Transfer Week (so soon?)

The first transfer, I can't believe Jess has been in Russia long enough to already get a transfer. I was hoping he would be able to stay with his trainer a little longer but the Lord and his mission president know better than me obviously. This letter was a little easier to read than the last two but until he writes and tells me he is completly better I will be a little stressed. Maybe it's not him that needs to strengthen his faith through this trial, it might be me. I guess I better get on the stick and figure it out.

Hey everyone,

Well, I just spent about 40 minutes writing an email which was erased because myldsmail is junk. I am going to start using my gmail to send mail. You can still send mail to myldsmail or send it here if you want. Sorry but I can't rewrite everything. I'll just tell you the important stuff. First of all, one thing I could use is a book of American stamps so I can send letters through the pouch. Also, Elder Hiatt says if you really want to, you can buy some kind of religious stickers and put them on the package but I know Elder Guynn just recently got two big packages and they didn't have a scratch on them so I really don't think you have to be too worried. I can't wait for you to come to Russia. I hear St. Petersburg is awesome. I haven't gotten any more emails from Bryan Tuttle or a package. Did he say anything to Shauna when I wrote him back?

Anyway, about my week. We had some success trying a new program called the Book of Mormon lending program. I think it was started in Brazil and how it works is you tell the people you have a book that is very special. You say you can let them borrow it for maybe three or four days and then you will come back. We glued in a paper with some basic questions and where to find the answers in the book. We have three appointments tonight to see how the people did. I am really excited about that. That was basically the work for the week, now I'll tell you about yesterday. Yesterday was Elder Hiatt's birthday. We had some good times and some bad. We got to have a district meeting with the sisters and the elders from Kaluga. That was really fun and afterwards, we ate a cake that the Russian sister had made. The cake is called miracle and I have no doubt in my mind of why it is called that. It was so good! We also ate some of this cake that this strange guy with scars on his face and half of one hand missing bought us. I told the full story of the guy in the email I wrote the first time that got erased but I just don't think I have the strength to tell it again, ha, sorry. Anyway, after the meeting we ate lunch at a pretty nice place. This is where we got the bad news. This week is transfers. President Woolley called us up and told me that I am being transferred to a city called Veronish. I felt horrible because he told me the main reason for the transfer was my health. I do not want to be a burden to President Woolley. I guess Veronish has a bit better health care than Tula. The thing is, I don't need health care. All my tests came back completely normal. I almost wish they would have found something just so they could say, take this and it will go away. Now it is up to faith and trust. Who knows, maybe this is happening to me just so I could get transferred to Veronish. My new companion will be Elder Khusainoff. He is a native Russian. I know he speaks perfect English, but I hear he will only be speaking Russian to me. I'm a bit nervous. I know it will help but it will be really tough. I also felt bad because Elder Hiatt was really disappointed. He said I have been one of his favorite companions. We really do get along great and both of us really expected to be together for a while. The Lord gets people where they need to be though so I just need to be patient and try to show as much faith as I can. After lunch and stuff I asked Elder Hiatt to give me a blessing. He gave me such a powerful blessing, I have no fear that this will effect my mission. I will get over this and soon. Veronish will be fun I guess. They have two branches there with lots of members. The branch building is an old Theatre so it is really big and really beautiful. Both me and Elder Khusainoff will be new to the area so it will be a tough transition for both of us. The only bad part is that I will really never get any actual mail because I will be way down south and have really no contact with the office as far as mail goes. email will be all I get until the zone conferences we have. Anyway, I really do feel good during the day, just at night and in the mornings my stomach seems to be out of control. Although, after the blessing I got, I had no problem that whole night, and now it after noon and I have only gone to the bathroom once today. I have full faith in the power of the priesthood. I'm trying not to ask why this is happening to me, rather I am just trying to be patient and continue to work hard. I have seen amazing things happen through faith and through the power of the priesthood, now it's my turn to have the miracle happen to me. Don't worry about me, I feel healthy and I feel like I will be over this soon. I want nothing more than to be able to focus 100% on the work and the Lord will bless me so I can do that.

That's the news from the week. Today we are going to the place where Lev Tolstoy was born. It will be awesome because the place is an orchard meadow type thing and the leaves are changing here. We have been wearing the jackets we bought last week almost every day. People here say this will be one of the last warm weeks and then it will start getting cold. Next week I will be looking for some winter stuff. I will let you know how much the stuff costs. I am so glad everyone seems to be doing so good. Thanks for all your prayers, love and support. I love you all!

Elder Jess W Geddes

Don't drink the water!

We are hoping that Jess only has a bug from drinking the water over there but we will see when the test results come back.  It is a mothers worst nightmare to have her child so sick and so far away.  I have put my trust in the Lord, as I'm sure Jess has, and I know he will be fine soon.  This is a test of our Faith right now not to mention his patience.  Moms of foreign missionaries tell me this is pretty common so I am trusting them also right now.  Even with the struggle, he would not want to be doing anything else right now and I wouldn't want him to either.  Hopefully next week there will be a more upbeat letter, for his sake and mine:}

Hey everyone,

As usual, it sounds like you are all doing great and having a lot of fun. The pictures of the kids at Nauvoo were pretty funny, I wish I could have been there. We'll have to do something like that when I get back. 

