2012 January 9

This week we focused alot on our new member N who lives outside of the city. We tried to have a lot of contact with her and we were even able to go to her house and visit her with a great member Klava and her daughter. To get to her house we ride a train for 45 mins. Her house has a kitchen and a bigger room and then 2 small bedrooms. When we went their water filter was broken so they had to get water from a well. Also all they have is an outhouse. Just as we started to teach N a lesson a hole bunch of people came to fix the water filter and then N had to help with that so we weren't really able to finish our lesson. We ended up playing with her granddaughter S and Klava's daughter who are about the same age. When we tried to leave to catch our train back to the city, but Natalya refused to let us go. So we stayed and went sledding with the girls. We got to walk around the very small town of Iyat and see their well and try it out. N came to church for the second time after she was baptised on Sunday with S. S kept asking us when we were going to come visit them again. She was able to talk to the branch president and the relief society president and was able to get a priesthood blessing. Sis Denning had a really good lesson with her on the phone about commandments and we found out that she has been drinking black tea for her low blood pressure because her doctor told her that would help. Also she has not yet payed tithing since she was baptized. And of course she doesn't come to church very often. We asked her to pick a commandment and work on it. She said she would pick two. She really is so great and has a strong testimony. She just needs to take the next step and sacrifice a bit and trust in God. She is still trying to find a room in the city to rent. She thinks that this would help her come to church and would also help so her granddaughter could go to school.

On Sunday V came up to us and told us that she had picked out a baptismal date. The 25th of February. She is doing really well. She has a lot of friends in the branch and she loves coming to church. She has also been reading in the book of Mormon and has gotten through 1st and 2nd Nephi. We have a meeting with her today that we are really excited about.

This week we had set up a meeting with S, but we found him drunk again. We are trying to back off with him and help him decide that he wants to come to church for himself and not for us.

The christmas party (on the 7th celebrating the Russian Christmas) went really well and Anya and her Mom came and really enjoyed it. Anya finally said we could meet with her on Wednesday!!! She is even going to let us go to her house!!! I really think that her mom needs to come with Anya into this whole joining the church process. Her mom took all the new liahonas that were at the church and has read all the other ones we have given her. For New Years we gave Anya's mom a french copy of the Book of Mormon with the picture and testimony in it that you sent me. She said she really liked that alot. The only problem with this is that now everyone will know my name. Maybe if they are smart enough to figure that out. :D

We also got another of our investigators I to come to the party. I is doing pretty well, but she is kind of old so I am not sure how much she understands of everything. We visited her this week and she insisted on feeding us. She keeps telling us she is to old to believe in God.

I love you all!!!!!!!

Sis Harrison

Visa trip to Finland

2012 January 1,

We get to write early this week because nothing will be open on Monday because of the holiday. This week has been a pretty crazy one. I feel like we had almost no time to get any work done. I had my visa trip on Tuesday. I was a pretty quiet visa trip. We went through St Petersburg to get to Finland and so we were able to go to a session at the temple and do baptisms for the dead. We had the senior couple The Jensens from Ufa with us and so the session was in English and so we didn't have to wear head phones with translation. It was so good to be back at the temple. This is my 2nd to last visa trip. This was the last visa trip for Sister Muhlestein in our group. It is crazy to think that she is going home so soon. We also found out that an Elder Waddington from Washington will be going home with Sis Whiting and I. The dynamic of our mission has changed so much since I got here and especially since President Rust has arrived. I don't even know half the Elders anymore because they are all new. It has been a very common occurrence for Elders only in their 3rd transfer to train. I sure have made a lot of great friends though. I think serving together in the middle of Russia just gives you so many commonalities. :D I don't know if I have talked about the new senior couple yet. They are the Coltons and are originally from Maryland. It has just been so great to see how excited all the members got when they heard that there was going to be a new senior couple in the area. I think it has been about a year since the last one was here. They live in our area so we feel like we have more claim on them than any of the other missionaries so that makes us feel special. :D When ever I am around them I feel like I am at home. They are so great.

This week we were able to meet with V. It seems like her husband is doing a little bit better so she doesn't have to be with him all the time. She still really likes us a lot. We will see if she can't progress this next month.

Our investigator Anya's mom bought us tickets to go see the ballet "the Nutcracker" at the grand theater here. We got permission to go with them. :D It was so nice of them especially since after we found out they had bought us tickets other missionaries tried to buy tickets and couldn't becaus they were all sold out until February. We are so lucky! Anya's mom think that we need to be more cultured and so she always invites us on tours of the city and to go to musems and things. It was so much fun! The ballet was great, but as I was watching it I reallized just how long it has been since I have seen a ballet. They had a live orchestra of course. I kept trying to explain to Anya that I played the french horn and that I have played Tchikovski before. We also got to meet Anya's grandmother Raesia. Now if only Anya would have time to meet with us to talk about the gospel that would be great.

We got a new investigator this week. Her name is I. She walked into the church by herself last Saturday just before the Christmas party and so we sat down and talked to her and she agreed to meet with us again. She is older and is really into history. When we went to her house she pulled out a world map and explained why she isn't very religious by showing us where her parents grew up and talking about WWII. We showed her where we were from on the map also. She is really nice and she said she would start reading the Book of Mormon.

