His first greenie has arrived

Hey everyone,

We had quite the week this week, it went really, really fast. Elder Cecil and I just worked as usual and nothing too big happened until Tuesday when we were supposed to go to Moscow. Elder Cecil had a visa trip, I had to go get my companion, the sisters went to pick up their new companions so everyone left except for one poor elder who stayed with the senior couple for a couple nights. Anyway, Elder Khussainov bought the train tickets and said at 4:00 we needed to be at the station. We showed up at about 4:20 which we thought was plenty of time to catch our 4:30 train, the only problem was that Elder Cecil and I showed up to the wrong station. There are two here in Veronezh and we had a bit of a miscommunication (the first one in my whole 10 months of speaking Russian... not) Anyway, we called Khussainov and he made some quick calls. There happened to be a member of the church from Lipitsk, the neighboring city, in Veronezh. The trains leave from Veronezh and end up going through a small station near Lipitsk. The plan was that she could beat the train to that station and we could catch on there. Well, we didn't make it. To make a long story short, we ended up having to buy overnight bus tickets from Lipitsk to Moscow so Elder Cecil could make it on time for his visa trip. At first I was a little annoyed about what had happened but by the end of the day I was pretty pleased about it. First of all, I got to know this member lady from Lipitsk who is actually really cool. She served a mission a few years ago and is just a good lady. Then when we were getting into the town, she got a call from a young girl in the ward who wanted her to come talk to her mom. The girl has been a member for almost 2 years and her mom has been pretty against the church this whole time. She is just now starting to open up a bit to the church. Yulia, the lady we were with, said that she could come talk to the mom and that she would bring two elders with her. When we got there, we were able to just get to know the mom a bit while Yulia talked with the younger girl. Her mom is a pretty nice lady, asked us lots of questions about where we were from and our families and stuff and why we were on missions. Then we got to sing a couple songs and Yulia kind of took over from there and did an awesome job solving a lot of this ladies concerns. At the end, Elder Cecil and I just bore testimony and were able to share our reasons for being on missions. As we were leaving, the mom told me that she feels a lot better now that she knows the people her daughter spends so much time with are actually pretty good people. I am not sure if we helped at all, but the spirit was strong as Elder Cecil and I bore simple testimony about the truthfulness of the gospel. It was pretty cool. I would even say it made the overnight bus ride worth it.

Our bus left at 9:30 and got to Moscow at around 6. I thought at first that the bus might just be better than the train just a bit, but I was so wrong. First of all, one of the first passengers that got on the bus after us was pretty drunk. He went to the very back of the bus and just started moaning and groaning. A lady behind me asked if the driver could kick him off before it was too late. The driver went back to talk to the guy and by the time he got back there the guy had already passed out. They all agreed that it was probably just best to let him sleep, so off we went. I was able to sleep pretty good the first half of the night, but then I woke up around 2 and couldn't sleep hardly at all the rest of the night. At one point, the guy from the back walked up the aisle past me to talk to the driver. He smelled like pure throw up. As he started walking back, sure enough he stops at my seat to talk to me and ask for some help. He was having a hard time getting the buttons on his cell phone to work so he handed me the phone and asked me to do it. His first mistake was that the phone was upside down, so he was trying to punch the number in on the back of his phone, ha. Anyway, I felt pretty good about myself for helping a drunk man covered in his own throw up make a phone call at three in the morning on a bus somewhere in the middle of Russia... only on a mission does this stuff happen.

We finally made it to Moscow and met up with all the others at the train station. We got to the branch building and just waited around for a couple hours for our new companions to get there. I finally saw my companion come in and realized he is about a foot taller than me. I also realized he speaks very good english. His name took me a few minutes to figure out. His name is Elder Khasbiullin... I'm still working on it. Anyway, he is by far the coolest Russian elder in our mission. He is so nice and he is exactly how I wanted him to be, excited and ready to be obedient. I thought about myself as a greenie and how excited I was to see basic street signs just because they were in Russian and how I wasn't affraid to tell my trainer "that's not what the white handbook says" and I thought, it would be easy to be even more obedient if my companion wants to stick to all the rules, even the small ones. Today, my companion asked me if I was going to wear my suit coat and I said, no but you can if you want. He said, ya but they told us in the MTC that we should always look alike. I chuckled a bit and figured I had at one point said the same exact words, only in english. He is 23 years old and has been a member since he was 8. He played college basketball and some professional as well. He is very excited that we have a basketball court here in Veronezh and president wants us to somehow figure out a way to use his basketball skills to find people to teach the gospel to. I'm up for anything. He is a very happy guy and has already helped me a lot with some words. Also, he knows that we as American missionaries need to speak as much Russian as possible so he doesn't try to speak to me in English just because he knows it. He wants to speak to us in Russian to help us. So far, I'm liking this a lot.

