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