Week 10 Easter 2011

Sisters Wilson and Lindstrom


This past week was amazing!

The fun started on Monday. We went to the zoo as a super district (3 Russian Elders, 2 Latvian, and us sisters) and had a blast walking around looking at all the animals. The zoo was quite impressive. The animals were also all very close since it was not America. We got to watch a show with a seal, laugh at the kodiak bears playing in giant tires, mimic the flamingos, and play I Spy with the frogs and other bugs. The most fun part (besides all getting ice cream and hot dogs for lunch) was playing on the playground. This is where we lost our cell phone, so Sister Sutterfield and I had a fun adventure going to the zoo two more times to find it. It was definitely a miracle that the phone was turned in.

On Tuesday we just had a series of entertaining events. The other night the Russian elders called and told us how they were about to extend a baptismal date in a lesson when a bunch of cops came storming in, questioned them, their investigator, and then the investigator had to go.

We were having a Latvian district meeting and the elders noticed these two men walking around and around and around the church. They finally came in and the elders recognized one of them as a man they had contacted the previous week. They gave him and his friend a 15 minute lesson and committed them to baptism. We were rushing out to our next meeting when the Russian elders showed up. Turns out the Latvians had just taught their investigators that had the cops come. They are both named Alexander and are both amazing people. One is older and the other is about 20-22 years old.

Tuesday night started off with a bang for exchanges. There were many mix-ups and so the Russian sisters were in Imanta at the church and the rest of us were in Center at the church. Sister Ferrin and Wilson got locked in (see the picture) and so we had to call the elders to come unlock the door (they had just changed the key to the building). I LOVED being with Sister Wilson in Center. She was so wonderful, making sure that I got to be involved and asking my opinion on things. She let me carry around the keys and we had so much fun contacting people. Her Latvian isn't the greatest (possibly worse than mine, but she understands more), but people always stopped to listen to her. She got the number of the first person we contacted, and we also got two lessons in a park, including praying with one lady out loud. She was the spiritual boost that I was needing and I learned a lot about just being happier for the people and being more persistent. By the end of the day my mouth hurt from smiling, it was so fun being with such a spiritual giant. I can't wait to serve with her because I know that we will be a great companionship because she loves what she does and who she is with. We had some really good lessons together. We met with Agrita and almost got her committed to baptism and then we met with this older member Helena who is dying. She is a saint. And she made me cry because her prayer was so earnest and touching. She was saying the closing prayer and just pleading with our Father to help her so she could go to church and partake of the sacrament there. It made me so grateful for my health and that I am able to go to church.

Random tangent: Living here makes me afraid to grow old. People don't seem to age well herel. I am glad to be an American, for sure.

Friday we had a Branch Easter Party. There was a 10 minute spiritual thought and then we went outside and played some games. One was finding "eggs" blindfolded, another a 2 team scavenger hunt, pin the tail on the bunny (which I got volunteered to draw), and our personal favorite a chasing game. You pair off and then there is one person without a partner who tells the last pair to run. They try to connect back up to each other while being chased by the person without a partner. The elders were quite daring taking leaps and bounds. My personal favorite was Elder Senkans chasing after Elder Taylor. Afterwards we played volleyball as missionaries with Elder Jakes and some of the members. It was a lot of fun.

Saturday we had an adventure visiting Leanna. Long story short (I don't have much time) we were talking with her in her stairwell, had two drunk Russians come who ended up taking us and the two little neighbor girls and Leanna out to talk and then to the backyard of the apartment where they had another friend and alcohol. I was ready to leave because it was obviously turning into a bad situation and Sister Sutterfield wanted to finish the tea the little girls gave us from their grandmother. Nevermind that she HATES tea and had a man trying to get her to drink that kept on grabbing her arm. We did get out but all the way home Sister S. was worrying about what those young girls would think because we didn't drink all their tea. Bless her heart.