I don't really have the greatest week to write about. After P-day last week, I just started to get sicker and sicker and I ended up spending the better part of 3 or 4 days in the apartment. I had a really high fever for a few days peaking at 102.7. The diarrhea was also pretty bad and I even threw up once for some reason. I kept in close contact with Sister Woolley and our doctor here. The doctor had me go get an anti-biotic that helped me get over the fever. I don't think I've ever had a real fever before this. I would wake up at night unbelievabley sweaty! It was pretty gross and eventually we had to wash my blanket in the bathtub. I can almost fill up our washer with my socks alone so you can imagine my blanket wouldn't fit in there. Being sick is the worst thing ever I decided on the mission. If it gets bad enough, you don't have the work to keep your mind busy and you just lay around and think about what you would be doing at home if you felt like this, namely, the kinds of soups and foods mom would be fixing me. Also, it began to wear on my patience so that when we did get to go work, it made me feel like I haven't learned a thing about the Russian language and that I wasn't understanding at all. I had to take a big step back and tell myself that I was just sick so my patience was low and that I was still as far in Russian as I was before I got sick. All in all I was able to keep pretty positive and in high spirits. I would go out and work when I felt like I could, which wasn't always the best idea...(let's just say I had to do an emergency batch of laundry) but I felt like I was wasting the Lord's time and the time I have here in Tula. 

We had a mission conference scheduled for yesterday, Wednesday, in Moscow. Sister Woolley set up an appointment for me with a place called SOS. I'm not sure if you've heard of it but I hadn't ever. It is a place where you can go and get real, western style health care and medicine. The doctors speak English, among a variety of other languages, and the place is just a nice clean place to go. So Wednesday came and we had to get up really early to catch our train to Moscow. Our train had the bed things that come out from the wall so we got to sleep most of the way. I thought that was pretty fun, although the train smelled a bit funky from all the other passengers who had been sleeping the whole night. The train left at around 5:30 so I had no trouble falling asleep. Then we got to the conference right around when it was going to start. The mission conference was so cool! I left feeling so motivated and excited to become a better missionary. President Woolley and his wife spoke to us, then we had Elder Pearson and his wife speak to us. They are in the area presidency over all of Russia. He gave a talk in conference in April as well. He spent most of the day training us and teaching us lots of awesome stuff. It was so cool and the spirit was very strong bearing testimony of the truthfulness of what he was saying. It was also really fun to see my district from the MTC, including Elder Johanson who got here last week finally. It was really fun to catch up with them and hear some of their stories. We got to eat Pizza Hut for lunch and Sister Woolley once again gave us all a jar of peanut butter. She's awesome. 

After the conference ended, Elder Hiatt and I went to the SOS clinic. It was so weird in there at first, they had a tv playing CNN news in English, all these nurses were asking questions in English, it felt weird but it felt really good. The doctor took a blood sample and also made me collect a stool sample ha. They do it a little different here in Russia. He simply handed me a tube with an opening about the size of a quarter and said go give me a sample. It wasn't easy, I'll tell you that much but I managed to give the man a sample. He said some results would be here in about 5 days. I have lost about 10 pounds, hopefully I'll be able to gain them right back. I wasn't eating a whole lot for a few days. Then he gave me a bunch of medicine to help with the diarrhea now. He gave me some probiotics, some chalk powder stuff that I mix with water and then choke down, and also some salt stuff to help me get 100% hydrated again. I guess I was pretty dehydrated as well. After we left there, we went to mcdonalds and got some dinner since it was after 8 o'clock and we hadn't eaten. Then we headed home, not quite as comfortably as we got there but we still made it. We got home at around 12, planned and went to sleep. I'm looking forward to a much better week this week.

One thing about the Russian people that is interesting is that they love to talk! Most people picture them as people who never smile, are never happy and never talk but if you get one talking, you had better have a few minutes to sit and listen. It makes it kind of hard to practice my Russian since you can't seem to get a word in edgewise. They are generally really really nice people. People are always willing to help you out when you need directions or have a question, they love to tell you about their town and buildings in it. The cars here are funny. Most of them are pretty typical cars, Toyota, BMW, cars you recognize, but the funny ones are these small square cars called Latas. They are all over and some of the cop cars are Latas. I think they are funny. There is actually a lot of unemployment and poverty here. There are lots of people begging for change and stuff but most of them just want to buy beer or cigarettes. We use Rubles here and stuff is pretty cheap for an American. It is currently somewhere around 31 Rubles to the dollar. I'm going to go buy a coat I can where when it begins getting a bit chilly and it is about 1200 rubles and it is a really nice jacket that I will get for I think under 50 dollars. 

