HOT!!!

Hello everyone,

I'm sitting in Moscow right now and apparently I woke up before all of you guys because I had no letters to read! That's the only reason I like p-day is to read all of your letters and find out what's happening. Hopefully by the time I finish this letter I will have a letter or two to read. That just means next week I will get twice the letters, right?

Anyway, it is still hot here. People are having a really hard time with the heat and this past week, all the forests have started on fire! Veronezh is completely surrounded by fires right now. They said that you couldn't even see the building across the street because of the smoke that had drifted in. Moscow is really really smokey as well. Kaluga was pretty smokey on Sunday, but it went away. People don't have air conditioning here, and they all had to close their windows because of the smoke in the air. Sleeping is about unbearable. We have a small fan in Kaluga that we sleep with but still, I wake up in the night and my pillow is soaked, my shirt is soaked, and I'm just dripping with sweat. Where is the -30 degree weather when you need it?

My companion and I woke up at about 4 o'clock yesterday morning and got on a bus to Moscow. We had zone conference yesterday which was really great. The church missionary department has recently made some changes in the Preach My Gospel program. They have come out with some additions and have instructed mission presidents to hold a 3 day training. Yesterday was the first training and in a few weeks we will all come to Moscow for the last two days. President says we will be staying in a hotel over night here, cool huh? The changes are all about how we teach as missionaries. They have decided that we need to change our focus a little bit as we teach. I feel like I got a lot of personal revelation about things I need to do better as a missionary and especially as a senior companion to someone who doesn't speak much Russian. I realize that as I have began to speak more and more Russian, sometimes my lessons turn into me trying to convince the people of the truths we have, just using my words and trying to use logic or trying to prove their points wrong. I realize that if I can't figure out how to let the spirit do the proving for me, the investigator will never understand what we are talking about. Anyway, I'll be trying a lot harder to let the spirit guide the lesson. My visa expires on Sunday so we had a visa trip scheduled for Friday. That would mean that I had to come to zone conference Wednesday morning, go home Wednesday night and return to Moscow Thursday night to catch our early flight Friday morning. Instead, my companion and I just stayed the night here last night and Elder Johanson, an elder from my mtc district who happens to serve in the office, and I will be going to Kiev today and the rest of my group will go tomorrow. At first, they told me that Elder Johanson and I would be going to the open house for the temple, I was so excited I couldn't hardly wait. Then we found out that it doesn't start for another couple of days. Then they said, well you guys can just go see the temple anyway, just tell them you're poor missionaries on a visa trip and maybe they will let you see at least part of the temple. Then the problem was that there were no tickets early enough. The planes were full until 2:30 this afternoon. I'm pretty bummed about the whole thing because now we probably won't even get to leave the airport, once again. Oh well, it will be fun anyway. We will get back late tonight so I will be staying another night in Moscow and taking an early bus home tomorrow morning, back to Kaluga. I swear, there is no such thing as a normal week on a mission.

This past week has been okay. I'm getting my bearings a little more each day in Kaluga. I'm not going to lie though, I miss Veronezh so much! I feel sad when I think that they are still continuing to have fun, hold sports nights, family nights, all that fun stuff, without me. I miss my friends a lot in Veronezh. I hope they didn't just forget about me there. Kaluga is still a big city, compared to Soda Springs, but there are still so many people we talk to every day who say, you've already talked to me about a hundred times! On Sunday, we started our meeting with 6 people there. By the end of the meeting a few more people had come and there ended up being a total of 15 people. We just lost two of our strongest members, one left to serve on her 4th mission, and the other moved back to Kazakhstan where she is originally from. That is a big hit for our small branch. I get really frustrated with inactives. They are full of promises that don't get kept. People have no problem saying, of course I'll be there on Sunday, then not showing up. We even went to a guy's country home to help him with his garden so he would have time on Sunday to come and he didn't show up. We cut a bunch of wood for him and we were both just sweating like crazy working hard for this guy. Also, I offended a different less active lady in the branch because I gave her a challenge to be ready to go to the temple in Kiev when it is dedicated. She didn't like that one bit. I guess it was our first meeting but still, it's unlikely she will be a big fan of mine.

I am having a hard time really getting to know my companion. He seems to care about 2 things, food and sleep. He doesn't talk much and I haven't really found what we have in common. He's nice and everything but I still don't know him very well. I don't know how long we'll be together, but it's always more fun and easy to serve with a friend, especially when you can push each other to be better.

We met a guy on the street and had a meeting with him the next day. He showed up with a friend and we talked for about an hour. They are both very Russian Orthodox but we had a good discussion. They invited us to attend their service with them on Sunday. They go to church at a monastery where Russian Orthodox priests and monks live. The times work out and we agreed to go. They told us that this is a place that you can really feel the spirit strongly... we'll see about that. I figure if we go to their church, they'll be willing to come to ours.

Well I'm not sure what else interesting happened this past week. Just a lot of walking and sweating. We had 3 lessons planned on Monday and all three fell through... that's the worst. A whole day of trying to find things to do to not waste time. I would say that walking the streets is almost a waste of time, but honestly we had nothing better to do. Needless to say, it was a long day. This will be a good week, I can just feel it. Mom and Emily were able to get their letters sent in time :) good job! Anyway, love you guys. Talk to you later.

Elder Geddes