It was interesting contacting this Easter. It is a four-day holiday so most Latvians were in their summer homes in the woods. We contacted MANY Russians. Luckily Easter is almost over, so hopefully people will go back to being themselves. Traditions here...they dye eggs with onion skins and we even had several members give us eggs on Sunday. We sang a musical number as missionaries and that is as Easter-y as it got at church. Sister S. and I made funeral potatoes and had turkey and green beans to celebrate.

Sorry I can't write more, but my time is up.
I hope you had an amazing Easter. I know I did. I am so grateful for our Savior and Redeemer.















Sisters Wilson and Ferrin Locked in the Chapel

Week 9

Four Latvian Speaking Sisters: Wilson, Sutterfield, Ferrin and Lindstrom

Can I just start by saying that I LOVE General Conference. I feel so spiritually uplifted and every talk was an answer to a prayer. I really enjoyed the talk with the analogy of the current bush. I am definitely relating to the cut down current bush right now. I was fine and happy and thought I was growing so well and now I am on a mission and being pruned and cut and reshaped when I already thought I knew what I was going to be. I am grateful that we are all in the Master's hands.

On Monday we went with our super district to FeiFei's with Inga. It was a really fun Chinese restaurant...except it took them an hour to bring the main course! I guess that is what happens when you have a group of eight people eating in Latvia... We got lemon ginger tea, soup, and chicken with rice. We also did a lot of contacting in the rain on Monday, luckily I wasn't completely soaked!

On Tuesday we had Zone Conference (aka all people serving in Latvia = zone). It was...interesting. I felt like I was in one of my psychology classes. President Dance talked about "barrier thoughts" and how our perceptions change our reality so that we need to focus on having positive thoughts. It was so great seeing Elder Lynch and Elder Burr. I'm pretty sure that Elder Burr grew at least an inch. They are both doing really well and Elder Burr is learning Russian. The assistants took us on a "Magic School Bus Trip" to "Contacting Land" where we got to practice contacting people using "natural conversations." We got fed kebabs and then got taught some more.

We had interviews with President Dance on Thursday. Mine was really short and not too interesting. He just asked me how I thought my language was going, what my goals were for my mission, and what I have learned from my companion so far (and how my family is :]). We had both Linda and Marita cancel on us (both possible new investigators for us). We got to meet with Aija, Erika's mom. She is so fantastic! She reads and has lots of great questions and comments. Erika said that she would be a "piece of work" to try and teach religion, but she seems really open to it all. We bought a yummy orange chocolate cake for Vicente's birthday and shared it with Anda and him. They are happily in love (celebrated anniversary #3 this week) and are going off to Stockholm this weekend. They can be pretty funny together. We taught them about eternal marriage and they were doing a lot of teasing to one another. We also were able to meet with Andris and talk with him about the importance of church attendance and prayer. He got yet another new work schedule, so we don't know if he will ever be able to make it to church.

Friday was a WILD day. We met with Valerija, the lady who Sister S. contacted last fall and decided to randomly show up on conference. She was very kind and fed us lots of sandwiches and tea and then showed us pictures of her family. We tried to teach a lesson but she kept talking about her Brazilian preachers. The Spirit WAS in the lesson and then she prayed and started praying in tongues as well and Sister S. totally lost it and well, the Spirit was definitely gone then. She kissed us when we gave her the Book of Mormon though. She has been searching for God all her life, so we'll see how she is. Elder Taylor made a pumpkin pie and brought it to Latvian language class. It was very good. We also talked about changing area boundaries which made a certain companion of mine very displeased. Going to Pinkie definitely made up for it. We visited Grandma Senkane (one of the first Latvian members). She is soooooooooooooooooo great! So the evening went a little bit like this: getting my glasses smashed into my face from the hug, getting dressed to try on some of the things that she knit, and then learning how to knit. In Latvian. Now mind you this would be hard enough in English, and I definitely don't have knitting vocabulary. I did catch what Grandma said, "Know you know how to knit so you can go home and get a husband now." Knitting IS very essential in a future wife, so boys, I'm ready. I can now knit (if that isn't a miracle, I don't know what is!) She also fed us potatoes and meat that you ate with pickles. I was graceful enough to drop my pickle in my tea. Grandma Senkane reminds me of my grandma, in the sense that she has lots of energy, love, and she makes yummy bread (Grandma K's is still better!). She decided to come with us to our next meeting with Inese Choblet, a ward member, but not before spraying both of us with some of her French perfume (I guess we smelled?). It was just so great. I love that woman. At Inese's we got to have some birch tree syrup. They are obsessed with it here since you can only get it out of the tree 2 weeks every year. It is supposed to be very good for your health. I don't think it tastes that bad (it is like sweet water), but my companion doesn't enjoy it. We gave a good lesson that with the Spirit tied in all their comments!

