Pictures from Week 58

Week 58

Monday was filled with some crazy weather. Within 10 minutes we experienced sun, wind, rain, hail, and then snow. Mother Nature can be such a pill. No worries, that didn't stop us from making chicken pasta salad (YUMMM!) as well as a Texas sheet cake for a family home evening that we didn't go to because our investigators cancelled. Oh well. No use crying over baked cake. Admist our lack of FHE-ing we found an awesome fellow, Ivo. He has never been baptized but knows he should and wanted to know the difference between the Catholics and Lutherans. We love people with questions like those.

Tuesday's District Meeting had a really entertaining practice. We were working on contacting and gems so we had a teaching stick. Whoever was the investigator could randomly say "Pass!" and then you'd give it to someone else and you have to continue where they stopped off. We taught Janis the elder who is willing to meet with us 2-3 times a week and learn all that we have to teach. We showed him a teaching record and he was very interested in eternal marriage; he has been married 40 years now! We are pretty excited about his willingness to meet. Harvesting we ran into a J-dub (Jehovah's Witness). Oh boy! She was 84 and did not look it. She was really friendly and we were able to correct some of her beliefs about Mormons.

Wednesday was a sunny day. Hurray! I love the sun. Unlike this one lady we said hello to. You woulda thunk we killed her dog. And her cat. And her grandchildren. She was very offended that we were asking her how she was doing. Happy Thanksgiving! We bought one of those yummy stuffed chickens at Rimi (the supermarket) and had Thanksgiving dinner (minus the rolls and pie). The Scherbinini came and had a family home evening with us and Janis and Kristina. Ieva and Sarra both fell asleep during the lesson which was quite hilarious. We taught the Beldavi about missionary work and then had Inguss come and help us with a lesson to a new investigator Elina. Elina is already friends with a member, tries to read the Book of Mormon but doesn't understand it. She wants to start her life over but doesn't want to be baptized. She is in the elders' area so we will see if they can change that.

Happy Birthday to me! Thursday I turned twenty three. It wasn't the worst day, but it wasn't the best. I made myself a carrot cake. That was fun. I bought cream cheese. It indeed was creamy cheese. I'm glad I tasted it before I tried to make cheese whiz frosting. We went and bought real cream cheese. Another old person got mad at us for saying hello. She went off and was yelling super mean not true or necessary things. I just about cried waiting at the tram stop listening to her rant off a bunch of balogne. Janis cancelled on us. We had a lesson in the park with Laimonis, a member who sadly has a lot of questions and doubts. To mix up weekly planning we tried it Sista Johnson style and built a fort. We took a nap during the middle of planning because being on the floor was making us tired, lol. Favorite birthday phone call: Elder Carlsson (from Sweden) sang Happy Birthday in English and then a Swedish birthday song. THEN Elder Burr came on and sang in German and Russian. Elder Lynch then tried to sing like they would in Scotland. It was pretty fantastic and made my day almost as much as Santa's awesomeness. She had five salmon-colored roses for me and a box of fancy chocolates. I don't even want to know how much she spent on me, but it was so sweet. We had a lesson with her and at the end she said the nicest prayer ever. "Heavenly Father, thank you for this wonderful day. Of course it had to be wonderful because 23 years ago on this day our Dear Sister Lindstrom was born. She is a great missionary and friend. She is kind and a hard worker..." and all sorts of other nice stuff. I love that woman! We sang about the Wise and Foolish men at the Frolavis' and then we had to run (literally) to the church to close it. The elders brought me a bouquet of eggs. They were on kebab sticks and they thought they were pretty awesome.

On Friday no one jaked us! It was a miracle. We met with Vineta and we got to play tic-tac-toe with her daughter. Sister Clark also caught the cold her children had. We had a lovely stroll back to the church by some of the old houses here in Liepaja. They are so pretty. We met with Rita and discussed the Proclamation to the Family. She gasped at the part about parents being responsible for how they raise their children. We met with Baiba, a happy go lucky English student who said her first "real" prayer with us (which was awesome) and is willing to meet and sees the importance of the Book of Mormon! We also met with Marika and learned some language and shared a thought about the 10 Virgins.