Well, that is about all I have to say for this week. Thanks again for your love and support. I love all of you and hope you continue to do great and have fun. Next week I will have a much better letter to write I'm sure.

Elder Geddes

Stear clear of drunk Russians

I read this e-mail at 1:45 this morning and as you can imagine, once you read it, I didn't sleep much the rest of the night. Jess has only been there less than a month and he has been sick twice and accosted by drunk Russians. I hope I make it through the next 20 1/2 months. The Lord will protect them, I know, but this is a little scary. I need to strengthen my faith so I am going to the Temple today in hopes of doing that. I am also going to put his name in the Temple so he can get over the stuff that he is battling with his health. I will trust in the Lord and turn this over to Him since I can't do anything about any of it myself.

September 10th e-mail from Russia
I'm glad everyone seems to be doing great at home. I loved all the pictures I got and I can't wait to get a picture of those babies that isn't an ultrasound, I'm sure they will be some pretty cute little girls. Well first before I forget, if you do send me stuff, I would want nothing but American medicine! Cold medicine, sore throat stuff, all that stuff is junk here in Russia. They think they can just put everything in a weird tablet form that doesn't work. Don't worry about stuff like peanut butter, I know that used to be a popular thing to send but Sister Woolley gives us each a jar of peanut butter at every mission conference. When are you coming to Russia again? I hope you like it here, it will be a bit strange at first. You'll notice everbody smokes and there's litter everywhere but it is really a pretty cool place. This is a little about my last week. Sunday morning I started getting a headache and diarrhea. I felt miserable all day Sunday but I just thought it was because we were fasting. I thought I could just sleep it off that night so wasn't worried. The next morning, Elder Hiatt and I got to go to a city called Kaluga. It is one of the three cities in our zone and since Elder Hiatt is the zone leader, we get to go on splits every once in a while. The bus ride was about 2 hours long and I tried to sleep as much as I could because I still felt really crappy. The bus was super hot and bouncy. That's another thing you will notice in Russia, the roads are so horrible here! We got to Kaluga and Elder Player and I got to spend the rest of the day together tracting and contacting. It was really fun, even though we don't speak well, we are still able to get our message across to people. We knocked on this one door and the second the guy opened the door he told us to come in and he ran back into his kitchen. I said I smell apples, and he said ya apples, and brought us each a nasty rotten apple. Russians pick up apples off the ground instead of off the tree so they are usually pretty questionable. He had us go into his living room and sit down. He asked what we want and we told him we just want to talk about our church. He wasn't interested in that but he could tell we weren't from around here. When he found out we were from America, he got real excited and started asking us about all these different movies but we couldn't really understand so he dug out all his movies. He spent about 5 minutes trying to put a dvd in for us to watch. We were trying to tell him we don't have time to watch movies and that we should go but he wouldn't hear any of it. Finally he gets the movie going and it turns out to be Fly Boys. Don't ask me why he thought it was so important that we see that movie. He kept trying to make us eat the apples which we didn't. Finally we got our point across that we needed to go and so we said goodbye and left. As we were walking out of the building, we both tossed our apples into the bushes and then we hear this guy say something. He had been leaning out his window waiting for us to leave the building. Luckily he didn't notice that we threw the apples but he just wanted to tell us a few more things. Most Russians really just love to talk. Even when they know you don't understand a word they are saying, they just love to talk. We had a ward activity that night which was held in their apartment since they don't have enough members there to have a branch building. It was lucky that it was in their apartment because I was just feeling awful. I ended up going to bed at around 9:30. I had to get up 3 times to go to the bathroom though so the next morning, the other elders had me call Sister Woolley and see what I should do. She told me to call Sister Corbett and told me she's a nurse. What I didn't know was that she is also just a regular sister missionary! I thought she must just be here on a mission with her husband or something. So I called her, told her in great detail what had been going on and she told me to just call her back the next day if things hadn't slowed down at all. We hung up and I said, she sounds pretty young. The other elders told me that she was just a normal sister missionary who happens to be a full fleged RN, they thought that was pretty funny. Hopefully I never see her. We ate lunch in Kaluga and caught a bus home. I was feeling okay because one elder gave me some immodium that seemed to be working. The rest of the week was pretty tough. We kept trying to meet with people and they wouldn't show up but finally we got a hold of a guy who used to meet with the elders but stopped for some reason. When we met with him, he seemed very interested and had lots of questions. When we asked when we could meet with him again he said how about tomorrow? This was yesterday so we have another meeting with him tonight. His name is Ivan and he is really cool. I can't wait to meet with him again. So this is where my day got interesting. We had English Club last night. I teach the advanced group and Elder Hiatt teaches the middle group. Only one guy showed up in my group so it was just me and him. I had him try to teach me some russian. His name is Nick and he is probably just a bit older than me. He's pretty strange but he's a nice guy. He always walks with us most of the way home after English Club. Well after we got sick of trying to speak Russian, we started just talking about stuff in English. Elder Hiatt told me that Nick was gay about a week ago or so, so when Nick asked me what my opinion on proposition 8 was, I knew I was in for a weird time. The rest of the conversation was pretty awkward and not fun. Needless to say, I was happy when time was up. Well I thought my night couldn't get any weirder but it did. We were walking home and we were about a block from our apartment and it was pretty dark outside. These three drunk guys and a drunk girl started yelling for us to come talk to them but we didn't want anything to do with them so we just kept walking. All of the sudden one guy ran and grabbed Elder Hiatt by the arm and stopped him. They said they wanted to know what we were doing here and where we were from. We said we we were here to preach the gospel so he started saying, okay then preach to me! It was obvious that they weren't interested in what we had to say so we were just trying to tell them that we have to go home. They didn't want us to leave so one grabbed my backpack strap. He said they wanted to talk to us over in this dark spot with all these trees. We definitely weren't going over there but he had a pretty good hold on my bag. He started pulling me over there and Elder Hiatt was trying to help. He turned to two old ladies and said call the cops. By this point, another guy had come up and started shoving me around while his friend was trying to pull me to the trees. When Elder Hiatt said call the cops, they got mad and started shoving me even more saying, why do you want the police? The one guy kept shoving my head and trying to shove me to the ground. I said a little prayer and knew I would be fine. All of the sudden, two older Russian guys came and started telling the younger ones to leave us alone and let us go. They didn't want to at first but finally they did. We started walking away and Elder Hiatt said let's run! So we ran the rest of the way home. It was a pretty crazy experience but we sure felt blessed to have gotten away without even a scratch. It could have turned ugly fast but I know the Lord watches out for his missionaries. Don't worry mom, Elder Hiatt said that was the first time that has ever happened to him so it's not like it is a common thing. He said I shouldn't even tell you because when he told his mom something that happened to him, she freaked out and called the mission office! haha, So please don't do that. We really are watched over and protected. Anyway, that was pretty much my week. That was so cool about Shauna's nephew. Our apartment is on the same street as his but we're sure it's not the same one. The weather has been actually pretty warm lately. I've been sweating like crazy, partly because I think I had a fever for a while but Elder Hiatt gave me a blessing today so I am on my way to a full recovery. I love you guys and am praying for you as well. Thanks for everything!
Elder Geddes

