Week 32

Mari 26 September 2011
Hello hello, ciao ciao,

Monday was a wild preparation day. We were more tuckered out than prepared by the end of it with all of the running around we were doing. I trimmed Sister Wilson's hair and then we went off to do errands and such. We spent quite a while at JYSK (the wannabe IKEA of Latvia, but totally kind of lame) discussing the qualities of different rugs. We are both penny pinchers and so shopping was fun. We definitely bought way too much. Yay for food storage! We bought kebabs at the only kebab place in town with some nasty cold fries. We couldn't get them to taste any better. So we just had a whirlwind of activities and when it came to working time we got to meet with the Beldavi family (members). We had fun singing "Wicked" on the way over. Sister Wilson is quite the singer. I enjoy the random singing episodes I hear while we are in the house, they make my heart giggle. We had a good lesson with the Beldavi boys and mom about prophets. Inguss wasn't there, but Elvis was (the 13-year old). Raivo, Lauris, and Elvis all said they want to serve missions. That was such a miracle to hear Elvis say that (he is inactive)!

On Tuesday I felt like rubbish. The black lung of the MTC is back!! We were still able to go out and work though. We had a semi-awkward District Meeting on the Spirit...Sister Wilson isn't used to small districts. We went to help Zelma Golta with the lesson for Relief Society on signs of the Second Coming. She fed us potato pancakes, tea, AND ice cream. It was an awful lot of food. I am glad I don't serve in America where the members stuff you with roasts and steak all the time. We had a super fun lesson with Santa S. (investigator). Rita and Ieva (the Branch President's 6 year old) helped out. Ieva was so fun to have in the lesson. She got to be God and give Santa the candy blessings. Later in the evening we went to Guna's home (a legit house!). She is in our English class so that she can help her kids with their English homework. She is a super nice lady and seemed fairly receptive to our spiritual thought. Sister Wilson and I have been having fun teaching together. She really brings the Spirit in with her thoughts.

Wednesday morning we got to go and visit Vineta (inactive) finally! Her kids are still sick. We taught them the Plan of Salvation and Martina her little girl had fun helping me draw the plan. We had service at Rihard's (who sang Britney Spears to us this week) with our new pair of hooligan elders. Elder Schmidt and Elder Alder came with their punk beanies on looking like trouble. We had some delightful minestrone soup. Good thing it is good because we will be having it for several meals. Maybe one day I will learn how to make less soup. Poor Santa (recent convert) is under the weather. After teaching her about the patterns of apostasy and restoration the elders came over and gave her a blessing. We had an awesome awesome awesome lesson that Kristina (BP's wife) helped on. We went to Jana Gromenko's, a Russian inactive member. I was totally expecting this older boring lady but she was so hip and fun and cute. We are hoping that with time she will be active again (curse those busy schedules!).

Thursday was a party! It was Sister Wilson's 1-year mark as a missionary. We had humongous calzones and almond pear cake to celebrate. We also did weekly planning and tried to take apart our washing machine. You see, it is broken and Sister Wilson has skills with anything that she can use her Leatherman on. The elders came and showed us how to clean the filter. They let us keep the rusty bobby pins and they took the two lat coin. Too bad the washing machine is still broken. We met with Oskars who is getting surgery on Tuesday. He is doing okay. Bless that man's heart, he has many blessings in store for hm. We then had the youth party and afterwards I had my first Skype conference. We had it with President S. on the other end. We being us sisters, the elders, Rihards, and Kaspars, the branch mission leader and we discussed the Branch goals for next year. The girls saw us on the screen and started waving and making faces, it was pretty cute. I got calls from Sister Boswell and then Dr. Mayberry (the area doctor who can't even give you drugs or anything, just listen to you since he is in Germany). He wants me to get an inhaler and see a lung doctor. Oh boy!

Finding a lung doctor isn't fun. We spent most of companionship study calling different phone numbers trying to get an appointment. Luckily, European socialized medicine can play to your advantage. We went to the pharmacy and you can get inhalers without a prescription for the low price of $4.50. Thank you communism for saving me a trip to a lung doctor (at least for now). We went to Lidija's with President so he could apologize and we gave her tram tickets to come to church. (She didn't come on Sunday though :{ ) We then stopped by Skaidre's and shared a quick thought from Mosiah 15:5 with her which she loved. We then spent the rest of our Friday eating couscous, watching Together Forever with Rita and Sandijs, and having Latvian at Marika's. She fed us mayonaise cake. Elder Schmidt thought the whipped cream was mayonaise and not that the chocolate cake had mayonaise in it. We all just about died laughing. Elder Alder ate at least half of that cake by himself. It was insane. By the end he was sitting cross legged with the whipped cream bowl dipping the cake in the bowl. Gross! The people love him though.

We had a HUGE English class this Saturday...thirteen people (and all women!). After teaching our class we taught Santa S. (investigator) about Agency from the Strength for Youth pamphlet. She really enjoyed it all. We cleaned the church as always. I got to clean the windows today which was fun and then we went home and ate and then went to the elders. You see, the repairman said they'd need to send our washing machine away to be fixed and we needed to wash our whites. We remembered all our wash, but not the phone. We also didn't know which apartment number was the elders. Luckily Sister Wilson's gut is better than mine so we found it on the first knock. Their stairwell is spooky though! We had another adventure in the dark, visiting Santa with Rihards. She might have to have surgery on her breast. We then headed back to the Elder's, collected our laundry and then had a lovely evening walk home.

On Sunday Sister Wilson gave a great talk. And then I gave an improv one because she was the only assigned speaker. The Tolmacovi were at church (miracle!), but we still had maybe 25 people there. No one was there to teach primary so I used my sunbeam skills and pulled out an hour lesson to keep the children entertained. It actually went really well...Lehi's Dream along with the interpretation, drawing pictures of the vision, and apple snacks from the tree of life. I then had to run to Relief Society to conduct that and left Sister Wilson to man music time on her own with Ludmila. Relief Society was good. Besides myself only 3 sisters attended. We had branch council and then a meeting with Kristina to plan visiting teaching. The girls stole our bags and name tags and were sister missionaries. It was pretty darn cute. They also found Sister Wilson's makeup, so I got LOTS of lipgloss...mmm.

My mouse keeps on glitching, so that is just going to have to be all for this week so that it doesn't freeze and you don't get a letter!