We had a really long training/orientation meeting there in Moscow with all the new elders and sisters. It was pretty good but I was so tired from the night before on the bus and I was also really hungry since we hadn't eaten hardly anything. We got fed pizza hut and then had a choice to either go contacting or go to a famous art museum. Of course everyone picked the art museum, even though it meant we would have to take part of our p-day today to work. The museum was pretty cool, once again, really long but I enjoyed it. There were some pretty awesome paintings. There were a lot of paintings of Christ. There was one painting of Judas after he had betrayed Christ that I thought was really cool. It was painted with mostly all dark colors and you could see Judas standing and looking at a mob of people in the distance. You could just feel his guilt and a realization of What have I done. It was pretty cool. After that, we just gathered our stuff and headed back to the train station to get on another train. I will be going back to Moscow in two weeks for a visa trip, then two weeks after that I will be going back because Elder Perry will be coming to our mission to speak to us. I'm excited.

I got the package, but I didn't open it. I was really tempted to because I was really hungry and everyone was telling me to just open it, but I stayed strong. It will be all the sweeter on my birthday. I still haven't heard anything about calling home but I will let you know as soon as I hear anything. It still doesn't seem like it was that long ago we called home for Christmas. Our apartment is really nice now that we have our furniture. We have had some issues with leaks and stuff that are still bothering us but today we finally got a mirror in our bathroom so I guess just one step at a time.

Our converts are doing okay I guess. Inna has a hard time getting to church sometimes, she works a lot. The bad thing is that she doesn't really see it as a big problem to miss church. Sergey is doing as good as possible, as long as his mom is around. She makes sure he gets to church and stuff. We had a lesson with him where we went over the plan of salvation. It was the first time we've gone over it since his baptism. I just asked him what he remembers about it and he proceeded to draw on the chalk board a very detailed plan of salvation. There were just a couple things he didn't remember but I was very happy.

That sounds like it was a crazy wind storm, hopefully nobody had too much damage done. I'm sure all the school kids weren't too disappointed about it. I have been wondering about the other missionaries from our stake. How many do we have out right now? I can't believe it's about time for a few of those guys to come home.

Well, thanks for all the letters and support. We kind of have a busy day so I'm in a bit of a hurry. We have to go buy some serious groceries and get my companion settled in a bit. Plus, we have to use part of our day for missionary work because of the museum. I love you guys and hope all is going well for you. I'll talk to you next week and hopefully I'll know when we get to call home. Love you!

Elder Geddes

Zone Leader

Hey everyone,

Well the big news for this week is that I will be getting on a train Tuesday night to go to moscow where I will pick up my new greenie. I still don't know his name because he is a Russian and so President didn't know how to pronounce his name. Of the six new elders coming into our mission there was one Russian and I get the chance to train him. President called me and told me I will be training and then told me that I will be the zone leader here in Veronezh. I felt pretty humble right there thinking I am not up to the challenge but then I felt really good that President, and more importantly, the Lord, would trust me with two huge responsibilities like this. I have the awesome chance to help an elder get started on his mission. I know at least for me, that my first couple of transfers have had a huge impact on my mission so far. I will do my best to help this new elder get off to a good start. President told me that this elder gave up a professional basketball career to serve a mission. I'm not sure what professional basketball is like here in Russia but it sounds like this guy has his head on straight. President also said that he comes from a member family and has been a member for a number of years. He is supposedly a very friendly and outgoing elder which will be good. I can't wait to learn from him and hopefully teach him a thing or two along the way. Our zone is receiving 2 new elders who will be serving in Lipitsk, the city about 2 hours from Veronezh. They took Elders out of Belarus which is kind of a bummer because I'm not sure I'll have a chance to serve there now but that's okay. Lipitsk needed the Elders more than Belarus. The Elders aren't even allowed to use their priesthood there but they sure can in Lipitsk. They pulled elders out of Lipitsk a few transfers ago and have had only sisters there up until now. The branch is small and struggling there and will be grateful to have two more priesthood holders joining the ranks. My companion is moving over to the other area here in Veronezh to serve with his mtc companion, Elder Tanner. Sister Corbett will be training an American sister and there will be two Russian sisters in Lipitsk. I will be relying on the Lord as much as possible to try to be a good leader and example to all the members of our zone. Our zone will be incredibly young, not one Elder over a year out. I think Sister Corbett has been out for a little over a year but still, we will have two greenies, me and two other elders from my mtc district and two elders who were with me in the mtc one transfer behind. We will have to trust each other and rely on one another to help the zone be as successful as possible.