Saturday we met with Oskars. He has a new new job that has better hours! We talked about opposition in all things and what we can do to conquer Satan- pray and read our scriptures! (2 Nephi 32:8-9, DC 10:5, Helaman 3:23-30, 1 Nephi 15:24). We taught Skaidra (LA) half english half spiritual thought on Visiting Teaching. She committed to do it and she even stayed after and helped to clean the church! Progress is beautiful! For service I cut and dyed Santa's hair. Oh boy, my 50-year-old friend now has plum colored hair. I didn't pick the color just so y'all know. We also ate gravy toast, talked about faith with Janis and Kristina and saw Valda. She said she couldn't talk long because of her illness. Some other members have seen her and it sounds more like controlling boyfriend Janis. Anywho....

Sunday was a blustery day. Pres. S. talked about the HTing message about prophets and Pres. Birkenfelt talked about a variety of things. Long story short church was entertaining. Two random girls showed up (18 or 20?), sat in the front row. At one point during sacrament meeting they got upset at each other and moved over seats so they weren't by each other. Girls. Sister Clark is sick so I mostly called people and let her sleep. Our new neighbors Ivo and Gints came by. I declined politely an invitation to their home. Bummer that I ALWAYS work. :) We also studied about Heaven sent questions on Sunday. It was amazing; I finally understand what that is and that we need to pause in our teaching and not say the first thing that comes to our minds.

I read about Shiblon in Alma 38. I really liked what his father had to say to him. I felt like it is what my Father would say to me. I love reading the Book of Mormon. I know that it is true. And so are you. I'm a poet, and you didn't even realize it!

xoxo

Cestra Linstrom

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

March Pictures

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.

Week 55

I would like to inform you all of the unexpected, yet expected passing of my running watch. It has been a good friend to me for the past 8 or 9 years, putting up with rain and shine, sweat and snot. It peacefully died on Wednesday night in its sleep. Attempts to revive the watch were not made seeing as major brain functions were dimming prior to death. It feels like a piece of my arm is now missing. Burial services haven't been made yet because all the memories associated with my running watch are still being played on repeat. It was a good watch and lived an exciting life.

Well, I was just waiting for that one. I feel so stripped from technology. I might have to run with the phone to know what time it is, yuck. Sister Clark doesn't have a running watch and I am far too cheap to buy one here seeing as it isn't completely necessary, just very convenient. It is a beautiful day though! Spring is here, we cleaned the house, it is lighter, and Elder Alder and I are losing it. Sister Clark and Elder Baxter still don't know that Elder Alder is leaving in 6 weeks. I wanted to keep when I was leaving a secret, but with only 4 sisters, you know what is going down. It is quite impressive. We'll talk about it with them there, but they have no idea.

We had a fun Monday. We scheduled a lunch appointment because I didn't want to cook. Ruta J made us some delicious fried rice that we ate with moldy bread. Mmm...mold. I didn't have to eat it though because I had a pocket! Sadly the homemade pickle could not go in my pocket. Sister Clark and I feel very blessed that we didn't die from the pickle. It was not a good one. There was no food at the store- no avocados, no apples, no onions. Gotta love Latvia! We just went without those and I just wanted to eat apples all week, lol. Oops! We made a HUGE batch of muffins with kefirs (plain drinkable yogurt?) and biezpiens (translated- thick milk [but think cottage cheese minus the juice]). It had 4 tsp. of sugar for 6 cups of flour. I added more sugar and I don't regret it. They were quite delicious. We had so much batter we made some of it into apple bread with a streusel topping. Yum! Monday night we had family home evening with the Beldavi and the Frolavi. Eriks was so great. At the beginning of the lesson his dad was telling us how his car died and he didn't know what to do. Eriks proceeded to take my Book of Mormon, open it up, and pretend to read, "Don't worry about your car. Buy me more beyblades. You can find answers in the scriptures!" Little did he know that was what we were talking about that evening! It was really neat to see that at 7 he knows that you can find answers through reading the Book of Mormon.

On Tuesday we had a really good, really humbling district meeting. Gotta get my butt in gear! "We are in the heat of the battle, every day fighting for souls." -Elder Baxter. We talked about being completely focused on our missions on the time and finding families for here in Liepaja. Balance is the key and it is a hard thing to do. We made amazing fahijtas for lunch. We had a great lesson with Skaidra (LA) about choosing eternal life. She wants help getting more active in church again. She gave us permission to call her about church and we invited her to share her testimony this Fast Sunday and she did---sweeeeet! We sang, "I am a Child of God" in Janis and Kristine's (I) lesson and 2-year-old Eliza kept trying to sing the chorus after we were done.

