My Missionary In Russia

Dear Readers,

Sometimes I am amazed at how much we can help a person if we don't have any preconceived ideas going into a situation. We don't judge or adapt our words for a specific situation. We can go in and serve our neighbor, even love them if we keep our hearts and our minds open to the Holy Ghost. We have to continue to remember that we are all brothers and sisters and our Father in Heaven loves each of us so dearly.

I have enclosed the following letter from our son, a missionary for the LDS Church in Russia. I receive letters from him and his elder brother each week. It is a blessing in each of our lives as we read their words. I hope you find something here that helps you today.

Blessings,
Valora

"Hey everyone,

Thanks for the letters, sounds like things are getting pretty interesting for you guys. Keep on going forward in faith, you guys are doing great! So Ryan got the job at Anderson, thats really great. Is he working for Wood Rite day shift? It's a good place to work, I don't have any complaints against it, it's a good honest company. I don't know if summer is over yet, but the weather has changed, it's like it's spring again. It's raining all the time and we've been wearing light jackets/sweaters for the past few days. So maybe it's officially fall here. I'll make sure and fast for both of you next week, I know that with our combined faith we can accomplish great things.

Well, Elder Thompson and I had a great week. We have recently gotten a lot of really solid contacts that will hopefully be turning into investigators soon, we have found a section of our area that is pretty productive for contacting so we have been contacting it frequently. We didn't have any meetings with investigators this week, we had some set up but they fell through. But we are confident that these new contacts will turn out and we'll have some great new investigators soon. This week we were able to meet with a good amount of recent converts and less actives. Nina, Lada, and Artyom are all doing well and progressing in the gospel. We had a exceptional meeting with Zilya this week, she is a long time less active. We talked about faith and testimony with her, which did go over well with her, but the highlight of the meeting was the fact that she took some of our advice and acted on it. We have been trying to get the Holy Ghost back into her life, and most of the meetings that we have had with her she has told us that it just isn't possible because of the place that she lives in. I guess most of the people that live around her really don't like her and swear at her all the time, usually when she is walking around outside, or when her window is open. We tried to give her advice, to just shrug it off and not pay atention to it, but she would just bottle it up inside and explode back at them with similar language. We also talked about how she can't hate everyone around her and have the Holy Ghost at the same time, we are all children of God and you should respect all people even if they do wrong. Well, she hasn't learned quite yet to love her neighbors, but her outlook is changing and she isn't swearing anymore and she found a way to get people to swear at her less. She put a sign up on her door, and on her window, and on her fridge to remind herself, and it says,"Only sin offends me, not sick idiots." And when people swear at her, she tells them that. It's not exactly the best thing to say, but she is making progress and she seemed a lot happier when we met.
She fed us which was really nice of her, and next time I think we are going to make some tacos for her. It's really good that we have been able to become friends, for so long no missionaries met with her, and if they did it turned out really bad because they went in with preconceived notions of her.
I went into my first meeting with her not knowing anything about her, and I think that really helped. She is a really hard women to teach, she is really philyshopical and always examines the scriptures with her mind and not her heart, which is a road block to helping her, but she is starting to change and it is amazing to see. I just keep thinking that if only she could change her heart in the right direction she would become a great strength to the church in Russia, she is very intelligent and knows several languages. I just hope that she'll get straightened out in the future.

Anyway, I thought I said in my last email that I would not be staying in Pervouralsk after this transfer. Just the feeling I got from my interview and the way things are going makes me think that I'm getting shipped out of her in two weeks, I'll have transfers for you next week I think, so we'll find out soon. As soon as we get our new meeting place moved to Revda (the other city in the branch) they will most likely be closing my city and the Elders in Revda will have both cities as their areas. This is happening all over the mission now because no new missionaries are coming in. So it's going to be hard for this branch to lose two missionaries but it's what the Lord wants and they'll be stronger for it, I just hope that they people that I've been meeting with will stay strong and active.

Something pretty funny happened this Sunday, our first counselor was in Moscow (a lot of the branch went to Moscow for a youth/young single adult conference) so I led the meeting, and it was pretty funny to read the program because it went like so:

Presiding on the meeting: Elder Otis

Leading the Meeting: Elder Otis

Playing the Piano: Elder Otis

Leading the Music: Sister Nina Belyaevskih.

So the congregation got a good laugh out of it too. The speakers (Elder Taylor and Sister Nelly Zaitseva) went a little short so I said a few things at the end of the meeting about how the branch was going to be moving soon to Revda, and how it is going to be a blessing for some and a trial for others, and I shared how at one time we had to travel a long distance to go to our meeting too(remember when we met at the Hudson building?). And then to top it off, I also gave the lesson for the second hour since it was a fifth sunday (we only go for two hours so it was a combined Relief Society and Preisthood Meeting). So I had my hands full to say the least, but it's not scary at all anymore, so I can do what I need to do.

Well, I think this is enough writing for me for one day, my brain is starting to hurt. I finally got the package so I've been buying stuff!!!! Yay!!! Now that I have some money I'm going to try and send out that package that I've been promising, I'll tell you next week if I sent it out. I just printed off some pictures the other day for you guys, they are pretty good except the fact that a lot of them have red-eye problems. Well, I hope you have a great week, keep on keeping on! Hey there are some Australians in this internet cafe, Elder Abel is talking with them, you never know who you'll meet here.

Love ya,

Matt"