2011 December 26

Highlights from this week are we met with L and her husband U. They are the couple who have a son on a mission in Las Vegas. We committed U to coming to church when they get back from their holiday break. L has been to church before quite a bit, but Uree has never been before. So this should be great. They fed us caviar and told us that we have to come back again. S was drunk most of this week as you already know. He did come to church on Sunday though and that was really good for him. Its so sad though because I could really tell he has started drinking again because he has gone back to not looking very healthy. We met with V. She is doing great. She has been reading from the Book of Mormon every day. She says that she thinks that she would like to aim for February for getting baptized. T came to the branch Christmas party on Saturday. She is so cute!!! She has natural curly blond hair which is so weird for Russia. She was really into the Christmas spirit and even gave us little gifts. We have actually gotten quite a few gifts already. Anyways she wanted to talk to us before the party started and so we went into a room, but then this older lady not a member that had just happened to walk in to the church found us and came in and sat down and started talking about the french revolution. So we ended up not being able to talk to T. But then after we left the party we walked her to her bus stop and as we were walking away we yelled back to her "Merry Christmas". It was the coolest Merry Christmas I have ever yelled. Sis Denning and I decided we needed to buy Christmas presents for each other some how and so we went to the mall here and didn't look while the other one bought the present. It was way fun. We have a lot of fun thanks to all the good ideas that Sis D has. For Christmas Eve we went to President's for dinner and then I got to talk to you all which was so fun! And then Christmas we went to church and then we came home right after church for the first time ever and then we took a nap. Best Christmas present ever! We also got to watch some of the 1st Presidency Christmas devotional. And that night Sis Denning got to skype her parents too. Thanks so much for the Christmas package and all the notes and everything! It was so fun to see you all and see that you haven't changed at all. Well maybe Charlotte's hair has gotten a little longer and Cami has grown a little bit, but other than that... :D I love you all sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much!

2011 December 19

I always get to this point and can't even remember what we did this last week. Everything is starting to blur together. We met with a newer investigator V this week. She has a son who is a member who is in America right now, and her mother got baptised I think less than a year ago. So she is in a really good spot right now. Plus she is amazing. When we called her she told us she was sorry that she has only been able to read a couple chapters a day in the BOM. She also came to church on Sunday.
A inactive member that we helped the other week called us and asked to meet with us. Yep that doesn't happen very often. He had a heart attack not very long ago and half of his body is paralized. He took this as a sign that he needs to start comming back to church, and he came on Sunday and all the members talked to him. It was a miracle.
We met with our investigator S a lot this week. He is still progressing really well. He even told us that he wouldn't drink alcohol during the holidays. Then when we hit Sunday I guess he thought that when he asked President Rust in person if Sis Dawson and Sis Whiting could come to his baptism he would say yes. After he said no S started saying again and how they had to be there or else he wouldn't get baptised. I just don't know what to think. I know that he does have a testimony even if it is a small one right now, and then again he just can't get past this point of that the sisters need to be at his baptism. It seems that he is relying on the sister missionaries too much.
Our girl T came to church yesterday. She is doing better. We asked her to read Enos and she said that the story was really important to her. She related to how his soul hungered and she said the fact that he got an answer gave her hope.

Thank you so much for the package!!!!!!!!!! And all the fun notes for the christmas chain! Sis Denning wouldn't let me read them all at once because she likes suprises and so I take out only a couple every day and I always get suprised to see who wrote me a note. It's a lot of fun. I really feel the love!

I forgot to mention that the other week we got to see an opera "La boheme" at the grand theater here. It was pretty fun. Of course it was in Italian, but there were Russian subtitles for us. Yeah we didn't exactly understand everything. We are hoping to be able to see the Nutcracker here in the next month. I am having a lot of fun I hope you all are too!!!!!!!!!!!! Love you all soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sis Harrison

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2011 December 5

This week was a good week. First off we saw a lot of progress with our investigator S. He finally after working with missionaries for about 5 months got enough will power to quit smoking this last week. And he also finally connected the fact that when he drinks he smokes. So he hasn't been drinking either. This is really exciting for him. He looks a lot better and is acting a lot happier. He has even brought up baptism himself. We think that since he quit smoking he has gained more self confidence. He has been insisting that Sis Whiting and Sis Dawson will have to come back for his baptism (the sisters that taught him before us). It is good that he is talking so confidently about his baptism now, but we have to help him realise that he still should get baptised even if the sisters can't be in town for it. It was actually kind of a miracle with quiting smoking. He told us that he prayed one night for help that he could quit smoking and the next day someone stole his credit cards so that he could not even buy cigarettes.

We found out this week that V's husband has cancer. She hasn't been able to even answer the phone really because she has to be in the hospital with him and she is not aloud to answer her phone when she is there.
We had a meeting with T this week about faith from Alma 32 and she told us that her heart does not have a place in it to receive the 'seed'. She told us something happened at school, but she didn't tell us exactly what. She is always so very honest with us and always tells us what she is feeling. We both could tell that she was feeling the spirit on the lesson even though she said she wasn't ready right now to accept anything.
We had a really good service opportunity on Saturday. We served some members in the Verhiseski branch and involved a less active member with the service. The service involved dragging a huge bag of clothing across the snow to the less active's house so she could help us clean them. I think everyone came away happier.

If you remember A she has been really busy lately because she is gearing up for her big project that is due at the end of the week about our church. I talked to her on the phone and she said that her teachers told her she shouldn't talk about our church, but she told me she is going to do it anyways. We just pray that the opposition will not grow to be to much for her.

I hope you are all doing well! I can't believe its already almost Christmas. Love you!

Sis Harrison