Apartment troubles

Hello everyone,

Happy late birthday mom!! I promise I didn't forget, I was thinking about you on your birthday. I hope you like the gray thing. It is real hair, as far as I know. It's hair from a special kind of sheep or goat or something. Not sure. It sounds like you had a good time for your birthday. Next year I'll be there to celebrate it with you. Cool huh? What about the doll, was it in good shape? I hope so. I feel like I've gotten all the shelf souveniers I want. Now I want to get some sweet movies in Russian so I will have a way of keeping up my Russian after the mission. I feel like Disney will be my best bet.

Well we had another week full of problems with our apartment. I really hope I am out of Kaluga before December because I'm pretty sure our landlady will kick us out when the contract ends then. I'm pretty sure I told you guys that I broke the washing mashine my first or second day here, but if I forgot to tell you, I broke it. I didn't shut these small metal doors on it before I started it so the drum tried to spin but it couldn't so a small belt broke, not a big deal but our landlady wasn't too happy. Anyway, after that, I started noticing that our shower was always so dirty on the floor. Our drain is clogged somewhere so the water takes so long to dry that the dirt and stuff just sits and makes the floor nasty. We decided to try to take a look and see if we could find out how to unclog the thing so we scooted the shower out from the corner and messed around with it for a bit. Somehow in the process we bumped the main pipe that the water comes through. This thing was already duct taped in one spot and was just crappy anyway. There is a long piece of pipe that connects two joints that isn't sealed into the joints at all, it just sits in them. Anyway, we bumped that and knocked it loose so the next time we showered and used the washing machine it leaked water everywhere in the bathroom. We slowed down the leak but didn't stop it so today there will be a guy coming to fix it. Our landlady once again wasn't happy about it but I don't care. She thinks everything in this apartment is just the best stuff in the world but it's mostly just junk. She also isn't happy with the fact that the last elder just left and I just showed up. She thinks every time a new guy comes he will do stuff like break the washer and the shower, which might be the case actually, oh well.

Anyway, last week was a bitter sweet week. For the most part a very unsuccessful week but we did some fun things. We got to go to a branch picnic in Tula that the senior couple invited our branch to. Elder Moffat is the branch president now in Tula and he likes to get the three small towns in our zone together whenever it's possible. We had 7 people from Kaluga show up. It was a lot of fun, we even set up a slip 'n slide, which the Russians had never heard of such a thing. They thought it was pretty interesting. We of course showed them how it works. It was just a long piece of plastic stuff that we just layed on the ground of the woods, so it wasn't exactly the smoothest thing in the world. Also, usually a slip 'n slide has a small pool at the end to stop you, but of course we couldn't get that arranged, so we just had dirt wood and rocks at the end of the tarp. I always managed to stop before the end but some people weren't so fortunate. Mostly the missionaries like it but a couple of the other people there tried it. They just didn't understand why we liked it so much. First of all they didn't know how to slide so a lot of them would try it and go about 5 feet and then just stop. We just had buckets of water that we would fill up in the nearby pond. The person would run and dive while someone else threw the water. It was pretty cool. Also, we played water balloon volleyball. It was really fun. They had brought about a million water balloons. It kind of just turned into a war of launching the balloons. It's always fun to play these games. Almost every time we do this kind of thing, someone makes a comment about how we are able to have so much fun without alcohol or anything like that. It helps the investigators see that we know how to have fun. The two people that were there that I am most excited about are named Ramon and Sveta. They are a young couple, not married yet but are planning on getting married. They have been coming to english club for a long time. They have met with the missionaries a few times and have already quit smoking. We have met with them only once so far since he works a lot but they like to meet with us. I want to work hard with them and see if they can get baptized. They have come to church twice, never since I've been here but we can help them with that. They're cool.

The day before the picnic, Elder Cecil, the zone leader, came and did splits here. He and I worked together. We weren't able to get one lesson set up for the next day, I hate it when that happens. It doesn't happen a lot but it does happen. Anyway, Elder Cecil is a transfer younger than I am and about 10 times more excited to go home. It's hard not to think about and talk about home when your companion talks about it a lot. I only served with him for one transfer but going on splits with him made me realize it would be pretty hard to serve with him for more than 1. He's one of my best friends on the mission but it's just hard to focus on missionary work when we're together.

I am going to use this letter to vent a little bit. Last night I had one of the toughest worst meetings ever. A few weeks back we got a guys number. We met with him and his friend once and gave them Books of Mormon. Last night we met with them again. They had just gone on the internet and found all sorts of stuff to "prove" that the Book of Mormon isn't true. First of all, I wasn't sure what to do, whether I should try to argue each point they made or what. Second of all, it is times like that that I HATE not understanding every word or being able to say everything the way I want to say it. I'm afraid they just feel like they proved something to me because I wasn't able to defend the book. The whole time I just kept thinking, there's nothing I need to worry about, the book defends itself and I don't need to be scared of them proving anything to me. I know that sometimes I don't have all the answers, especially when people try to use all sorts of historical facts and dates, but also I know I don't need to have the answers to every question. It says in Preach My Gospel that sooner or later everyone is backed up to a wall of faith. I could answer questions and prove things all day long, which is what I have been doing with this one lady we have met with a couple times, but sooner or later it will be her choice to excercise faith. The most disappointing thing about last night was that when it was all said and done, I tried to do the only thing I could and bear a simple testimony about the Book of Mormon. They cut me off half way through and didn't let me finish. They want me to go to their church with them this Sunday. I don't feel like meeting with them anymore. I told them that I was sad that they didn't read the book and instead just searched for things like that on the internet. They said, how else should we do it? We need to find out all we can about it so we know if it's a true book or not. They didn't do anything to my testimony of course, but I really need to continue to strengthen my testimony in the Prophet Joseph Smith. I woke up this morning and read the Joseph Smith History.

It's interesting the different experiences you have on a mission. Just changing cities and companions can show you a whole new world of knowledge you need to gain and a whole new set of skills and attributes you need to accuire. It's all for the best but sometimes it's just frustrating. I can say that I'm trying hard. I might not be finding a ton of success here but I'm trying.

Sorry this letter is all over the place. Oh ya, I am once again realizing how my hair is just disappearing! I feel like the mission has aged me about 30 years. You probably won't recognize me when I get home. I look like a 45 year old and I feel like a coat hanger when I put on my suit coat, ha, it's kind of funny, at least my companion seems to think so. When I get home, have a nice tall protien shake ready for me, along with a big beefy steak and maybe a membership to a gym or something, I'm going to need it. Other than that, I'm not sure what else has been going on. The weather has been cooling down a bit which is nice. It still gets hot in the middle of the day but it has been nice and cool in the mornings. I'll send some pictures home this week for you guys. Anyway, thanks for writing, I'll talk to you next week. Love you!

Elder Geddes