Yesterday we moved into a new apartment. The apartment is really big, three rooms! It was completely empty when we found it but the lady agreed to furnish it with the things we asked for. Yesterday we found as we moved in, a small fridge, an old beat up table, a bed with a nasty mattress on it and a new washing machine. There will still be a few more pieces of furniture coming but as of now, it still echoes. Last night was our first night there. I had to repair the toilet last night and the shower this morning. There are still some leaks in the shower but the important thing is the toilet flushes now. Also there was no hot water this morning and there supposedly won't be for a few more days. Yesterday we didn't have hot water in our old apartment either so we just filled up everything we could to boil water in it and we showered from a bucket. This morning we just took the cold, it's too much of a hassle to boil the water, plus we didn't have a bucket there. The best part about the new apartment is that it is right behind the branch. That will be cool.

Some other cool things that happened this week. A while back Elder Cecil and I thought we had gotten a golden contact. He was really excited about the Book of Mormon, asked for a copy then gave us his number and the number of his friend who he said would also be interested. Every time we called him he would say that he and a few of his friends were really interested and would love to meet with us but we just couldn't find the right time. Finally after calling him for a couple weeks, we got a time worked out and a place to meet. We waited on the bus stop they told us and then they called and said, "we are almost there, there's three of us" Then I thought he said, "One of us is black" I said okay, and we were on the lookout for three guys, one of them a black guy. Much to our surprise three guys show up, one of them wasn't black, he was just IN black. Sure enough, it was three guys, one of them a Russian Orthodox Priest. I tried to be cool and stuff but they knew we had both just peed a little. Anyway, they took us to this special building next to one of the temples. They really just wanted to talk and find out a little more about us and what we believe. They were all three some of the nicest guys in the world and one of them will probably be coming to our english club tomorrow. They said that when they found out we were Americans they really wanted to meet with us since all the Russian Mormons they had ever met just wanted to argue. They said right off the bat that we don't want to argue, we just want to learn. They of course didn't agree with some stuff we said but all in all we made friends with Father Yevgenny and his two assistants. They want to meet again sometime and even said they would take us for a tour of one of the temples here in Veronezh that he works at. Just for your information, I have heard that this temple is the 3rd or 4th most important one in Russia. It's way big and really cool looking. I'll send you some pictures of it. I thought that was a cool experience.

One other thing that happened that wasn't exactly as funny, we went up to this inactive guys house and knocked on his door. He has been having struggles in life with the word of wisdom but had been doing really well for a long time and had actually been coming to meetings and stuff lately. This time he let us in and we asked how he had been doing and he said, bad. When we asked him why he just said, I drank vodka again. When we got into his room, there were 4 empty bottles of Vodka. I think he was either still a bit drunk or just hung over. He had spent most of his monthy 5 thousand rubles on vodka and cigarrettes and had been smoking and drinking for the past few days. We talked to him for a while and he asked for a blessing so I gave him a blessing and I'm pretty sure he fell asleep during the blessing. Anyway, I said, let's get this cleaned up. So he gave me a bag to put all the bottles in and showed me to the kitchen where there were a couple more bottles and tons of cigarrette butts. I found one pack almost full of cigarrettes. He quickly grabbed those and told me they were his friends. I told him that his friend could buy some more but that I wanted to take them from his house so that it wasn't a temptation. He hid them but Elder Cecil saw where so he grabbed them and we said we had to go. Before we could get out he realized we had taken the cigarrettes. I had to play keep away with a 60+ year old man. He started by lying and saying they were for a friend, when that didn't work he changed to threatening to just go outside and beg for more. When that didn't work he tried to compromise and ask for just one saying that he would quit smoking after that one. It was interesting that addiction caused this man to act exactly like a small child trying to get something he couldn't have. Addiction is a powerful thing and it is more clear to me now than ever that it can and will destroy lives.