This weekend we have to be inside all weekend because of the Holiday, but we have been given permission to watch church movies. Too bad the only church movies we have are the standards: Finding Faith in Christ, the Restoration, and one about eternal families. I am sure we will have some fun somehow. :D Love you all!!!! Happy New Year!!!!!

Contacting in the wild

2012 February 13,

This week we had some fun things happen:

-I get to teach piano to an active member in our ward. :D She is the wife of a man who served a mission in Moscow when Bro Kelly (Annalise, Jacob, and Spencer's dad) was mission president there. They are the cutest young couple in our area. Sis F's job is to keep their 2 yr old son occupied without touching him. It's a challenge.

-Sis F and I decided to pick a new area to go contact in. We picked it because I have never been there before and we thought we should get to know our area better and because it was by this really big lake. When we got there we realized the only people we could contact were the wild dogs in the forest surrounding the lake and the ice fishermen fishing on the lake. Not a very effective use of time.

-We were able to go visit the new member again outside the city. The senior couple The Coltons and the other sisters went with us. Her 6yr old granddaughter is learning to play the piano and they have this really out of tune piano for her. We talked about the Holy Ghost with her because she has been asking about why before her baptism she felt the Holy Ghost very strongly and then after her baptism she hasn't had any of those same experiences yet. We shared Elder Bednar's talk with her from a couple of conferences ago about receiving the Holy Ghost. It's always so fun to go visit her.

-On Saturday morning we went contacting around the church building because we had time before a meeting. I like contacting around the church building because then you can show people where the building is. And the building is so pretty. We talked to a kid named "D". I honestly didn't think he sounded that interested because he said he wasn't very religious and we didn't talk to him that long. We got his number and said we would call him later to set up a meeting. We called him that night and he told us that he couldn't meet on Sunday or until the next weekend because he has school. That was kind of disappointing. Then Sis F helped me call him back and ask him if he could meet in a half an hour. Amazingly he agreed. We had a really good meeting with him with our amazing member Masha. And it turned out he had a lot of knowledge and questions about the bible. Then in the middle of the lesson the security people for the church building came because the alarm for the building had been having problems that day. There was this huge security guy that kept joking with us and the tech guy for the building security. After they left it was way too late and so we had to go home. Then when we tried to set the alarm for the building it wouldn't work. Big surprise. We tried several times and then "D" said "Shouldn't you pray about it?" He had stayed with us this entire time even though we told him he could go. We were all happily shocked and insisted that he should pray for us. He hadn't wanted to pray for the lesson. We probably stood around for 15mins trying to get him to pray. He wouldn't in the end, but it was still a cool experience. Next time I think it will be a lot easier for him to pray. He was a really really nice boy. We already know he doesn't smoke and he doesn't have to serve in the army. He is also only 21. Yay miracle! We are going to give him to the Elders this next weekend when he can meet again.

Love you all!!!!!

Anya's baptism

2012 February 6,

We really got around our area this week. We even got some people to talk to us on the street in the freezing cold weather. It was the coldest week of the winter I would say this last week. (-28 C) But over all this has been a really warm winter. And then all the new people that we were going to meet with at the end of the week canceled or were unreachable. We keep trying though to find new investigators. Sis Fitzsimmons is so great. She always has a good attitude about everything. It was so amazing to see Anya get baptized!!!! She is such a miracle. I just want to be her friend for forever. Sis Fitzsimmons and I were able to talk to her mom while the other Sisters were taking care of Anya during the baptism. Her mom did seem really happy for her daughter. She gave us presents. Her mom is a teacher at a French school her in the city. She told me that she discovered that one of her acquaintances is a Professor of French at BYU. She was very, very excited about this. She said that BYU must be a good school if this man is working there. Anya looked like an angel. President Rust baptized her and he had to twice because her feet came up. I only got to see her get the Holy Ghost through the window of the door to the sacrament hall because we were going to our other church meeting also and made it out of our class a little late. I love her! We had a miracle happen last P-day. We were at the mall trying to find Sis Fitzsimmons a coat for spring. And a girl came up to us and started talking to us. She spoke English really well and said she had been to English club one time. She started asking us why we decided to come on our missions and we invited her to the baptism on Saturday to come and see what our church was about. She agreed to meet. Then she ended up as one of the meetings that didn't work out, but it was still a testimony to me on how we are watched all the time and if we are being representatives of Christ all the time people notice it. We also finally got a person from our branch to call "N" (new member). She has really been struggling lately because she hasn't had a job for a while now and she was never fully paid for the last job she did. We just keep telling her that she needs to keep the commandments especially paying tithing and then she will get the blessings. The branch is going to send her a bit of money to help her out. I hope you know that I love you all!!!!!!

Sis Harrison

Favorite Russian Holiday- Maclinetsa (spring)

This week is my favorite Russian holiday - Maclinetsa. It is the holiday that celebrates the change from winter to spring. I like it alot because it means that you get to eat as many blini (crepes) as you want.