Hello from Russia

Hey everyone, I was happy to get all your emails, it sounds like things are going great there. Meg, your kids crack me up, they are pretty cool. Hopefully Liz and Dallin and Alex made it safely to Iowa and you are all having a fun time. You can send me pictures on my email if you want, I even can send pictures as well but I don't have my cord. I will probably try to find one here rather than have you send it to me so I can send some pictures soon.

So starting with the rest of my p-day last week, this is what has been going on. After we finished writing we went to a store to try to find some ties. Dad, make sure that when you get here you find a place that sells ties. They have some awesome awesome ties here for really cheap. They are a bit thicker and wider than the ones we are used to but I love them. Anyway, we found a place after searching for a long time and got some ties. This place wasn't as cheap as we would have liked so I only got two. It ended up costing about 14 american dollars which is still really good because these are some seriously nice ties. I hope to come home with enough ties that I never have to wear an American one again. Anyway, after that, we took a look inside a Russian Orthodox Temple. They are everywhere and they are the buildings people think of when they think of Russia. They are really beautiful buildings with some awesome architecture. The inside is a bit odd and creepy but still very beautiful. Every inch of the inside is covered in murals and paintings and pictures. The Orthodox people believe they aren't worthy to speak with God so they speak through an icon. There is a picture of every priest they can pray through and we saw a woman do it. She crossed herself said a prayer and kissed the picture a few times. The idea is that you pray to the patron saint of a certain virtue. That saint will then count on the good side for you when you die. When you die they believe a big scale is brought out. On one side is all the sins they committed against these certain virtues. On the other side is all the good things you did for these virtues along with the saints help that you prayed for. If the good side outweighs the bad side you are allowed into heaven. Aren't you glad we know what we do? The Atonement is pretty amazing and I just wish that these people understood. Also, I am so glad we know we not only can, but we should speak with our Heavenly Father regularly. After we got done looking at the temple, we went and got some lunch at a grocery store. It ended up taking so long!! We waited in line forever because this is how they do it here. You order your food, they take it out of the display case and put it in the microwave. There is one microwave, ha, it was ridiculous but the food was really good. Then we just got some groceries and headed home and relaxed for a while. When we got dressed and headed out to work for the rest of the night, we had a mini miracle happen to us that had a strange ending. We were walking through a busy street corner when for some reason I turned my head and looked behind us. There was a man trying to wave us over to him but it was too loud so we couldn't hear him. He wanted to know what our badges meant and what we were doing here. He was really interested and asked if we could come teach him tomorrow sometime. We got his number and said goodbye. What an awesome feeling we had after that. We knew neither one of us heard him and that we could have just kept walking and never known the difference. I was so excited until that night when we tried to call him. For some reason his phone number didn't work. I was really disappointed but I am still making Elder Hiatt try calling him every night. So far, no luck. I'm wondering why the Lord let us find him and now we can't get a hold of him. There are too many people here and it is unlikely that we will ever see him again. His name was Pavle or Paul I guess but he seemed perfect and I would have loved to help him learn more. The next day, Elder Hiatt and the sisters and I had an opportunity to go do some service at a less active womans dacha. A dacha is like a small farm. It is where people here go in the summer to try and grow enough food for the winter. She had Elder Hiatt and me sawing a log that I swear had to be a few hundred years old into smaller pieces for firewood. She gave us two little rusty handsaws and we got to work. It was like trying to saw a rock with a butter knife! It took forever for us to cut one piece and we were both sweating like crazy. We didn't even get half the log cut up by the time we had to leave. She was grateful for the help though and she even came to church the next sunday! We did find a guy to teach though. His name is Justin. He is from Camaroon Africa and he is here going to school. His native language is French and while he is better than me at Russian, he still didn't understand a lot of stuff but he is really nice and we gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon in French. We will hopefully meet with him again soon but he said he is really busy with school. He said he will find time though and that when he says he'll do something he does it so I am excited. Elder Hiatt says one thing he has learned is that if you see a brother, talk to him. They are all really nice and friendly. Other than that, the rest of the week was filled with a lot of contacting and tracting.

