2011 November 28

This week was so fun with Thanksgiving and we had President Schwitzer the Area president for Eastern Europe come and visit us. Pres Schwitzer was the mission president here in Ekat 3 presidents ago. He talked a lot about how he loves the people here so much. He only came to the City Yekaterinburg so we the missionaries in Yekaterinburg were able to meet with him and then he gave a devotional here. He talked to us about how we need to simplify our teaching and focus more on the principles and doctrines that will help people gain a testimony that this is the true restored church of Christ. He also talked about how the 2 reasons that people don't get baptized are fear and sin. We combat fear by finding friends for the investigators from the members. And we combat sin by not just telling a person to repent, but helping them to repent. He also talked about how everything we do here is to help people come closer to Christ and that our casual interactions during the day with people should also help them come closer to Christ.
For Thanksgiving we got to go to Presidents house to eat dinner. Oh my we are so lucky to be living in the same city as the mission president. We actually ate turkey and stuffing! I have never even seen turkey meat here before. It was like being home for thanksgiving. President is so good to us!
This week we finished teaching V alot of the commandments, but then her husband got sick so she wasn't able to meet with us or come to church on Sunday because she has to sit with him all the time. They are taking him to the hospital today so everything should be ok. She still wants to get baptised. We now need to decide though if it would be better to keep trying for her to get baptized on Friday or wait until next week or something. I don't know, I think it might be better to wait at least a little bit so that maybe we can announce to everyone on Sunday the baptism so more people can attend. So anyways she is doing really well. We have been calling her. She is just a little down because her husband is sick.
This week we met with T. We had a pretty heavy lesson with her talking about pre-earth life. She kind of got hung up on the fact that God might have created evil. That is why Pres Schwitzer's talk was so good for us. He reminded us we need to stick with the basics with her. That is what we are going to try to do this week. She has also been going to institute after we meet with her. So she has started to meet some of the youth in the branch.
We got a miracle meeting with a lady L whose son is serving a mission in Las Vegas. Her son met the church and got baptized in the states. He was living in Salt Lake City before he went on his mission. She is very prepared right now to receive the Gospel because of her son who has been telling her to read and pray and everything else. She also suggested next time that we meet her husband too. She showed us some pictures of her son with his companions and she showed us this letter that their mission president wrote to all the parents telling them not to send their missionaries sweets for Christmas.
Pres Schwitzer's talk also helped us with our investigator S. We realised that we have been telling him to repent and not helping or showing him how to repent. We are going to try to be better. It is going to be hard for him because he is a serious alcoholic. We need more ideas if you have any with how to help him. We are going to try to set daily and weekly goals with him.
I am doing pretty well. Sis Denning and I set up our Christmas tree that we found in our apartment. That was pretty fun. There have been some little signs of Christmas starting here, but new year's is a much bigger holiday for them so I don't think we will get quite as much of that here as in the states. Love you all!!!

Sis Harrison