Week 38

7 Nov 2011

Well, life is unpredictable. Sister Wilson and I are still together in Liepaja. If life will be predictable I will be staying here the rest of my mission and training twice in Liepaja. It just depends if President Boswell wants to throw me under the bus and have me be lost in Riga all the time. I definitely wasn't expecting it. He is having all three sisters who are leaving this transfer together in a tri-panionship. Weird. In other random news, Margarita is not going to Ireland and we now have heating on in the house. It makes life so much more pleasant to be warm. Now we just need to get rid of the mice. I always tell God, if one lands on me while I am sleeping I am going home to America. And so far there haven't been any mice in my bed, so that is good. I am sorry if any of you have written me and I haven't written back...it means that I did not get your letter. There seems to be a mail monster between America and Latvia.

Monday was a good day for us. Poor Elder Schmidt did NOT have a good day. His older brother is engaged to his ex-girlfriend person AND he broke the refridgerator while he was defrosting it and has to buy a new one. Fridges are very expensive. We ate at Doka Pizza and boy do they have yummy fries. To celebrate Halloween Sister Wilson and I made carmel apples (sooooo good!), pumpkin cookies, as well as carved a pumpkin...into a mushroom. Sister W. thought this was hilarious.

Tuesday night we got the shocking call that we are staying together. I wasn't expecting this, so we will most likely have 3 together in Liepaja, if President B. doesn't pull anything else crazy. We had a lesson from Ether 6 which Oskars loved. He can work now and is looking for a job...hurray! We did some contacting and harvesting as well, as missionaries do. We knocked into this really awesome Russian lady that had her husband pass away recently. She had two cute boys, the older one translated her Russian into English. They had us in for tea and showed us their cat. They are the cutest family and they invited us back. Hopefully we will be able to teach them!

Wednesday contacting I suppose we were looking good. A man told us we were the prettiest girls in the world. He was also drunk at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. Anywho, these beautiful girls made Thor's no-knead bread and ate it with pumpkin soup (from the carved pumpkin doner). We had a nice lesson with Zelma. She didn't overfeed us today (she actually made us carrot juice) and she is a great member missionary sharing the gospel. She is doing well, although still sad taht her family isn't open to the gospel.

Thursday we went and shoved newspaper into Santa the older's windows. Aside from the cat attacks it was a lot of fun. Crocodiles, the cat, was not excited about us cleaning up more and moving boxes and she got a good chunk o' Sister Wilson. She hates cats. We also got to take Riksi, the dog out for a walk to practice pet sitting. Santa is getting surgery this month and she asked us to take the dog out for walks. Santa and I just laughed as Sister Wilson tried to control the dog. I was under the weather on Thursday so I got a blessing. It was really interesting, it talked about the people desperately needing me here in Liepaja and my trials are to give me perspective. Elder Palmer was a great mouthpiece for the Lord, and I will be fine and better. The elders then stuck around for a mini-meeting in our apartment. They all seem so happy. Elder Davidson (3rd transfer, from Texas) is very mature and speaks very well. He is the first to undergo the new MTC training, and I think it works well. He is a great missionary already. We had a pretty fun night. Before then, since I got banished to home by Sister Boswell we watched this new Russian film about how to make a happy family and ate popcorn. It was the weirdest non-church church film I have ever seen. It had English subtitles that made it totally worth it.

Friday for exercise we went to the beach. It was really pretty..foggy and calm. I was pretty hyper during planning which was just ridiculous. I forgot about my talent for making up new lyrics to songs. Sister Wilson thinks I should be sick more often. Anywho, we had church cleaning with the Elders and Margarita and Sandijs. On our way out we saw the trolls and Martins (Ieva and Olga). They seemed like they were up to no good. Sad day.

Saturday we taught English as always and had a good time. We have lots of promising people coming from our English class. We also had District Conference, which was excellent. President Boswell told us to stop living in the past and complaining and just embrace the future. The prophet Moses was better than the Pharaoh but people still complained. It is a commandment for us to be happy and we need to choose happiness. Elder Senkanes shared about when he translated the Book of Mormon into Latvian. He said he did it for two hours a day and the Lord helped him to do everything else he needed to. When he finished he thought he'd have those two hours, but they just disappeared! We need to put the important things first.

Sunday's session was from President Uchtdorf, Elder Oaks, and Sister Thomspon broadcast. I almost had to be Sister Thompson in Latvian. I convinced Sintija to do it instead so I was able to enjoy all the great talks instead of stress about translating. They all did really good and told the East Area that they need to be more faithful, come to church, pay tithing, etc. We had a great lesson with the Beldavi in the evening, Elvis was so excited to learn about the Title of Liberty. We then made our own Title of Liberty, which everyone thought was super great. We also met with Rita and started to teach her from chapter 6 of Preach My Gospel- Christlike Attributes.

The church is true, I love you all. We are so blessed by the Lord. We are here on this beautiful earth and we have a Saviour. He lives and He lives for all man-kind.

Love,
Sister Lindstrom

Read Alma 38! It is one of my new favorites.