Both of us got pretty sick sometime last week and while I was getting over it, Elder Hiatt was getting worse. I had the worst sore throat and cough I've ever had because we couldn't just sleep it off like I would have at home. I didn't really complain much and kept working. Once elder Hiatt got it though we went to the pharmacist and got some sore throat medicine. It was really funny because we had no idea what to get so we just got something that pointed to the throat. Turns out they were big tablets. We had barely gotten them open when Elder Hiatt tells me they aren't easy to swallow. I asked him why he swallowed it because it doesn't make much sense that a tablet you swallow would help a sore throat. He said, ya you're probly right. Try sucking on it, it had some flavor. So I sucked on one and it seemed like that was the way they were supposed to work, but they didn't work too good. I just thought it was the funniest thing that he just went ahead and swallowed it, he must have been pretty desperate. By Sunday morning, Elder Hiatt was feeling sick enough to call Sister Woolley. She told him to go get this one antibiotic and take it easy for a while. We went to church where he had to speak and teach Sunday school. He gave his talk then we just put on a movie for Sunday school. After church we did the financial stuff. I don't really have to do a whole lot. I have to tell the branch president some numbers and sign some papers where he tells me to then write a little thing. It's not too hard so I should be fine. Once we were done with that we went home and ate some sandwiches and Elder Hiatt went to bed. He slept for almost 4 hours. I studied and cleaned up the apartment a bit. When he woke up, we had about an hour left until 9 so we decided to just finish the day by really cleaning the apartment. I felt a little bad that we didn't really do anything but it seemed to help, Elder Hiatt is feeling better so hopefully we never have to do that again.

On Monday, we got to travel to Rezon to go on splits with the elders there since Elder Hiatt is the zone leader. It is about a 4 hour bus ride and I'll tell you one thing, the roads here are terrible. I slept some of the way there but the bus was so hot. We got there and took our stuff to the apartment. Their apartment is so nice! They are the first people to ever live in it and it is huge. Elder Hiatt went with Elder Gillis and I got to work with Elder Guynn again. It's interesting to see all the things we have learned in just these short weeks since we were companions. They gave us a cell phone and trusted us to get some work done and not get lost. We even had a lesson with a member set up. I was amazed at how well we were able to communicate with the people. Even though we weren't able to understand a lot, or say too much, we were able to get our message across to a lot of people. We even got chased out of a stairwell by an angry old babushka. That night, I slept on the hard wood floor and Elder Hiatt slept on the couch bed. He woke me up at about midnight or so and had me and Elder Gillis give him a blessing. He had been coughing the whole night I guess and just couldn't sleep. I have become a very deep sleeper lately. I'm not sure if it is because I got used to Elder Guynn snoring at the MTC or if I'm just wiped out by the end of the night. It takes me about 5-8 seconds to fall asleep and I usually don't wake up at all until morning, even when I am on a hardwood floor. Anyway, I annointed and Elder Gillis blessed him. He coughed maybe one more time that night and was able to sleep the rest of the night. The priesthood is an amazing power. The next morning we had a district meeting, lunch and then another 4 hour bus ride back to Tula. I slept even more on this bus even though it was even hotter. Yesterday we had another opportunity for service that ended up being a lot more than we knew we were going to do. We were going to do some farm work at a lady in the branch's farm. This sister hasn't come to church in a few months because she was an endowed member but she got pregnant and had a baby. She wasn't excommunicated or anything as far as I know but I think she feels really ashamed and embarrassed maybe. It's pretty sad because she is a really nice lady. I guess her family doesn't even know she is a member of the church so for some reason we had to take our badges off. Anyway, we did the service with her sister I think, who was pretty crazy. She didn't want to call us elder and sister so she asked for our first names. It was weird having her call me Jess all day, it's been a while since that has happened. It was about a 45 minute bus ride to the farm. It's not exactly pretty here in the city of Tula, it's really actually pretty dirty but out in the country it is really beautiful. It's really really green and there are farms and stuff. So we got to the house and her sister leads us to this big blue volkswagon bus. It had no seats in the back but we all hopped back there and went for a ride a lot like the Indiana Jones ride from Disneyland. This lady was driving this manual bus like a champ through mud and bumps all over the farm. We were going to pick potatoes for the service. I would say we picked a row of potatoes a mile long since we did one and a half rows. We probably easily picked over a thousand pounds of potatoes and filled that bus up pretty well. I was so tired and dirty by the end. This lady was a bit crazy but really nice. She kept getting mad at Elder Hiatt and me because we were either putting too small of potatoes in the big bucket or putting too big of potatoes in the small bucket, or we were picking ones that were a bit rotten or a bit unripe. All in all it was pretty fun and she fed us lunch after. She had mashed potatoes and hot dogs. They were so good, along with the black bread and tomatoes. Make sure you try some fresh black bread when you come here, I quite enjoy it! Then the woman who had the baby brought out this big jar of some nasty nasty looking stuff. I thought it was some sort of pickled something. She poured us each a glass of the juice inside and I took a drink. It tasted really good and sweet and I thought I recognized the taste. Turns out it was plum! They were bottled plums and the juice was really good. After that we went home and worked for just a couple more hours since the service took way longer than expected.