Saturday we had a super big district meeting. It was fun having the 3 Russian elders. They are good kids with great hearts; I enjoyed their comments. We met with Aija again and gave her a BOM. She actually met with the missionaries about 15 years ago, and gave a great prayer at the end and was visibly touched by the Spirit. We pray that she will want to be baptized!

I wish I could write more about Aija, but I'm out of time. Hopefully we'll get Martins a baptismal date this week!

Love
Me!














All the Sister Missionaries in Latvia

Week 8

What is new in my world....
I feel like I'm understanding a lot more this transfer. I'm praying for the Lord's help to be courageous in talking to people and it is helping. I am finally starting to see buds on things and that is exciting. The weather is wild here though. This morning it was warm and sunny and now it is cold and wet. If the mornings are cloudy it tends to get sunny and vice versa. Mostly I think I'll just plan for rain, lol.

Monday we went out with the other sisters to Tex Mex and got some Mexican with a Latvian flair food. It was really good considering it is Latvian Mexican food. We also had a great conversation with this man from Sri Lanka. He is a professor here and has been living here for several years now. He had lots of questions about our church and activities since he is involved in running two seperate churches (of two seperate religions I might add). The Jakes weren't having their usual "Fry Day" so we went around the mall and checked out the different stores. I found a really cute tan beret-esque hat because you wear hats year round here- to keep your ears warm, to keep your head dry, to keep your hair from flying everywhere in the wind (it is quite windy lately), etc.

Tuesday's District Meeting focused on working with members. Following our meeting we went with all the elders in Imanta and filled partikas- food bags for needy people. Sister Sutterfield and I met with Anda and Vicente. Sister S. worked with Vicente on working on setting up his account to do geneology on the church site. I talked with Anda about the scriptures. We talked about where she was in 3 Nephi and then talked about how I like Ether 12. She sped read it all and then we spent some time disecting Ether 12:27. Anda had some great insights about how we need to continually rely on the Lord to make our weaknesses strengths, otherwise they become weaknesses again. We also talked about it relating to the Pride Cycle. Sister S. told them she was craving pickles (I'm not sure why)... They got out this GIANT bottle filled with pickles and gave us half a dozen or so. Ask and ye shall receive! Needless to say I felt goofy carrying around pickles while contacting.

Wednesday was a very rainy day. We met up with the Ward Mission Leader, Gatis and talked about our members. We told him how Martins no longer has a baptismal date and how he has a lot of concerns, such as if there are multiple gods, etc. Gatis joked that we do and that we should build on common ground. On the way back to Imanta I spoke with the cutest Russian lady. She was very interested in the gospel and wished that my Book of Mormon was in Russian and not Latvian. I got her phone number and passed it off to the Russian sisters. I pray that she will listen to their sweet message. Inga helped us with our lessons with Martins and Andris. Mariss, a ward member (male) also came and helped. They were both God sends. Martins brought his red haired, faux-hawked, very sassy, friend with. He wanted to cause a ruckus because he wanted to know what exactly we were doing to brain wash his friend to make him want to not smoke and drink. Inga was laying out the jokes and the truth. "Yeah, we are weird, but we aren't zombies. I understand, My friends thought the same thing. You are a good friend, but if he wants to change, let him change." And those sorts of things. Mariss was the spiritual rock. What was really neat for me was seeing the change in Mr. Grumpy red-head. He was not wanting to do anything except be rude at the beginning, but towards the end of the lesson I was able to testify of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and he listened. It was so neat to see that and to feel the Spirit touch him. Andris' lesson was fine. We read with him one of the Isaiah chapters in Alma. Good thing Sister Sutterfield is scripturally scholarly, otherwise we would have been toast. Inga did say something pretty funny to Andris though. She said, "You're not baptized so you won't be saved in the last day, ha ha!" I hope it made him think!