We met again with the kid D who we met on the street last week with the Elders to pass him off. After that meeting I don't think any of us really wanted to meet with him again. All he did is argue with us and not listen at all. One Elder said that he thought he had a recording device in his pocket recording our lesson. I am sure if he did record it it was a pretty boring with him just arguing and the rest of us telling him that we know the Book of Mormon is true and that he should read it and pray about it. I think he read stuff on the internet after our last lesson. Considering all this D does have some potential if he were to stop arguing and start thinking about the answers we are giving to all the questions that he has. He said he would try to come to church next month when his schedule frees up.

T came to church and the youth Devotional on Sunday. We had about a month when she couldn't meet with us, but she finally pulled through. We thought that she made some progress this week. We met with her on Wednesday and talked a bit about the BOM and then on Sunday after church we talked about her concerns. She said that she has a lot of doubts about all kinds of different religions because she hears so much and can see good in all the churches that she goes and visits for her class. So in the end she said she gets really sad because she can't see one of them being true. We read the Joseph Smith story with her from D&C and talked about receiving answers to prayer. She said that first she needs to come to know if God is real and then move on to the question of which church is true. We keep telling her she need to pray and ask God, but she is afraid of praying. Sis F shared the really good analogy of how feeling/seeing the presence of God is like seeing the wind. We can't really see it but we know it is real. We also talked about how the best place to feel wind is if you go climb a mountain and stand on the top. If we stay down in the forest (trees = distractions) we won't feel the wind as strong. T was much happier after our lesson and she said she got a lot out of it.

The lady that I have been teaching piano to has been really excited about it and on Sunday played 2 simplified hymns that she was able to learn for us. Her goal is to be able to play for primary. Teaching her to play the piano makes me feel good. Probably because she is such a good student.

This week I also found out that Sis Zaharova got her mission call!!!!!! She is going to the Rostov Russia mission on May 9th. She really wanted to serve in Russia so she got her wish. :D Its so exciting!!!!! She was my favorite mini missionary ever.

Love you all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sis Harrison

Happy Easter "Yes its true He is resurrected"

2011 April 25,

This Sunday was Easter for us. We thought it was the one before so we dyed eggs then and they were really cool, let me tell you. We found this dye for about 6 rubles (less than 30cents) that turned the eggs all metallic. We also got these stickers to go on the eggs but they were all of Russian Orthodox churches and crosses so we didn't use them. Although there was one random sticker of a cat so we used that one. They have a fun tradition in Russia of on Easter you are suppose to say "Christ is resurrected!" and then the person who you said it to is suppose to say "Yes its true He is resurrected!" and people give each other colored hard boiled eggs. Sis Knol told me this is a really old tradition and that kids used to go sort of like trick or treating on Easter and they would say this phrase to people and the people were suppose to give them candy or an egg. Here is a fun very Russian thing that happened. Our neighbor one night knocked on our door and complained that we hadn't locked the outside door properly. So to say sorry we made our neighboors banana bread and left them a note saying happy Easter. Later one of our neighbors (not the same one as before) came over and brought us a plate with traditional Russian pastry and colored eggs for us. The really Russian thing that happened is that our neighbor wouldn't hand the plate to us over the door step Sis Knol had to go out into the landing first and then our neighbor could give her the plate. I guess its bad luck if you do anything over the door step or door frame. I didn't see any decorated eggs just colored ones.

Our Easter Sabbath went really well. After church, we had an appointment fall through and Sis Parkinson didn't want to go home so we decided to stop by a babushka, Lubof, who Sis Hakes and I found. Every time we have called this week she said she was "sick" so we decided to just drop by. We got to her door, but we had for gotten which apartment was hers and as we were trying to remember she came out the door with some trash. She let us come in and we talked to her about Christ's Resurrection. She gave us homemade compote, which is a drink here made of boiled fruit in water with sugar. It was cherry and was really good. We have met with her about 5 times I would say, but this time I finally realized she has no real religious background. Maybe because I finally decided to listen to what she was saying or I am now able language wise to understand. She has been telling us this whole time she doesn't understand she just goes through the motions (ie reads prayers from her prayer book) because that is what she thinks she is suppose to do. It was a miracle to me. Hopefully now we will be able to teach more to her needs. It was funny during the lesson because right when I was telling her about Christ's life the phone rang and it was a lady from another church. Lubof started telling the lady that we were there and about us and invited her to come over and meet us. This is not always good because people from other faiths tend to think that we are a cult. The lady didn't come over so it was ok. Then after that another investigator, Nina who hasn't been answering her phone finally answered and we were able to meet with her on a park bench. Yes it is finally warm enough outside! Well it was still pretty chilly but there wasn't any snow to hinder us. We knew that we were in the right place because a less active who has been avoiding us walked past with another less active. God blessed us. We try and try and try with our less actives, but in the end it comes down to their choice to come back. Especially here where its kind of a fight for your life to join the church. So they all have really strong testimonies when they are baptized. This week was also perfect that in my Book Of Mormon reading I just happened to be at 3 Nephi when Christ comes. I would be a very happy missionary if I could just help everyone understand a little bit more about Christ. I am glad that we don't have to be perfect for the Lord's work to go forward. I am sure not perfect. LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sis Harrison