Wednesday we had a lesson with investigator Liga and taught the Plan of Salvation. She really liked it and thought it would be something important for her family. Yes!! She lives in the elders' area though so we won't get to teach her. English class is getting smaller and smaller. We gave the option of watching Finding Faith in Christ and a couple of people stayed (mostly members).

Thursday was a very foggy day. So foggy that when I got inside I had hundreds of little waterdroplets condensing on my glasses. It made it a perfect day for our Danish soup. We thought of Mark. It was really yummy soup. Hopefully some babushka in Denmark will make him it. Santa helped us teach a lady named Iveta from English (who actually taught Madara and Rihards music). Santa bore a powerful testimony about reading the Book of Mormon with real intent. She talked about how the first time she read it she did it because she was scared of what the elders would do if she didn't. The second time she knew she should pray before she read and have good intents. She did and said it was a completely different experience and couldn't believe how she missed all of the important stuff before when she read it the first time through. I love Santa. We got to teach English/a spiritual thought to Vesma, the elders' investigator. She is so quirkily awesome. She just has a really unique voice and can be kind of weird, but she knows French, so we like her. She really is a sweetheart, she just wants to take being baptized seriously and thinks March is too soon.

Friday was an eventful day. On the way to Valda's we had a man in his 20s contact us and start talking to us in English. "Believe in God. Only God and Jesus. Jesus can save you. I know all about you Mormons. Your white trousers and t-shirts won't save you." I agree completely. I also don't own white trousers. I own white pants if we are speaking Brit. But anyway, he was a creep-o and we were glad that Valda's house was close. We had waffles with strawberries to celebrate the spring weather. We were at the church planning there so that people could practice for the talent show that evening. The elders had this super creepy older man Oskars come that was OBSESSED with wanting to meet with us. We told him we were having a meeting for the next hour and to just wait for the boys. "But you are here now, I'll wait for you. You speak Latvian AND English. Mmm. Just speak with me. Ten minutes every day is all I need." No! We are busy for the rest of our lives. We hid in a room and he was still waiting for us after his lesson with the elders. We called the elders to tell him to go away instead of coming out of the room.

Anyways the talent show was really really really really really good this time. The RS had a skit about the parable of the talents which was a hoot and a half (see pictures). Their costumes and the script were just too good. Presidents and his wife, Sintija and Sandijs, and Eriks and Ieva danced to one of the songs off of Anastasia. Sarra was twirling by herself and she kept getting so dizzy that she'd fall down. It was really cute. The trolls did a funny skit about a school teacher and student. They are really good at fake falling. Sister Clark sang "The Call", Inguss played guitar, there was some poetry read, and we missionaries had a funny skit. We recorded the song "I am a Child of God" off of Mormon messages (http://mormonchannel.org/mormonmessages?v=1101413030001) and then all took parts mouthing the song. We at least enjoyed ourselves. Annika was getting a picture with Elder Alder at the end and he was making faces so she smacked him in the behind! It was so funny and we all just watched and laughed. He probably deserved it. And liked it. Ha ha.

Saturday was the third day of the third month and Sister Lindstrom found it hard to do. Sisters Lindstrom and Clark met with Ligita and the elders before church. Ligita thinks the Book of Mormon is true but doesn't want to be baptized. Sisters Lindstrom and Clark met with Janis and Kristine and they had a great time because Ludmila played babysitter so that they could talk. Sister Lindstrom and Sister Clark went and met Ieva's mother and brother (a more attractive male version of Ieva with red hair). Ieva's mom is fine with her meeting with us and coming to church. She also thinks that Ieva doesn't know what she wants. We saw a lot of dogs harvesting.

Sunday we had break the fast and I didn't do anything for it! The Elders' Quorum made spaghetti. I counseled them NOT to cook it at 9am (church ends at 2). It went really well and then we had a "coordination meeting" with the elders and I got a blessing. I feel a lot more peaceful and chillaxed now. God has given me lots of gifts to help people here in Liepaja and he isn't going to stretch me more than I can handle and He is pleased with my work which is always good to hear. I'm supposed to remember my brother, our Savior, and remember the blessings of being a missionary. The priesthood is so neat, I know that it is real.
Have fun, be safe!

Love, Sis L