Thursday Sister Sutterfield taught me how to make twice baked stuffed potatoes. They are really good. We also had some not so goodness. One of the elders serving in Imanta, Russian speaking, was going home. He was a great missionary so we were sad to find out but so happy when we got a call from Sanita and Raitis. They were cancelling their appointment (boo!) because their daughter was sick (Latvians do NOT like visitors when they are sick. They are very phobic about that sort of thing.) and the doctor said not to have any visitors. BUT Sanita told us that Raitis loved the reading SO MUCH that he shared it with his mom. And wanted to with a friend but he had already given his copy of the Book of Mormon to his mom. How great is that?! We taught less-active Ieveta. The highlight was definitely a bird flying into the window during the lesson. There was this loud smack and then feathers stuck to the glass!!! Sister S. started to laugh...ahh. Missionary work. We had lots of time to contact today, but we saw mostly cats. We could have seen at least 30 or so in a 2 hour period. It was nuts. Even more nuts was the awesome girl Alisa that we met. She was waiting at a bus stop and had awesome style that reminded me of Kirstin/her friends. She had a lace skirt she made herself and a mustard yellow coat, an insanely cool umbrella, and two cameras. She was going to Center to a poetry reading with her friends. We started talking to her (in English) about what we do as missionaries and why we decided to serve missions, as well as what we believe. She had a lot of questions and said she didn't think she could know about God at such a young age (21). She was so interested in the convo that she was like, "That is my bus, but I'm going to miss it because I want to keep talking." Exciting!! We got her phone number and will be calling her soon. Thursday I also contacted a lady whose mother had just died...yikes! I force gave her a Plan of Salvation pamphlet and told her it would help.

Friday was someone's birthday! I woke up and made crepes for Sister Sutterfield. We went to the church to watch Saturday Afternoon's session of conference with the elders (Russian and Latvian). We brought some bean dip that I made and put candles in and sung to her. We then went to Ineta Lidace (the less active with 3 girls) to help clean/share a message. The house was so clean though, there was nothing to do, so the girls wanted to play cafe with us and gave us muffins and milk. It was pretty cute (other than it all being in command form. "Sit here! This is your table! Give me the money now!" We went to Latvian language class where we sang and had Sister Sutterfield blow out the candles on her birthday cake that I made. I am pretty sure that Elder Taylors ate half of it by himself. I'm guessing that it was pretty good. :}

Lately we have been seeing lots of people selling pussy willow branches. In Latvia it is to remember Easter/Christ. They also have a tradition of spanking the children with it on Easter for their health.

Saturday the members got to watch conference. We went and helped to prepare for the lunch that was inbetween the sessions. We were also able to meet with Martins. Inga came and helped. We found out that Martins' concern is drinking. Inga told him he could quit and that our prayers would help and that we need to pray for him. We definitely are praying that he will quit, as well as that he will get a baptismal date again.

Sunday we also helped get the lunch ready for inbetween sesssions. I had a very hard time listening/understanding. Their mouths were moving and Latvian was coming out at a different speed and so I am just glad we get to listen to it in English. The two sessions that I have watched have been so uplifting and each talk has been an answer to a different prayer that I've had on my mission. The gospel is amazing! When we are searching for answers God does provide them. So, we were contacting on this street and this cute little kid was learning how to ride his bike. And fell. And kept on falling. And then ran straight into a pole with his shoulder. We felt so bad, especially since we walked by 4-5 times because we were contacting different people. It was so sad/funny. He was a trooper. We talked to a really nice Jehovah's Witness that had lots of questions for us. We talked for at least 20 minutes. We were also able to meet with Erika's mom. Her name is Aija. She actually lives really close to us. We are teaching her English/the gospel as well. The spirit was definitely there while we were teaching and I have hope for her. I could definitely see her getting baptized. She never has been because she thinks it is just the "popular" thing to do in the Catholic church. Favorite drunk of the week: This man called us cute little ducks and asked why cute Sister Sutterfield was not married.

