2011 December 12

End of the transfer has come again. So fast. Sis Denning and I are really excited that we get to serve together again and that we get to serve here in Ekat. I feel really blessed. Sis Denning has been asking me about what do you do when you stay in the same area for more than one transfer. I just told her that you just get to keep working with the same people you were working with. Although I hope we can find some new people this transfer. Need to create some kind of excitement. One exciting thing we found out this week is that a boy in our area Sasha got his mission call. He has been a member for a little more than a year. He is going to New Zealand. This is really pretty crazy. He just might be the first missionary from Russia to go to New Zealand.

Hopefully we can help S get baptised this transfer. He is doing really well. If we could he would meet with us everyday. He has already not smoked or drunken alcohol for more than 2 weeks now. It is a huge miracle. We just need to get him to be more reverent at church and help his testimony grow and help him find a place in the branch.
A came to church on Sunday which was great. It was kind of sad though because she told us that she is no longer going to talk about the church for her topic for school. She said that talking about it would cause to much contention. She wanted to talk about all the good things about the church and she kept finding bad things about the good things or something and so she decided not to talk about it. We couldn't talk to her for very long so we weren't able to figure out if this has affected how she feels about the church. She is still too busy to meet with us.
We had a meeting with T and read 3 Nephi 11 with her and talked about the doctrine of Christ. She was a lot happier this week than she was last week, but she still didn't really want to accept what we were talking about as it applied to her personally. In this case I guess we are going to try the virtue of the Book of Mormon. We know she feels the spirit. I guess she is just scared to accept it. We can only have faith that as she reads it she will feel something special.
We heard that V now doesn't have to be in the hospital all the time, but she still has to go there with her husband. She hasn't been answering when we call, but she told the Bashkirov family to tell us hi from her.
A miracle that we have seen is with a Older lady in our area who is inactive. At the beginning of my time here she was really very grouchy and not very pleasant to be around. She lives near to us and so we have tried to make the effort to visit her a little more often. Even if we were there for not very long. We have also tried to do little acts of service for her when we can and when we talk to her focus on positive things or just laugh off negative things. We have seen a big change in her attitude. She is definitely happier when we visit her than she was.

We found out some things for Christmas. We will be able to call/ use skype on what will be Christmas day here. So it will be Christmas Eve for you (you are 13 hours behind). We are going to try to do it so that it will be Christmas Eve Eve in Utah, but we aren't completely sure yet. I will try to let you know for sure next week. Christmas should be really fun. :D Love you all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!