Time marches on

Hello everyone,

Thanks for all your letters, I really love hearing from you all. I forgive you for emailing President Woolley mom, haha, I wasn't too embarrassed. I'm sure you aren't the only mom that has ever done that.

Well things aren't going exactly as I had them planned for my first week with my new companion, but all in all, I am very happy. My companion is an awesome kid with a real desire to work and help the people. He speaks Russian really well and has already taught me a few words. We have continued to speak Russian all week, partly due to the fact that we are with Elder Khussainoff, he has helped out so much, thanks to him we have set a solid pace for ourselves and our companionship to speak Russian to each other. We are still in a threesome and it is not always the most fun. We have been switching off working in both of our areas and sleeping in both of our apartments, it's not exactly ideal but we have made due. It's been pretty fun but I think we are all ready to get back into normal companionships. His companion had visa problems getting from Kazakstahn to Russia, which is why he is late coming. We think he will be here either saturday night or sunday morning. I can't wait. Being senior companion is a little harder than I thought it would be. Like I said, we are kind of lacking in the investigator area. President wants us to get 15 lessons a week and I know we can, but I really want to get lessons with different people. Elder Traasdahl and I seemed to meet with the same people week after week. That doesn't help anyone. We are going to be focusing a lot more on finding new people, along with getting our lessons in. Yesterday we did some finding and got a couple of good contacts. It was another testimony to me of how Satan tries to slow down the work. We spend a lot of time on the bus since our area is so big so it is important that we always try to talk to people on the bus. Sometimes it is just plan awkward and not fun because Russians don't talk on the bus. Anyway, I was feeling kind of sleepy and was sitting by a lady who was about 40ish and I was feeling like I just didn't want to talk to her. As I was starting to nod off to sleep, I decided that I just couldn't make excuses and needed to talk to her. I just asked her if she had ever heard of the book of mormon and told her a little bit about what it was and where it came from. She was really interested! Enough to even offer me money, a lot of people just think we are trying to sell the book. Anyway, I told her it was free and that we were just trying to help people have a chance to read it. I told her I would call maybe tomorrow or something and she said, give me a week, 2 days isn't enough to read the whole thing. I really hope she reads it and feels the spirit of the book. Also, we have made the goal to get in contact with every person we don't know from our branch list. We have been calling every number and fining a lot of people have moved or that we have a lot of wrong numbers. That will be a big service to the branch and to future missionaries. No wonder our activity rate is so low since half our members don't even live here anymore! And also it will give us a good amount of work to do as we track down all these people.

Sergey and Inna are.. okay I guess. They both missed church on Sunday. We have only been able to meet with both of them once since their baptism. Sergey needs a lot of support so that he doesn't fall back into the same crowds. We will keep working with him.

I am not sure if the package is in Moscow, I'll find out and let you know next week. I'm hoping to get it soon. We have had more weird money problems so I will be using personal funds to buy groceries today but I will be able to pay myself back in 2 days I think. Sometimes communication is just plain bad between us and Moscow.

That's crazy about the USU thing. What a weird guy. I'm not sure what password you were asking for, so I don't know what to tell you. Everything worked out right? What if I ended up wanting to go back to USU, is it still an option?

I'm glad to hear all is well at home. I'm doing good here and still having fun. I can't believe I will hit my year mark in 2 months, or that I'll be 20 in two months. Time flies. I realized I have already had my mission call for over a year and even went to the temple a year ago. That is just crazy to me. Well, I hope all is well there, thanks again for everything you guys do. I love you all.

Elder Geddes