Well, that is all the time I have.
Love you all, the church is true!
Bisous,
Soeur L

Week 7

Mari's Missionary District

Shalom!

On Monday evening we received transfer calls. Sister Sutterfield and I are still together in Imanta. Elder Adams is staying but Elder Mills has been replaced by Elder Taylor. Sister S. does not like him, so it should be fun!! We also went to this amazingly fun tea house on Monday that Kirstin would like. It is basically like a greenhouse- all glass and round. They have pillows up the twirly stairs that you can sit on, sip your tea, and people watch.

On Tuesday we celebrated Sister Sutterfield's half-way mark. We made "anthill cake." This consists of several boxes of crushed cookies and sweetened condensed milk. It is really good, but isn't something that you should be eating every day by any means. District Meeting was pretty funny today. It took us a good half hour to settle down and get serious and then by the end we were too serious. District Leader Adams said, "I'm in a room full of perfectionists and they are all tying their nooses under the table." That is one of the most witty comments I have ever heard. I have a feeling we will all be fake-tying nooses for a long time. I tried buckwheat today for the first time. It was...interesting. I'm still not sure if I like it or not. We went and taught Anda and Vicente. We ended up showing them some Mormon Messages. The spirit was very strong, but Anda was kind of trying to deny it. She has been going through a difficult spell lately. It's definitely a good thing that we are required to visit recently-baptized members weekly for a year after their baptism. After Anda's we went "harvesting" in some apartment buildings. We knocked into a creepy Russian man who ended up following us out of the apartment building. We most definitely ran away. I've never been chased by a Russian before. Speaking of Russians, the people here can be prejudiced. A lot of the Latvians hate Russians and think they are the cause of all of their problems. Bless their hearts!

On Wednesday Sister Sutterfield woke up sick. We stayed in most of the day except for the evening when we had two lessons. Our first lesson was with Martins. We taught him about tithing using candy. It went really well. He stayed after and talked to us and Maija (the member we had helping) until Andris came. With Andris we just read with him from where he is in the Book of Mormon. We are trying to light the fire back in him to want to be baptized.

On Thursday we went to visit less active Janina (who has come to church a lot the past while). She noticed Sister Sutterfield's cold and made her take some vitamins, drink lots of tea, and stick some ointment up her nose....while we were having tea. I made some wicked good chicken noodle soup. It was mostly good because we bought animal shaped noodles for it. I also made some granola during the day (since we were inside again). I think I have your Moab granola recipe down dad! It tastes really good with dark brown sugar. We went to help Lena Blum, the RS president with a going away party for Zane. She will be serving in Ukraine. We got to stay for dinner and had essentially potstickers. Some had cherries in them and others had potatoes and mushrooms. They were really good. It was funny because it was a Relief Society activity but they invited the Elders and Maris who had just got done teaching a lesson at the church. I hope they enjoyed their first RS activity!

On Friday I finished reading the Book of Mormon in Latvian! Woot! I learned how much the Book of Mormon focuses on the missionary purpose (faith, repentance, baptism, the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end) and in the order that they appear. I also noticed how much it talks about the heart...the gospel truly is something that we know in our hearts. I made some amazing curry corn chowder with rice, corn, potatoes, celery, carrots, and curry. It is definitely one of my new favorites. Martins texted us and told us he was "sick" and couldn't make it to his lesson. What he didn't know is that Maija called and told us that Martins had been texted her with lots of questions and doubts and wanted to meet with her and talk about it. I didn't do anything for April fools. They call it Aprilapril here.

