Week 56

Hello Hello!

It is spring today. The weather keeps on going back and forth. I prefer the sun over the gray. It has been a REALLY long week. It is unfathomable that last Monday we were eating salted pig fat on rolls with the Branch President at a Ukrainian eatery. We also had some delicious borsch (my first time in Latvia). Sister Clark and I split some cherry filled pastas as well as some chicken. Yum yum. The restaurant was super great; the hostess saw that we were taking pictures and kept giving us more and more props. We left her a large tip. MIRACLE!! We saw Laima! Laima was baptized right before I came down to Liepaja. I was able to attend one retention lesson with her and it was amazing. Her spirit is so incredibly strong- I assume it is how it would feel if you were with President Monson. She is just incredible but then disappeared due to her family getting some anti-Mormon material and turning against her. We were walking to an appointment and I recognized her after we walked past so I yelled back after her and we talked. She and her husband have now divorced and it has all been really hard on her physically, emotionally, and spiritually. She isn't sure why this all happened and she is praying a lot to try to understand why this all happened and figure out what she should do. I told her to come back to church! It was so good to see her and all of us missionaries who know her fasted this Tuesday that she'd get her answer to come back to church. I was able to play legit dominos (not knocking them over) with the Frolavi family after we taught about Ether 12. It is incredible what happens because of faith.

Tuesday's big lesson was that the Lord will bless us if we go out of our comfort zone as missionaries. This is something I've been working a lot on with Sister Clark. We are working on finding a new kind of people and Sister Clark is just working on building up the guts to say hello. She really doesn't like contacting. She is INCREDIBLE with the language and does an excellent job teaching, she can talk to people on the phone, knock on doors, but she does not like talking to people outside. Anywho, I have some exciting news. When we met with Kristine on Tuesday she was to Alma 30. On Saturday she was in 3 Nephi. That is incredible! She is doing really well and Janis just doesn't seem to care. We contacted Jolly Janis from English. He said that he has almost read all of the Book of Mormon, and that if his temperature is down he will be at church on Sunday because he wants to come see what it is like. We contacted the most adorable girl, Ina, on the tram. She was super duper nice and couldn't remember what church she goes to, lol. We have a meeting set up with her this upcoming week. I was doing some computer work at the church and Ieva decided to be a missionary and use my bag. I got lip gloss-ized. Yum.

Wednesday we went contacting, studied, and then made pumpkin soup. Yum. We had a pass off lesson with the elders so that they could meet Liga from English since she lives in their area. Her and Elder Alder bonded over dogs and she came to church this Sunday! We had a little time before our last English class so we went with Liga to make origami tulips. Our English class loves us! People brought us chocolate and flowers! Santa D. helped us to teach Ieva (the troll) about keeping the Sabbath Day holy. Of course Santa and Ieva got along well. "What if it is really hot on Sunday, can we go swimming then?" "No, but you can dump a bucket of water on your head." "Oh, okay."

Thursday was transfers. No worries y'all, I'm staying in Liepaja. This will be my eighth transfer in a row her (one transfer = 6 weeks). That is a while. We made popeye pucks to celebrate. Thursday was also Women's Day! Last year we celebrated by having kid champagne with Anda and Visente. This year the elders brought us tulips and no bake cookies! We also had an amazing meeting with Skaidra (LA). She fed us pumpkin soup, bread, chocolate, and gave us a ride to the church (wherein was Madara making cinnamon rolls...yum!) so we wouldn't be late. On the way we heard "The Sweetest Thing" by U2. Elder Seitz (my favorite Russian elder who stole my boots once) called to wish us a Happy Women's Day. It was even better than my birthday!

Friday was a pretty crappy day. The weather was lame and we got jaked four times. At least one of them brought us a box of chocolate and said she didn't have time to meet. :) We met with Santa but it was a sad meeting. She is just tired, doesn't like her job, and knows that it is hard to endure to the end. "Can we do anything for you?" "Sure, slip me some poison so I go quicker." "No!!" Goofball. She actually told us this unbelievable story about how she and an old boyfriend of her designed Pastnieka maja, my favorite restaurant! She thought of a lot of the clever postal things and created the first menu. And naturally on that first menu is my favorite spinach and carrot soup. Santa had an architect boyfriend and she never told us! Anyway, we are so insanely blessed as Americans. Santa works over 40 hours a week and gets 80 lats (160 US dollars) a month. We spent that much last month on heating...we have a budget of 40 lats a week for groceries. She told this tender story about how when we have break the fast if she has recently gotten her paycheck she'll buy and bring something because the week before she gets her paycheck she goes without bread because she doesn't have enough money. We had a wild lesson with the Beldavi. It was good that no one died, crazy boys.

Saturday we had more appointments fall through so we went on a long contacting walk in Ezerkrasts. We also helped clean the church, I think. Lumila remopped everywhere that we mopped, so I don't know how much we did. We saw Valda out walking. With boyfriend Janis. Not cool. She hasn't been answering our calls or visits. Janis told us she'd come when she wants to. It is a good thing I don't know more sassy words in Latvian than I already do. In my brain came a slew of sassy French things to say back to him when he was talking. "So are you coming to church on Sunday Valda?" "I don't know, what do you think Janis." "Oh, I have work." "Well that's great, I didn't ask about you. That means you'll be free Valda." Anywho. Yuck. Dumb. Grr. I shot some hoops after that one.. We taught Janis and Kristine out of the Primary age 4-7 book. They are having a hard time grasping stuff. We actually taught the same lesson to Ieva and she understood a lot more.

On the Sabbath I gave a talk based off of DC 90:24. I enjoyed it, even if no one else did. Aivars Fishmeisters I convinced to come listen to me speak. He was so great. "Just like a professional!" He's going to get baptized one day. We went contacting on the beach after calling people and ran into this great lady named Ilze who over the past two weeks has been thinking about God and religion a lot. She asked us how to properly pray and we talked to her about her family and running among other things. She talked our ears off for about 20 minutes as the sun went down and her 3 1/2 year old played on the ice.