Week 57

Sorry this will be short. I spent some time trying to figure out schooling. I'll send pictures next week.

MONDAY

We made a cd from the free downloads on the LDS youth site. Yay for new music! Davis (age 7) came and helped us teach Janis and Kristina about temples and eternal marriage. She was really shy and didn't say anything in the lesson but was bouncing off the walls outside. We are glad she behaved. Sister Clark is having a rough time with the whole Valda totally ignoring the church and just the day and night contrast. Hard to imagine that a month ago she was begging us to come over every day. Now she doesn't acknowledge our existence if we see her on the street. :(

TUESDAY

The sunrise was beautiful at the beach. We practiced being conversational in District Meeting. Elder Alder is really good at it. We are not. We had pizza with mission leader Kaspars and his kids. We finally met with the Tolmacovi (LA) again! We had a great lesson about the compasses we have in our life. We also got to go contacting by the park and saw Ilze, the runner lady from last week running!

WEDNESDAY

Happy Pi day (3.14). We made a chocolate banana pie to celebrate. The crust was made out of banana flavored cookies. Yum! We had an English lesson/spiritual thought with an older lady Alvine from English. She brought me a pink and yellow rose! I was quite twitterpated. I worry for if a boy were to give one to me...I like flowers. Any boy definitely has competition with my English class though, lol. Flowers, chocolates.... anywho it was awesome because in the first 20 minutes of her lesson she started asking questions about the church and seems interested enough that she should be coming to an activity sometime! We also met with Skaidra (LA) and learned more about her and taught how obedience makes us free- God's laws aren't restrictions! We had a great lesson on talents with Zelma. She fed us yummy babushka food but the best part was the 5-year-old she was visiting. Raivo was super shy when we first got there and hid. In the middle he was pretending to be a lion and it was super funny. At the end he hid our books and then said he hid another one just so that we would stay! We also had sports night and I still have my floorball (street hockey) skills! I am out of shape though- It was right after way too many potatoes at Zelma's and I may have thrown up in my mouth. It reminded me of one of my good friends. ;D Member Raivo (the little one) was there and we played ball as well. His laugh is PURE HAPPINESS. Love it. On the way home the elders passed off a street contact, Elina. She is a nice lady who wants to know more about the BOM.

THURSDAY

It was Elder Alder's birthday so we took him breakfast in bed. At 6:25. We knocked for at least 3 minutes. We thought we were pretty funny (and so did he); we brought him cereal and forever shelf milk. Later in the day we took him 13 different flavors of cookies because he wouldn't tell us what kind are his favorite! Today the sunrise at the beach was a pretty pink. We taught a quiet lesson (all the kids were sleeping) to Janis and Kristina about the atonement. We taught Santa about how the Lord helps us to be obedient like he did with Nephi building the boat. While we were at the Beldavi teaching the word of wisdom Elvis (14) hid our books...seeing a trend??? I now know if a boy steals my book at the library he wants me to stay at the library, lol. We also got to be secret agents and sneak home so that the trolls wouldn't follow us. (explanation to follow).

FRIDAY

Good morning 4:30am bus ride! I thought we were going to die. We took a taxi to the bus station and our driver was SCARY. He was out smoking when we got outside. "How are you this morning?" I chirply asked. "I should be sleeping." "Shouldn't we all. *gulp*" We listened to heavy heavy metal on the way to the bus station. "Where exactly are you girls going? Riga? I could drive you there and we could get drinks." "No thanks, we already bought our tickets. The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful, other than watching people fall asleep on the bus. I didn't sleep much; I had a 250 pound Russian snoring in my lap. We had an amazing zone conference. We talked about how we are some of the few people who live the law of consecration, that we need to have "Sacred Grove" moments daily. President Birkenfelt (District Presidency) talked of the importance of speaking oru languages and it was really touching. President Boswell added that he had unfinished business- a whole list of people he wanted to teach the gospel and none of them in English. We learned about Belarus which will be joining our mission soon. The church isn't officially recognized there but they have 350 members, 120 active. Of those 120 51 are Mel. priesthood holders. All 51 have been through the temple and pay a full tithe. WOW! This was to show how important member referrals are because missionaries cannot proselyte in Belarus. We also learned about finding PMG pearl/gem/nugget/power punches to use in our teaching...sort of a swing back to the memorized days, but not. My favorite part was farewell testimonies. My favorite was Elder Carlson (our resident Swede). "Change is the center of our message. Embrace change. You can always change back." I really like that last part. I got a bunch of mail (thanks for the package AC!). We were walking up our stairwell when we got a call from the elders and headed over to the church. The trolls have been graffiti-ing the church every day this week because they got mad that we accused them of stealing some basketballs when we know they did. Anywho, mostly they have been writing bad stuff with dry erase markers on the windows (easy fix). They've also been calling a ton and sending inappropriate texts and following us around and yelling stuff at us. Friday night there were dozens and dozens of stickers all over the church, human feces by the door, permanent marker on the door frames, doors, windows, walls, a destroyed Book of Mormon and some mean notes. We had the police over. We aren't pressing charges (I have no idea why not), but we had a minor cleaning party at 10pm, music included.

SATURDAY

The music cleaning party continued since the church keeper has been at the temple all week and we were having the Relief Society party. Hairspray- it works. Anywho, the party was great. The men made us ziti and the talks were by the presidents of the auxillaries led by women. My favorite was Sister Wixom's about primary- loving people and smiling! Kristina finished reading the entire Book of Mormon. She is simply glowing- a total transformation.

SUNDAY

Was uneventful. The members were really sad to see the graffiti that was left. Good thing I don't know bad words in Latvian and Russian! We didn't run into anyone exciting harvesting and we will have a lot of finding time this next week.

The church is true! Willing obedience is the key!

xoxo

ML