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