The Wray side of the family sounds like they are doing really well. I have been meaning to ask how Tanner has been doing for the longest time I just have always forgotten to ask. That's really cool that he's getting married, tell him congratulations and tell Dillon congratulations as well, that is so awesome. It sounds like everyone in the family is getting ready for some big changes.

Thanks for sending parts of my letters to Bro. H. I'm sure I wasn't always the greatest seminary student but I really did learn a lot from him. Tell him thanks for me for all the stuff he taught me.

Well, next week I'll have good news for you since I'll actually know my new companions name. I'm excited for everything that is happening here. I'm going to be working hard and will need your prayers and support to help me do a good job with the stuff I've been asked to do. I love you guys and am so glad I have such and awesome family. Good luck this week, I'll talk to you soon.

Elder Geddes

Easter in Russia

I didn't realize I hadn't posted last week so this post is out of order. It is his April 8th letter but I didn't want to leave it out so here it is.

Hey everyone,

How's it going? It sounds like everyone enjoyed conference and had a good Easter weekend. We had a good Easter weekend but haven't enjoyed conference yet, that will be this weekend. I can't wait. For Easter we had a small branch activity. It was pretty fun. We got to see how the Russians decorate their eggs. They take the shells off of onions, you know, like the brown part that you don't eat, and they boil eggs in that. It turns the eggs this really pretty dark maroon color. That's how pretty much everyone does it and will definitely be how I do it when I get home. Also, some people will take cheese cloth and put maybe a leaf or a flower or make some design using rice or something and when they boil it it comes out with a really pretty design. Also, they have gotten big on those little shrink wrap things but theirs are really cool. They are usually these really pretty Russian Orthodox pictures. Maybe I'll be able to find a few next year and take them home. Anyway, then on Sunday we had a really nice testimony meeting. After church we were waiting to try to get a meeting with some people and ended up meeting with some different people. A family named the Rusakov's. They are a really great, strong family in our branch. Sister Rusakov asked if I would help her husband give her a blessing. She asked me to annoint which I've done enough that I could do it in my sleep. Right before we started though, she turned around and said, actually, can you bless and my husband will annoint? Her husband was fine with that so that's what we did. She said her hormones were out of balance, haha, so I was even able to include that in the blessing. I felt really good about the blessing and was really glad she asked me to do it. I had been feeling a little less than spiritual for some reason so it was nice to have that experience. She said afterward that usually she has her husband bless her of course but that this time she just felt like maybe someone else would benefit by giving a blessing. I was really grateful for that.

Speaking of hormones being out of balance, there are so many stray cats and dogs around here and spring time is definitely the time of love in the animal kingdom. For about a week straight, every night and a few times during the day we would hear this awful screaming noise from cat's all over by our apartment building. I couldn't figure out for the longest time what was going on. At first, I wanted to go find the cat and kill it because I was sure it had been half way run over or something and was just suffering. It was funny this one day at lunch, we started hearing the noise and at this point I was still convinced that there were just some fighting cat's or something. I looked out the window and saw a couple cats that looked like they were fighting. They were making a lot of noise and there was this guy who was raking some dirt near by. The cats went behind some cars and I saw the guy with the rake go over and whack the cats. I couldn't seen them but I just noticed the noise stopped. I was sure he had just gone over and killed both cats because this other guy came out of the door nearby where the cats were and immediately looked to the spot, ha. I thought it was pretty funny.