On Saturday Sister Sutterfield started to get more on the mend. I was in charge of the district meeting lesson. It was about revelation through church attendance and it went really well. I learned a lot about how it is the jump starter to people progressing and feeling the spirit in a lot of different ways. We taught English class which went well. We told our class about prophets and conference and invited them to come listen to it in Latvian next week.

Sunday was FREEZING at church. They turned off the heat and it was just cold. Right before sacrament meeting Grandma Senkante (her son is a 70) grabbed my arms and starting pumping them back and forth and she was telling me to do that to get warm. It was just hilarious. We didn't have any investigators and church, but we were able to meet with Martins. He came an hour late. Turns out that his friends are not a good influence. He had LOADS of questions and concerns so as of now he doesn't have a baptismal date. Maija did most of the talking. I did get to testify about Joseph Smith and praying to know. It was really neat because it was the first time in Latvian that I really felt the Spirit strongly while I was testifying. He still wants to meet with us and he is going to read and pray, so that is good. We are hoping that we can get his concerns resolved. He loves his friends from the church and is going to family home evening with them today.

Love you,
Sister Lindstrom



Sister Sutterfield and her 'Halfway' Anthill Cake

Week 6

Sisters Sutterfield and Lindstrom

So the week wasn't too entertaining, so I will try to get some more "cultural" stuff by trying to do the alphabet.

A- The apartment. Right now we are having problems with the electricity. Good thing I have a great sense of humor otherwise only being able to run the washing machine and nothing else wouldn't be so funny. We just rearranged the living room and got rid of the old lady lacy stuff (we rented it decked out with awful figurines and yeah...just not 20 year old people stuff). I have a queen size bed to myself and we have a small kitchen with no table. All our neighbors are remodeling. You could almost set your clock to when you hear them start in the morning.

B- The buildings here could be gorgeous (in Riga center). They are mostly from the Art Nouveau- early 1900s. Sadly they are getting run down now. I wish I could have seen them in their glory days.
Borsch is very popular here and I love it Gramma!
The bread is definitely not as good as in France. They have great rye bread though.

C- The cars are actually normal/large here. They don't have any of the small compact cars. There are a lot of BMWs and Audis. All midsized sort of stuff.

D- Dogs. Everyone has them! Big and small.
Doors. All the houses have double doors. If someone wants to talk, they just open one door and yell at you through the other. I'm not sure what started the double door thing.

E- The Eighties. People are stuck in the 80's here...clothing, music, everything. Even rollerblading and crimped hair is in.

F- The food all comes in bags. Mayonnaise, ice cream, ketchup, yogurt, milk, you name it, it comes in a bag. I suppose it is really environmentally friendly though!

G- Grass! There were signs of grass and spring, but it just started snowing again today. EVERYONE talks about how green it gets in the summer and how amazing it is though.

H- Hair. The Russian red (I'm sure Erik knows what I am talking about) is VERY in.
Honey- They do not have OODLES of honey here as I was told. I did find some creamy honey today on sale, so we will see how it is though.
Hats- hats hats hats. They always wear them and they often remind one of newsies. People will tell you that you are going to get sick if it is cold outside and you don't have a hat.

I- ice cream! It is REALLY sweet here and is hard to eat a large amount of.

Well, Time is up! I love you all, the church is true,
Until next week!
Mas

Week 5

Last Preparation Day we got some not so good kebabs, made up for it with some awesome hot chocolate and shopping. We went to the DI of Latvia, Humana, a second-hand shop chain here. I got two really cute skirts and at another store I bought some scarves. We headed over to the mission home for a Sisters Conference. They fed us burritos and then we had a "sleep over" (if going to bed at 10:30pm counts as a sleep over).

On Tuesday we went over some training about how to better use the baptismal questions in teaching. We had some Minnesota wild rice soup, talked about some of our concerns, and had a testimony meeting. My favorite part was the game time. The assistants were there and we were playing "I have never" where you run around and try to get a seat not in the middle. President Dance grabbed one of the assistants and moved him out of the way so that we could have a seat. On Tuesday we also went and visited Erika. We have her sort of committed to a one-month spiritual/get baptized plan. She just has a hard time believing and having faith in pretty much anything.