One thing I like is English Club. I had to teach it by myself last Saturday for some reason and it was fun. I taught the advanced group so pretty much you just lead a conversation. I decided to talk about the first day of school and the differences between here and home. We still had some time left over and I made the mistake of asking about the last day of school. I was trying to get at the point how I felt when I finished school, how I felt nervous but excited and a little sad to see all my friends going different ways. They all just talked about how they couldn't really remember too much because there is so much alcohol. Note to self, never ask Russians how they celebrate big things.

A little about my companion. He is from Riverton Utah. He goes home in December and he had been in Tula for about 5 weeks before I got here. He and I have a very similar sense of humor and he is always making me laugh. He is a hard worker and he has taught me a lot of stuff. Also, he cooks some really good stuff. I have gotten in the habit of doing the dishes right after dinner. Our sink is really small and can't afford to hold too many dishes for too long. We usually listen to some motab or some talks by Truman G. Madsen on Joseph Smith. We have a twelve part series he did and it is awesome. We've already listened to it once and we started it over yesterday. By the way, if you want a good cd, buy the Mormon Tabernacle Choire "Come Thou Fount" cd. I think it is their newest one and it is really good. Today we are going to visit the Kremlin here in Tula. Also we are going to visit the weapons museum here. I have decided I am pretty interested in old communist stuff. Elder Hiatt has some old pins and coins from the soviet union and a member in our branch is going to give us both a one ruble coin from the soviet days. It's crazy to see the influence those days had and still have on a lot of people. The other day, we were knocking on doors and an old babushka just couldn't figure out why we were there. She said, First this country teaches us there is no God, now God is preached freely. Also I found out they didn't even know about Christmas here until about 10 or 15 years ago. A lady was telling us about how it's not really that cool of a holiday here because not everyone really even knows about it. Interesting stuff.

Well, that's about what my week was like. I am still having a ton of fun here. Tonight, Elder Guynn and Elder Player will be coming to Tula and staying the night. Both of their companions have a visa trip tomorrow along with one of the sisters here in Tula. Tomorrow we will have to wake up at about 4 to go meet the sisters at the bus stop and take back sister Lavrenteva to our place. There will be 5 of us tomorrow which will be really interesting. We will probably split up. Hopefully I know my way around good enough to not get us too lost. But I'm glad to hear everyone is doing well and having fun there. Mom and Dad, you probably don't need to be waking up and staying up all night reading this email haha, just sleep and read it in the morning. I could tell Dad was pretty sleepy by the end of his email. I love all of you!

Elder Geddes

One Week Down

Here is Jess's first letter from Russia. It's a bit late so you are getting his second letter also today. As you will see as you read, he is a pretty excited young missionary. His e-mail comes in at around 2:00 in the morning and somehow I am able to hear it and wake immediatly so I can read it first thing. As you can see, he has a very excited mother also. We love his letters and hope you will enjoy them with us.

