing "Faith" for the Primary kids to sing. I ended up re-translating it and yeah, fun stuff!

Sunday I didn't even get to use my song translating skills because third hour President disbanned Primary because there was no one to go to Relief Society. Santa D. taught the lesson and did a great job talking about the spirit world. It was another one of those "aha" moments. There is no church in heaven, but the spirit world is organized by the church and that system still exists there. Anywho, it was sad that we had about 30 people at sacrament meeting, because it was a great meeting. Elder Schmidt, Sintija, Inguss, and Santa spoke. Santa's talk was my favorite. She spoke about missionary work and she just does a great job being funny and teaching pure doctrine. Elder Schmidt taught with the spirit and President taught second hour. He did a great job talking about revelation. I understood because someone translated it from Russian! We met with the Branch leaders and talked about our missionary efforts for a very long time and then went home ate, and took naps. Our struggling little branch is just stressing us out; we don't know how to help them. Got some meetings set up (notice the lack of a noun...you can do this in Latvian) and then met with the Frolavi family (members) in their home. Everyone behaved today and we had a really pleasant lesson.

Nothing too terribly exciting. We need to find some new investigators but life is good. Some of the leaves on the trees are starting to change and autumn is in the air, which I love. The air is just so fresh and crisp; you feel like you are in the mountains getting out of your tent in the morning.

I know that this church is true. Life is hard, the gospel is not. If we keep the commandments and are faithful, we will be blessed.

Sis. L.