On Wednesday after our District Meeting we went to Ineta's to help clean. Her girls had gotten paint everywhere. It was pretty funny and they made us some cute pictures. We were just glad that we got there because the bus driver never let us off the bus so we walked 2-3km to her house. We also had a lesson with Martins. Inga (the one who is also our Latvian teacher who loves all the elders) helped out and it actually went really well.

On Thursday we found out that our branch mission leader is getting married! We are excited for him. He has a lot of great ideas to help us out. We had an interesting lesson with Anda and Vicente. Anda doesn't think the Word of Wisdom is a commandment so she doesn't understand why she doesn't always feel the spirit.

On Friday we had Latvian class. I had to practice conjugating verbs on the board. It was not fun. We also had a good lesson with lily lady Ieveta and found out that she wants to come back to church and wants to have that desire, but doesn't like that people ask her about her family because they are a little...different.

Saturday we had our second district meeting. We are a riot singing songs. Usually at least one person isn't singing because they are laughing. It was really spiritual and about the role of prayer in conversion. We examined Moroni 10:4-5 in detail. It was awesome. Our English class went well. We have a new class member, Edgars. He is in his twenties and hopefully will be interested. He is a smart kid.

The highlight of Sunday was meeting with Raitis and Sanita for their English lesson. They had to cancel at least two times this week, so it was good to finally see them. We introduced them to The Book of Mormon. We read the intro with them and talked about it. I think there is definitely potential. Raitis left today for his business trip and last night Sanita said that she feels like she is missing something in her life/looking for something else. Hopefully the gospel is it!!

Week 4

Oh my goodness it has been a busy week.

On Monday we went to Lidos. Lidos is a Latvian food restaurant buffet style. I got a crepe with cottage cheese in it, some type of swedish-esque meatball and a potato pancake. It was quite good. So I had the best contact ever on Monday! I was talking to this lady on the bus coming home from Preparation day in center (we always go to center). She was very patient and kind considering my Latvian. She told me that she had to get off in two stops but that she wanted ME to write down HER number. I had already given her our card, but she asked me if I would take HER number and then she wrote down mine (even though there was a number on the card). It was so tender and neat to see that someone was wanting the gospel so much. I tried calling her this week but her phone was off. Sister Jake gave all the sisters a rose today. March 7th is Women's Day and the tradition is to get all the women in your life a flower. There were so many people in the streets walking around with flowers. In the evening we went and taught our cute little family Raitis and Sanita. Their daughter Katrina found a bag of cinnamon (all the spices come in bags here) and she poured it all over herself. It was pretty hilarious (her parents didn't think so).

On Tuesday we had an entertaining district meeting (as always). Elder Mills is very proper and perfect (he sings opera and wants to be a doctor) but Elder Adams happy go lucky hilarious personality is working on our posh handkerchief using Elder Mills. We took flowers to some of our investigators and we also went and visited Anda and Vicente, some recent members. They are both so fun and so smart. We do their lessons in English because Vicente is from Mexico (and was a doctor there) and Anda can speak English (as well as 6 other languages). I took notes; they definitely don't feel like they just joined the church! There were some pretty funny boys on the bus today, they were apparently telling me to stay on the bus a couple more stops with them...ha ha ha... no.

Wednesday morning we got lost going to Janina, a member. It was pretty entertaining though because I got sang to. I contacted this old man on the street. We started talking. He wanted to go to English class. He began to count for us in English. "four-teen five-teen six-teen seven-teen eight-teen nine-teen twelve!" "twenty." "twenty. twenty one (and so on)..." Sister Sutterfield left to take a call so I was able to enjoy his company. He told me about how he is an artist and works with marble. He told me about a statue he likes in NYC and about the KGB. He then started to sing. Very loudly. I said I had to go and left. We did eventually make it to Janina's apartment. She is a nicer lady in her 50s who is really lonely. She was so cute with her tea cosies all ready and some little pancakes for us. She really appreciated our visit. We went and visited our ward mission leader, Gatis Senkante at the firm he works at, Vindex. He had some good ideas for help with investigators. Today was a day of crazies. We were walking by some apartment buildings and this lady approached us and started talking to us. We of course talked about the Book of Mormon and she asked how much it was. We said it was free and then she tore the copy that Sister Sutterfield was holding from her arms and began to kiss it. She also repeated this with the calling card and pamphlet that we gave her. And with us. We tried to get her name and number. She wrote down her name for us but told us that we didn't need her phone number...okay. We had a really good meeting with our baptismal date investigator Martins. His answers are so good. He was telling us that he didn't need to pray to know that the Book of Mormon was true because he already knew that it was! He is struggling with smoking, so currently his baptismal date is April 9th, his 22nd birthday!

