Every week in the mission field is both harder, and consequently, more fulfilling. I don't think I've ever been expected to achieve things of the magnitude expected of me now.
Monday, Elder Morris and I went to the mall and got coats for the winter. It has dropped about 25 degrees in the last week and a half and is only getting colder. Then we went out to dinner with our kind of inactive ward mission leader. He's a young guy named Sergei and he just finished recording an album with his band. He's a stud, and now that we have a relationship with him, hopefully he will be more willing to work closely with us.
I ended up going to the home of Luba and Yuri for dinner with Elder Mugerian, our zone leader. I had the best borsch (beet soup) of my life there. It's legendary in the mission, and very few volunteers have managed to get the recipe. THe next day, I went to bishop's house and had a similar experience. Bishop Vlad is also Luba and Yuri's son. Yuri serves as his first counselor.
Then Elder Morris and I were called as the mission service coordinators. That's a big job, seeing as each volunteer should be doing an average of 15 hours of service a week, and it all needs to be tracked. We still have no idea what we are doing in that regard.
Thursday, Elder Morris had his visa trip to Riga (capital of Latvia). Russian law requires we renew our visas every three months, so we actually each have two passports. We fly to Riga, spend an hour there, and then fly home. I got to spend the day with Elder Bedke. Elder Bedke was in my MTC group and serves in Smolensk, which is the boonies. He wanted to see some things around Moscow, and our lessons fell through, so we went to Victory Park. Thursday was also the night Sokolniki's new companionship, Elder Stevens and Elder Atkinson, moved in with us. They'll be in our apartment until they find one.
Saturday, we attended another baptism. We also received a couch, microwave, and our dishwasher and water filter got fixed. We are now one of three apartments in the mission with a functioning dishwasher. The church is true!
Sunday I was asked to speak. I had time to write about 8 bullet points in English, 5 vocabulary words in Russian, and then I spoke for 15 minutes. It was a little rough, but I was very impressed with myself. The Spirit was definitely lending a helping hand. We had three meetings yesterday, two with inactives, and one with an INVESTIGATOR! I haven't seen one of those in 4 weeks. He basically showed up at the building when it was closed, called the area office, and we got his number. He came to sacrament and we taught him the first lesson. His name is Vitali and he is super eager to learn, though he's very quiet. He started reading the Book of Mormon as we walked him to the door.
This week I want to give a special shoutout to my dad. It's his birthday. Thanks for being one of my heroes dad!
Hope you all have a great week!
--
Elder Wilkins
No comments:
Post a Comment