We have gotten some pretty good contacts lately. We had this meeting with this guy the other day who kind of tricked us into meeting with him because he wanted to turn our church building into a dance club. He was a professional balet dancer and he wanted to share that talent. We have a gym in our building that he wanted to use. He said we could split the profits and that we could even call it Club Jesus Christ if we wanted to. He would be teaching "religious salsa" among other dances. I told him absolutely we wouldn't do that and he tried to guilt me into it by saying stuff like, God gave you this building and he can take it away, and "where do you think the youth of Russia will be if they aren't here dancing? They will be out on the streets, smoking and drinking vodka!" Anyway, I finally said, I can guarantee you we will not be having a dance club in here but we would still love to share the gospel with you, would you like to hear what we have to say? He agreed and we shared the message of the restoration. We were able to give him a Book of Mormon and a copy of the restoration dvd. We are going to be meeting with him again soon so We'll see if he is interested or if he is still just trying to talk us into giving him our gym.

Thanks for your testimony mom. Sometimes I wonder how I have gotten here and how exactly I have gained my testimony. I know that for everyone, you usually have to rely on someone else's testimony at first until you have found your own. I was lucky to have such strong testimonies to rely on as a kid. That made it so I could find my testimony early in my life so that I had time to strengthen it before my mission. I know I still have a long way to go, but that's a good thing in and of itself. We know that we need to spend our whole lives trying to progress. We never have to hit the plateau. We will have ups and downs but we never will just level off. That knowledge also helps us through hard times and mistakes we make. Sometimes when we make mistakes, we just want to give up because it just feels like it's not worth it. In the book that Liz sent me, it says that we don't have to be perfect right now, we just have to be willing to be perfected. That always motivates me to try again when I make mistakes. We always need to just pick ourselves up and try again. Or better yet, allow our Savior to pick us up and help us to try again. The power of the atonement is real and is such a blessing.

Well, I have a shorter time to get stuff done today since we used two hours of our p-day on Tuesday when our district went to a puppet show for "culture night". We are allowed to have one culture night a transfer. It was fun, the puppets were cool. I didn't understand a lot of it but it was still really interesting. After we right home we will be going with the Lowry's to a place called Metro. It's pretty much like costco. You even have to have a membership card. Did I tell you we will be moving sometime in the next couple weeks? We found an apartment right across the street from the branch building. It's brand new and President wants us all to live really close to the branch. Anyway, thanks for writing. I love you guys and hope you have a good week.

Love Elder Geddes

Moving Apartments, Again!

Hey Everyone,

How's it going? Sounds like things are going well. We have had kind of a stressful week. People have been giving us figs (standing us up) and we have been having problems with our apartment. First of all, last week we had zone conference here in Veronezh. It was really pretty good. The AP's came and I won't lie, I was happy to see Elder Traasdahl. It's sad that you seem to get along with people better after you are done being their companion. I'm sure it just comes from two guys being forced to spend 24 hours a day with each other. Anyway, they slept at our apartment and we stayed up way late just talking. It was nice for both me and my companion because the other ap is my comps trainer. The next day was zone conference. It was really long but really good. We also got to watch the general priesthood session after that. It was so good!! I can't wait to read the talks once we get the Liahona. That will be so fun. We got to watch both Sunday sessions and one of the Saturday sessions we missed on Sunday. I was really happy to see that two of our investigators showed up to it. Remember Costya, the 21 year old kid we have been teaching? He came to conference! It was pretty exciting. It was the first time he has ever come to a church meeting here. Anyway, the other investigator was the dance guy. He had a meeting with our branch president who, for some reason, scheduled another meeting with him for this Sunday. I'm not sure what the deal is with this guy, I'm still trying to figure out if he is just trying to get our building or what. Anyway, it was really nice.