Thursday was quite the traveling day for us. We went out to visit a less active member Ineta Lidace. She has three cute little girls. We helped her clean up around the house and then she fed us potato pancakes and some really really good vanilla-orange tea. Her little girls were cute helping to clean up but were throwing balls everywhere when we were trying to give our spiritual thought. She still really appreciated it though. We went to pick up some food to drop off to poor people from one of the center members (Velta) who owns a NPO. We carried these 30-40 pound bags all over the place. We had Latvian class with Inga today. She was apparently really mean to us masas, especially Sister Sutterfield. Luckily (maybe?) I didn't understand when this bashing was taking place. The elders said they wanted to slap her (oye-vay!). We went over to Anda's house and helped her dye her hair. She really appreciated it (Anda got in a car crash when she was 18 or so, she is in a wheelchair now and doesn't have full use of her hands. She is brilliant though and I think she'd love Aunt Becky.) She gave us some fish and Sister Sutterfield did a puzzle while I dyed hair.

On Friday we had another meeting with Martins and also helped to set up for this big temple conference that they are having. President Blums invited the temple president of the Stockholm temple and his wife to come.

Saturday morning we made some delicious scones and visited Ilze and Ainars. They are a couple (with two children) who come to our English class (English was canceled due to the temple conference). They have a GORGEOUS house and it went well. They fed us apple crisp and ice cream and gave us a ride home (it took us 60-90 minutes to get there). It was a shame, if we would have known, we could have done a longer spiritual thought. So we went to the church to get some things from the library and this little boy followed us and said "prison" and then shut the library door. Which locks. Automatically. Long story short we got locked in the library and we had to telephone the Russian elders to unlock it. They thought it was pretty hilarious. So did I. We took Maja, a member, to Cili Pizza today since she helps us a lot and is always busy. It is hard on the members here because they have to be so involved because there aren't a lot of them. It was really good food. On the way traveling back we ran into a dozen hooligans who didn't think we spoke Latvian. Once we told them we did all eyes were on us and all their English came out. My personal favorite was, "Where did you get your Hollywood smile?" We had another District Meeting (new program) and it was a hoot. And really spiritual as well, once we got over all of the laughing. It was about the Holy Ghost in conversion. We read some really good scriptures. We went and taught English to Raitis and Sanita. They gave us walnut ice cream and we taught them a little English and talked a lot of gospel. There is definitely some potential with them although they have a lot of questions and think we are too young to know.

On Sunday church was really good. In the morning we went and picked up Leanna and went with her to church. In Sacrament meeting the Temple president and his wife spoke (with translators). It was really nice because they spoke English and then they had it translated into Latvian, so I got spiritually fed and a little Latvian lesson. None of our investigators came like they said they would, but all of the less actives that we visited this week did come! We went and visited Ingrita, Sandra, and Maris today. They all had headaches and had obviously talked to their pastor. They wouldn't let us speak and if we asked them to read something, they'd read it to themselves first. She also read us ALL of the last book of revelations. And Ingrita was being rude and interrupting and bashing my testimony. We left. They felt bad and called us at like 11pm and texted us around 4am last night. They aren't open to the gospel though. Sad, but good to know so we don't waste the Lord's time.

We are His servants and his work will go forth. The snow is melting and the puddles are growing and it is a lot warmer!

Love,
Sister L