Week 40

21 Nov. 2011

So, in random news, Masa Madara Zommerovska (member from Liepaja) just got her mission call to the Temple Square Mission. She reports to the MTC the end of March 2012. You will all have to go visit!
Happy Thanksgiving! Mosiah 2:19-22

Monday was Sister Wilson's birthday and we had a fun time celebrating with Sintija and the Elders at the Rock Cafe. I played billiards against Elder Davidson and I lost, but not too badly! Sister Wilson got a gorgeous ring with lots of flowers and vines on it from Maris the ringman. We had a miracle Monday Night! We were able to meet with Vera and her daughter, Diana. When we got there Vera was having Diana's friend read the Liahona magazine about The Book of Mormon. Vera then asked us to explain what we did as missionaries to this friend. When we got to The Book of Mormon Vera took over and started to show her the pictures. [Pointing to Joseph Smith] "See, this is a prophet.." It doesn't get much better than that! Sadly, Vera believes it all but doesn't see the need to get baptized again since she feels that faith is enough. She's going to be a member eventually; she is trying so hard to find truth.

On Tuesday I got to roleplay with our Russian-speaking Elder Palmer. He is picking up Latvian quickly, he did the whole roleplay in Latvian. We borrowed a guitar to practice for the talent show and while tuning it we broke a string...gulp! We bought new ones after we had Thor's bread and NY ziti for a late birthday lunch. Sister Wilson loves dad's artesian bread. We met with Guna in the evening and taught her about church attendance and invited her to come. She seems a lot more open to the idea now!

We got to have a special District Meeting on planning with the Zone Leaders on Wednesday. I liked the change of mindset they are trying to instill. Instead of knocking you are finding X amount of lessons doing activity Y. Cute Santa Dike gave Sister Wilson chocolate and a flower for her birthday. Oh how I love Santa, never a dull moment. And cute Oskars (apparently everything is cute this week), he is opening up so much. I am sad that we won't have to teach him retention anymore after this month.

We taught investigator Santa about the word of wisdom on Thursday. The talent show was on Thursday and Sister Wilson got asked to sing "I love you like a love song" by Selina Gomez with Santa. We took the other option which was "Mistletoe" by Justin Beiber. In the end, both Santa and Sister Wilson sang solos. I played "Viva la Vida" by Coldplay on the guitar...not my best performance, but I didn't practice since we broke the guitar! My favorite talent was the primary doing the "I Don't wanna be a chicken I don't wanna be a duck" song in Russian. As missionaries we had a tie tying race (sisters won), sang "I Need Thee Every Hour" which went well, and "Hallelujah" which did not go well. It is the Hallelujah from Shrek. The Branch President asked us to sing it because he thought it was a church song. It was sooo awful. We had no accompaniment and were laughing at the lyrics.

Happy Independence day Latvia! We are the same age...weird. We had a weird lesson with the recently found member, Dzintra. I'm still confused. For Elder Palmer's half birthday we gave him half a card, half a candy bar, and half a cup cake with half a candle. We thought we were pretty funny. Ieva turned six and we went to her birthday party. Playing charades was hilarious...carrots, lamps, snails, oh boy! On the way back we saw some of the fireworks...I'm glad our Independence Day is in July...so much more romantic and fun to celebrate. After Skaidra (member) showed us her fun remodeled tropic paradise bedroom we had a great lesson with her on priorities. She is quitting her job at the end of the year!

On Saturday we found out that Maragrita is in Ireland and she didn't say goodbye. God bless her and keep her safe, that girl will need it. I guess she is planning on staying for a year. We had an awesome lesson with some of the Beldavi boys. Elvis really likes the scriptures and we had fun coloring with Raivo and Lauris.

We picked them up for church on Sunday and had a good sacrament meeting. Liga came to church again, hurray! I helped in Primary for a little bit. Sister Wilson and I have very different crowd control styles, so it was interesting. I'm marrying someone with the same parenting style views! Anywho, I was able to talk to a great lady on the tram Sunday night...she was going home from visiting her son's grave so I got to testify about the Plan of Salvation and she had lots of questions about our church. Maybe she will come one day. :)

The church is true, have a wonderful Thanksgiving. There is so much to be grateful for!

Masa Lindstroma