The trouble started on Monday. At district meeting, our lovely zone leader told me that me and my comp need to meet our real estate agent guy the next day to look at an apartment. I had no idea what he was talking about because the apartment we were going to be moving into was fine. Elder Khusainov said, oh that one fell through, this is a different one. I was pretty upset. We had already told our landlady that we were going to be moving and now we had to go look at an apartment that wasn't in the area we wanted it, and could possibly be junky. So the next day we go look at the apartment and sure enough it is a piece of junk. So then we realize, we have two weeks until we need to be out of our apartment and we have no place to go. I called our landlady to ask if we could still live there and she just laughed and said someone else had just signed for it. Yesterday though, we decided to look a bit for ourselves. We put up some announcements that we were looking for an apartment and someone already called. Elder Khusainov is looking at an apartment for us tonight. Also, just on a whim I asked this one guy if he knew anyone who was trying to rent out an apartment. He said, hold on. He made a quick phone call and said, can you guys look at one tonight? We went and looked at a one room apartment in a really good area. It is tiny but both me and my companion felt like we would live there if we had to. It had everything we needed and was in way nice shape. Plus, the guy said we could wait until the end of the two weeks to decide and that we could live there for as long as we need to find a different place if that's what we want to do. It is a nice little safety net, keyword, little.

Anyway, so that was kind of stressful. Also, for some reason I have just been having nights where I just am tired of trying to schedule meetings and come up with things to do for the next day. The thing is, I just need to get used to it because it isn't that likely that I will have another companion who is older than me. We get 6 new elders at the end of this transfer. I have a chance of training and will probably find out what's going on with that next week. If I do get a chance to train, that means I will be in Veronezh for at least probably 2 more transfers. I've already been here almost 6 months, I almost feel like a new city would be a nice change. Not to mention, not a whole lot is going on in our area still. We are finding new people and working really hard but things just aren't happening very fast here.

We had such a sad meeting with an inactive guy. He just has gone off the deep end and doesn't believe that the book of mormon is true or that there is even a God. Some of the stuff he was saying was just sad. Meeting with people like him is probably my least favorite thing to do. My companion and I were talking not long ago about different missions and how people come home and say they just gained a testimony and that they saw so many miracles on their missions. We decided that if you get called to our mission, you had better already have a testimony. Mom, you have told me a few times that a lot of the stuff we do as missionaries is just as much for ourselves as it is for others. I agree. Meeting with some of these people, especially this guy we just met with, has made me realize what faith is. If you think about it, you might be able to reason your way out of some of the things we have faith in. This guy said that one day it just clicked that while the church is good and it helps people, it just isn't real. It is just there to provide comfort but it just isn't real. We tell ourselves so much that we believe in God and in Joseph Smith that one day our brain just accepts that. This guy has it all backwards. The ability to believe in God and in Joseph Smith and in Jesus Christ, while the whole world is telling you that it's not real, that's the challenge. It would be easy to throw your hands up and claim it's not real. I just feel bad for this guy. The man actually apologized to us if he had somehow shaken our faith. He acted like someone telling a small child that Santa Clause wasn't real. The kicker to the whole thing is that, while he thinks maybe he has shaken our faith, my testimony has grown in some ways because of it. Denis is living proof that no matter how far off the deep end we go, God still loves us and is aware of us. As we were arranging a spot to meet, we called him and he said, Hey guys, can you please bring me a loaf of bread? We said sure and we bought him a 50 cent loaf of bread. He himself admitted that it was strange that we called him since missionaries hadn't called him in years, but as soon as he had found himself in such bad money problems that he couldn't afford a 50 cent loaf of bread, the missionaries call him up. He said that he had drank one glass of tea the day before because he just doesn't have money for food. If Denis doesn't want to admit that God provided for him the only way he could that day, I just feel bad for him.

Well, I think I've gone on enough. It sounds like things are going well at home. I hope you and dad made it home okay mom. I'll send home some pictures today for you guys. Thanks for everything you do for me, for all of your love and support. I love you all. Talk to you soon.