Hey everyone, How is everthing going in America? I can say that now because I am in Russia! It sounds like everything is going really well, I'm glad Britney made it back from her trip okay. I can't believe that about Caleb and Struan. That is really too bad. Oh and don't worry about my license, I found it, plus I found out it is pretty much useless anyway but I was glad to find it. I can't believe Mikelle is in school! That's pretty exciting. I guess I can receive emails from you all I just can't send them to whoever I want, so feel free to email me and I when I email you I will just have to do it through mom's account. We have to go to an internet cafe and we just pay for how much time we want. We got an hour and a half so it should be plenty for this week. Okay, so my first week in Russia. What an awesome week! After I got done talking to mom, we had interviews with President Woolley. He told us a little about our areas and companions and expressed his love for us. He really does love us already. In my interview he told me Elder Hiatt is the first counselor in the branch presidency as well as a zone leader. He asked me to be the branch clerk in our small branch here in Tula. Elder Hiatt says that we keep the branch afloat because right now there are only 3 worthy melchezidek priesthood holders and two of them are us, but I'll tell you about the branch later. After the interviews we got to go to the ap's apartment. It was so nice! They had tons of food, they had real milk but it still tasted a bit weird, and they even had a bedet if that's how you spell it. I didn't get a chance to use it though, I was just too tired. My whole district, plus two other elders who were going home in a few days, slept in the living room on these IKEA mattresses they had. I didn't sleep too great, even though I was completely exhausted. I had the misfortune of getting a bed in between Elder Guynn and Elder Grossman who both snore like crazy. I woke up at about 5:50 and knew I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep so I just layed there until 6:30 when I could get up. I ate a bowl of cereal called little pillows in english. They were way to sweet but I have figured out a good way to eat them thanks to the other elders. You add corn flakes and granola! It is so good. Granola here is awesome. Anyway, we all got up and got ready, it took a while for all 11 of us to shower and what not. Actually 12 because another elder showed up at about midnight for some reason, I never figured out because he didn't speak the best english. We were picked up by President Woolley and his driver Sasha. Sasha drives like a champ but it is really scary, I'm really glad we aren't allowed to drive. One of the ap's forgot something important at the apartment so he and the president took the presidents car and drove back and Sasha took the rest of us to Red Square. Sasha doesn't speak English but he is really nice. All of us were so excited when we got to see St. Basil's Cathedral. We took a bunch of pictures and everything but right as we got there, Elder Anderson found out his camera battery was dead so he didn't get any photos of Red Square haha, I felt bad but it was kinda funny. Another cool thing we got to see was similar to the changing of the guard and Arlington Cemetary. They have the same kind of monument there and have a similar ceremony when the guard changes, only with a bit more Russian flare. I got it on video. While we were watching that, Sasha was saving our spot in line to see Lenin! I never knew this but they preserved his body and have it on display. We walked in, without Sasha because he was holding our cameras and stuff since we aren't allowed to take them in, and we walked down some stairs into a really dark room. There were Russian guards about every 15 feet. Lenin was in the middle of the room in a glass case looking about as freaky as ever. We walked around and stopped to look and right as we stopped, a guard started yelling something to us in Russian so we assumed we weren't allowed to stop and we got out of there. We also saw the Kremlin, that was cool too. After that we were driven to the central office in Moscow where we would meet our new companions. I met Elder Hiatt, said goodbye to my district, grabbed my bags and left. We walked quite a ways to get to the metro. The metro was beautiful, it had high ceilings with mosaics and murals and everything. We took a short metro to the train station and waited for a train for a little while. While we were waiting Elder Hiatt bought me a yogurt drink and some chocolate and we talked to a woman at the store about our church. The train was finally there and I was really excited because I had never been on a train. One of the first things that happened was I got yelled at for having my suitcase on the bed above me instead of in the bin below me because it was too big to fit in there. She made us put it on this shelf clear at the top of the train and this bag was heavy! Other than that, the train really wasn't as cool as I thought it would be. It was so slow and the seats weren't very comfortable. I knew I should be studying or something but I was so tired, I couldn't stay awake. I slept almost all of the 3 hour ride. I was awake for part of it and finally got a chance to talk to Elder Hiatt a little bit. We only spoke Russian, since there were two Russian guys sitting accross from us and Elder Hiatt was really impressed with how much I was understaning and able to say. When we got near the stop, we grabbed my bags and stood in the doorway. I farted silently and when Elder Hiatt smelled it he said "Ah, Tula!" He explained how there was some sort of sewage plant thing right as you come in to Tula. I still haven't told him it was me, I probly will today. We walked what seemed forever to get to our apartment. Elder Hiatt bought me a Russian pastry that Tula is famous for making. It was pretty good, I had another one yesterday. We got to our apartment and I was a little nervous. One thing I have already realized is that here in Russia, no matter how nice the apartment is, the entry and stairwell is really sketchy. We open this big steel door and walk into a dark entry way and head for the elevator. The elevator is tiny and reeks of urine. It has graffiti on the walls that amazingly enough was washed off the other day. The graffiti is sometimes funny because Russians try to write things in English and if there is one thing they don't understand about the English language