Hey everyone,
Well Happy Halloween! We have had a great Halloween season, even though they don't really celebrate it here. There is one poster that I know of in Kaluga advertising some sort of Halloween night at a night club, other than that, there isn't one witch, skeleton, or ghost anywhere in the city, plenty of spider webs, but that's a different story. Last night, Elder Bressler and I hosted a Halloween themed family night. We had lots of people come, namely almost everyone from our English club. It worked out really great because we had more people than I have ever seen at English club on Tuesday so we were able to invite them all to the Halloween party. We had two investigators and a couple of new people come. We had a spiritual thought then played some games. Our first game was kind of a dud. We had bought a bunch of doughnuts and tried to get them to play a game where you had to eat a doughnut hanging from a string without using your hands. They didn't understand and nobody wanted to play so Elder Bressler and I did a demonstration. I won of course and they all thought it was pretty funny and stuff but they still weren't willing to play. So we just moved on to the next game. We had bought a bunch of rolls of toilet paper (you can get rolls of toilet paper here for ten cents, but of course... you get what you pay for) and we had teams of two race to see who could mummify their partner the fastest, they liked that game a little more, but they had no technique. Elder Bressler and I creamed everyone. I ran around him in circles and he spun in circles the other way, the obvious path to victory. Anyway, we had made cookies, bought some candies and juice and just had a nice set up. After the mummy game we broke out three pumpkins that we had bough that morning and everyone worked together to carve them up. They did a good job for their first times ever doing it. Nobody cleaned out the inside anywhere near my specifications but what can you do, they just wanted to cut up the pumpkins without doing the necessary work. Speaking of whiche, remember that huge pumpkin I bought a few years ago? I know I took pictures, but I don't know where they ended up, if anyone could find them, they should send them to me. They should just be on our computer somewhere. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and everyone enjoyed themselves.
Things are just going pretty good here. We had 4 members take a trip to the temple last week, 2 of them for their first time. I feel like the city is feeling the blessings of it's faithful members efforts. We had a record amount of people at church on Sunday since I've been here, 22! It was mostly because there was a girl in our branch that lives in Moscow right now but comes back to Kaluga sometimes. She got her mission call and so she called all of the members and personally asked them to come and then she brought two friends. We have gotten some really great contacts lately, including a family of 3 and another family of 6! We haven't met with them yet, but we're trying. Also, we have started working with 3 new guys in the past little while. A 21 year old named Ivan, a 23 year old named Igor and a 27 year old named Gary from Armenia. We have had a couple lessons with Igor, and Ivan came to Sunday School last week and I think he really enjoyed it. We got Gary's contact on Saturday, met with him on Sunday, met him again Tuesday before English club and he came to the halloween party on Wednesday with a friend. Granted he did call me before the party and ask if he needed to bring any alcohol, he's a great guy. He's interested in learning and I hope will be acceptive of what we have to teach him. He understood everything in the first lesson and had great questions. If we could get these 3 guys baptized it would help out the branch so much.
Tatyana is doing good, still strong. She has lately become very protective of us, acting like we are her kids, always telling us to be careful and telling us that we need to carry around flashlights when we have to walk home in the dark. She's pretty cool.
We bought coats this morning. The lady originally asked for 3300 for the coats but said she would sell two to us for 5500. I eventually bargained her down to 4500 so we ended up paying 2250 each for our coats that were originally 3300. I felt pretty good about that, that's more than 30 dollars we got off. They're pretty nice coats, good fur collars and everything. Oh ya, I have heard that ecco shoes have some kind of guarantee on them. One elder had a pair blow out and sent pictures to his mom. She showed the pictures at the store she bought them and they gave her a new pair right on the spot. I don't know if you have any papers or anything left from my shoes, but it might be worth looking at. My other option would be to buy a pair of winter shoes so I could give my eccos a break for a few months then just start wearing them at the end of my mission again. Like I said, they still like fine, they just have cracks in the bottom that let water in. Let me know what you think.
Christmas, I really don't need a whole lot other than just tasty snacks. Maybe it would be nice to throw in some cool aid mixes or some drink mixes. Did you remember to put at least one good pen in there? I'm really struggling with my pens right now. Oh ya, I have been meaning to ask for this for the longest time, could you get a copy of my mission call letter and send it to me?
I haven't gotten sick and my stomach has been treating me great lately. I still have a ton of medicine, cold medicine, cough medicine, I have it all from last year so I don't think I need that.
Anyway, I hope everyone has a great Halloween. Thanks for everything, the letters and support. I love you guys.
Elder Geddes
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