Love, Elder Geddes

Spring in Russia

Hey everyone,


Well, spring has come to us here in Veronezh. The snow is pretty much gone and yesterday was probably around the high 60's I would say. Maybe it just seemed like that because we walked a couple miles with our jackets and backpacks. We were trying to hunt down some inactive members in our branch. We walked forever and searched forever for this one building and when we found the address, the apartment that we have listed doesn't even exist. So either our list is wrong or that building has been changed and we never got an updated address. Luckily there was another apartment we were searching for not too far from that one because it seriously took forever to find the first one. I was already a bit discouraged that we had spent that much time and the place doesn't exist that I was just hoping and praying that the other one was home or at least that we could find him. Our list has a wrong phone number for him which is why we had to find him. I called his apartment number on the apartment phone thing, I'm not sure what they are called in English but I remember Megan and Mica had one on their building in NY. Anyway, a cranky old lady answered and I asked for the guy and she wasn't cooperating but she told me he wasn't home and quickly hung up. I was pretty mad because we weren't about to come back to that area any time soon so I didn't want to leave without at least getting his number so I called her again and explained that we lived really far away and that we just wanted his number. She compromised and had me give her my number. I figured that she would never pass the message but a few minutes later my phone rang and it was the guy. So now we know where he's at, and we will be meeting with him someday soon. He has been inactive long enough that he didn't even know where the church was anymore. We also found another inactive guy and had a meeting with him. I'm not sure how we'll help him come back to church, he's a bit weird. He's 29 and had us meet him at a small diner. He bought us a small salad with an orange juice which was cool. Anyway, he wants us to email this former missionary because he thinks the government reads his emails. He wants us to eventually mail him this binder with all these weird pictures in it. I swear, the people we meet with as missionaries. I guess I can email the guy if it will help this inactive trust me and come back to church but I'm just not sure how much he wants to come to church. He is like so many other people here in Russia who joined the church, was really excited and faithful for a little over a year and then just completely quit coming. I'm not sure if people get burnt out or what but they are the people the bible talks about when Jesus gives the parable of the seeds. I think its the ones that land on rocky ground so they start to grow but their roots don't take and then the sun burns them up. They just don't have a testimony that will get them through. It's hard to work with these people because they just don't see the point. Oh well, it's our job and we'll keep trying.


I got kind of sick this past week with just a cold. I think my body's reaction to any kind of sickness now is just to go back to the diahrrea. Have you ever heard of seasonal diahhrea? Elder Khusainov said he had a stomach ulser and now he gets seasonal stomach problems. Weird huh. The diahrrea is already going away a bit and hasn't been near as bad of a problem as it was in the past so don't worry, I was just wondering about the seasonal problems if anyone has heard of that.


I was pretty surprised to hear about the bombings. Every time I heard about stuff like that back home it wasn't such a big deal, it's a lot harder to worry about a place on the other side of the earth. But now I'm here and every once in a while I use the metro. I guess I just don't understand how someone could decide to do something like that. What did any of those people in that metro do to them? It doesn't make sense to me. I'm not exactly scared but it was a little bit of a reality check. Don't worry about it though. Just know that I'm safe and that the Lord truly looks out for his people.


I am still getting the hang of things being the man in charge. This week has been our first real week together and we have been doing fine. We have gotten some good contacts on the street, we have taught some good lessons, and we have tracked down some less/inactives. Those were my goals coming into this so I'm happy. Although not everything is going perfect of course. We still haven't been able to meet with any of the contacts we have gotten, and sometimes people who agree to meet with us stand us up. All very common problems but all the same it's not fun. I was thinking a lot about things like that lately and got a really good answer from the Book of Mormon. I finished it again a couple days ago (which means I reached another goal, we all had the goal to start the Book of Mormon over at the new year and finish it before May!) and I started it over again. As I was reading about Nephi getting the plates I realized that it wasn't until his third try that he succeeded. He had the faith to know that God will prepare a way for him to accomplish the things he commands and so when they failed the first time, he just came up with a different plan, even when they failed the second time he never gave up. Finally the third time the Lord prepared the way. There will always be opposition in all things we do, especially here on a mission (2 Nephi 2:11). God tries the patience and faith of his people (Mosiah 23:21 I think) and we are expected to excercise faith and continue to work hard to obey and fulfill the commandments of God, even when we fail the first and second times. I'm going to keep calling the contacts we get until we either find out that they will never go anywhere or until the Lord opens up the way for us to meet with them. I know not everyone is ready to receive the gospel here but there are people who are.


I'm sure you guys are excited as ever for your trip to Iowa to spend some time there. That will be fun. Anyway, thanks for writing and supporting me. I love you guys, I hope you all have a good week. Oh ya, I got your package mom, thanks, the animal crackers only lasted a couple days, they're my favorite. I really like those juice things too. That hard drive seems really cool, I forgot to bring it today but I can't wait to start filling it up. Anyway, talk to you next week, have fun with conference. We get to watch it next week and I can't wait.


Elder Geddes