it is words like the, and is. Our elevator said "Linkin Park the best" Elder Hiatt said he saw one that said "Rap cool" Kinda funny. Anyway, our apartment is pretty nice. It's pretty small but I like it. We have a small kitchen, a small room with a toilet, a small room with a shower and a washing machine, a living room with a piano, which happens to be my desk until further notice, and a bedroom. It's pretty nice. All I have eaten since I have been here is stuff Elder Hiatt makes me. He is a good cook and we have eaten well. We eat lots of vegetables and lots of taco stuff or chicken on rice or in barley. It's all been really good. We taught a lesson to an awesome member of the branch and she fed us these delicious pastry things and a cup of berry flavored tea. Elder Hiatt is awesome. He has already taught me a lot and he makes me laugh so hard my stomach hurts. One of the greatest things he has taught me so far is that somedays we will be disappointed in the results we have, but we should never be disappointed in ourselves or in our efforts. It's true too. We walk I don't know how many miles a day and knock on tons of doors and sometimes people don't want to talk to us, sometimes they talk to us but don't want to learn more, sometimes they give us their info and we never get a hold of them or they say nevermind. We have found some awesome people who I think would really enjoy the message but we haven't been able to get back in contact with them. We have some investigators already, one that is really promising. I haven't met him because he has been in Paris. We are hoping he got married to his girlfriend in Paris. If so, we should be able to help him get baptised. This is what we do, we set up meetings with people at night, if they don't follow through or if we can't get anything set up, we go knock on doors or talk to people on the street. We don't have a ton of strong members to help us find so a lot of it is up to us. We go get into an apartment building and go all the way to the top and work our way down. It's pretty funny because most people when you knock on the door just yell "KTO TOM!" Who's there! We explain that we are doing a small survey about families and that we would like to talk to them. I can do it already. I can tell them who we are, why we are there and give the survey. At the end I ask them if they think it's possible to live after this life. That's usually where I hand it over to Elder Hiatt. It's pretty cool, I'm not sure why, but I am not one bit afraid to talk to anybody. Probably because I have Elder Hiatt to help me out but I have talked to a few people all by my self and had a small conversation with them. The sister missionaries we share Tula with just love me for some reason. One of them is a native who was actually in the mtc with me for a while. She tells me every time we do anything with them how great she thinks I'm doing. She says I speak almost without an accent and that she can't believe that even though I don't really know the language too well I will go up to anyone on the street and start talking to them. I love to hear that and even though I have SOOO far to go, it really helps build my confidence. Church was an interesting experience. I had to give a five minute talk, basically just bear my testimony and I shared a verse from the book of mormon. When I stood up, I could see everyone's face looking like "this oughta be good" After the meeting, lots of the members came and told me good job and that I'm already speaking well. Once again, I know I have an incredible amount to learn but that is always good to hear. After church, me and Elder Hiatt had to meet with our branch president. He is awesome. He is 25 and he's a returned missionary. He is a great force in the branch. I had to be trained on the finances, it isn't too hard but I felt bad because President Alfonin had to wait for me to try to understand and also to write in Russian. I'll get good at it though. I have a pretty tough time understanding. Some people are better than others but for the most part I am just trying to pick out words here and there. If they say short phrases I can usually figure it out but when they go off forever I completely lose it. Russians love to talk a lot so I am usually pretty lost. It will come though. A lot happened this week, this email is huge and I probably left out a ton. Some of the more interesting things that happened: My first morning, as we left the apartment, we saw a guy carrying a full grown man over his shoulders because he was too drunk to walk. I see a lot of people stagger from alcohol, it's pretty sad. It's such a so called tradition to drink here, if you are a guy that doesn't drink, people think you must be an alcoholic and you just can't handle alcohol. Another funny thing that has actually happened twice now, an angry old babushka tried to make us leave the stairway we were in. The first one was the worst. She was just screaming and waving her newspaper. Elder Hiatt explained we were here by the law and we didn't have to leave but she insisted. I didn't understand anything she said except for leave fast. Elder Hiatt said she was using some pretty foul language though. The next one that did that to us was pretty calm about it. She just kept saying, leave quickly, leave quickly, I'll call the cops haha. We aren't too scared of them. We hold English club every Saturday night. We are trying to get it going on Wednesday's too but nobody came last night. Elder Hiatt and I teach the advanced group where we simply hold a conversation with them. It was a lot of fun and it was a relief to understand what people are saying. Hmm, I'm sure there are other things I have forgotten but this is a really long email. Oh, the weather has been rainy and pretty chilly lately. We have been wearing just sweaters. One of the sweaters I brought is way too big so I have only been wearing one. Maybe that could be a good gift. As for music, we are allowed to listen to any motab, and any variation of the hymns. we have a cd player in our apartment and some pretty good music. Sorry this is so long, I hope you don't get too bored, they probably won't be this long every week, it's just this was a pretty big week for me. Everything is going great, I am loving the work. It's really hard and I am just tired every day but I just love it here. I'm glad it sound's like everything is going well at home. I'll talk to you next week. I love you all!
From Russia with Love,
Elder Jess W Geddes