August 4th.
I just finished a late night with "Laundromat Larry". We had a good day today. We go finding a lot. Today, while we were street contacting, we were walking along and I checked my zipper, which happened to be down. So I quickly reached down to fix it. When I looked up, a lady and her boyfriend happened to be walking past and saw the whole thing. I was embarrassed, so I started looking at a girl off to the right and kept walking. When I glanced back, my companion was about fifty feet back, talking to the couple that caught me pulling up my zipper. So I walked back but stayed about ten feet away because I was so embarrassed.
August 26th
The Ruble is crashing, again. It's predicted to be worthless because of the devaluation of the currency. The Family lost all their money and now their income is only Kopecs (pennies). I called President Wright and asked him what we could do to help them. He says we can give them fast offerings if needed. I told him about how they feed us every night. He suggested we tell them there is a mission rule that we need to contribute or bring something with us when we come over for dinner. So we at least have a made up excuse to help them.
In other news, Felix rocks! He is understanding gospel principals better than I have been. He understands things that I am still learning. His baptism is set for the 5th of next month.
I got mail today. Sandy wrote that Jason and Randy both got Harleys! Wow!
My baby sister is turning into a zoobie, I'm really disappointed. She is getting cuter and filling out. She's even got a missionary.
I'm getting along well with my Companion, Elder Callahan. Other than he stops to buy drinks or candy at every Kiosk we pass. So this coming month, we're not going to use the law of consecration.
August 30th
Today was Sunday, we saw Marina, aka: the raper girl, off at the train station. We nicknamed her that because she doesn't care about mission rules, she is a super flirt. She is being sent back to Ukraine, only because her Dad threatened Lena, (her Mom), that he'd kidnap her sisters if he didn't send Marina back. I'm really sad for her, she didn't want to go. She is really cute, has huge feet. She gave everyone a kiss on the cheek that was there to send her off, including my companion and I.
This week has been a really busy and exhausting, yesterday more so. We only ate at home twice this week. Both times were because we were having a discussion with Felix, who is getting baptised this coming Saturday. He's such an awesome guy! So Friday night, Galya called us and said to meet on the train station platform at 5:30 am. I quickly handed the phone to my companion, hoping I misunderstood. But no, So we were at the train station platform at 5:30 am the next morning because it was Galya who asked. The next thing we knew we were at another members dacha (cabin), way outside the city. About 75 km outside of Moscow. This was definitely against the rules, we were not supposed to travel that far outside of our area. My shoes were soaking wet from the hike through the rain to the dacha, it was very wet and cold outside. The TV was put on and we watched bananas in pajamas, (it sucks even worse in Russian). The gal who owned the dacha fed us while we watched the show. I still didn't understand why we were there, until I saw Andrei digging a hole with a manual boar auger. Then I understood, we came to put in a fence around a members dacha. It took all day but we worked hard and played hard collecting frogs. We caught 13, 5 of which were pretty big.
I asked my companion at one point, so do you think President Wright would approve us putting up a fence at a members dacha, this far outside of our area? He responded, no, we'd have a better chance getting approval to go buy pirated CD's at the CD market (which was forbidden). Although, if there was anyone I'd break the rules for to do service, it would definitely have been Andrei and Galya. They fed us every night and loved us like we were their own.
At the end of the long day, we were out way past our curfew. We were saying our goodbyes to Andrei and he broke down and said, "Guys! Don't be mad at me!" How could we be mad? They were doing everything they could to survive after the Ruble devalued. There only motive was to simply keep their family fed. They had no money, this was their answer to how we could help. And I was happy to oblige, even if it broke a few mission rules. I was good at breaking mission rules anyway.
I just finished a late night with "Laundromat Larry". We had a good day today. We go finding a lot. Today, while we were street contacting, we were walking along and I checked my zipper, which happened to be down. So I quickly reached down to fix it. When I looked up, a lady and her boyfriend happened to be walking past and saw the whole thing. I was embarrassed, so I started looking at a girl off to the right and kept walking. When I glanced back, my companion was about fifty feet back, talking to the couple that caught me pulling up my zipper. So I walked back but stayed about ten feet away because I was so embarrassed.
August 26th
The Ruble is crashing, again. It's predicted to be worthless because of the devaluation of the currency. The Family lost all their money and now their income is only Kopecs (pennies). I called President Wright and asked him what we could do to help them. He says we can give them fast offerings if needed. I told him about how they feed us every night. He suggested we tell them there is a mission rule that we need to contribute or bring something with us when we come over for dinner. So we at least have a made up excuse to help them.
In other news, Felix rocks! He is understanding gospel principals better than I have been. He understands things that I am still learning. His baptism is set for the 5th of next month.
I got mail today. Sandy wrote that Jason and Randy both got Harleys! Wow!
My baby sister is turning into a zoobie, I'm really disappointed. She is getting cuter and filling out. She's even got a missionary.
I'm getting along well with my Companion, Elder Callahan. Other than he stops to buy drinks or candy at every Kiosk we pass. So this coming month, we're not going to use the law of consecration.
August 30th
Today was Sunday, we saw Marina, aka: the raper girl, off at the train station. We nicknamed her that because she doesn't care about mission rules, she is a super flirt. She is being sent back to Ukraine, only because her Dad threatened Lena, (her Mom), that he'd kidnap her sisters if he didn't send Marina back. I'm really sad for her, she didn't want to go. She is really cute, has huge feet. She gave everyone a kiss on the cheek that was there to send her off, including my companion and I.
This week has been a really busy and exhausting, yesterday more so. We only ate at home twice this week. Both times were because we were having a discussion with Felix, who is getting baptised this coming Saturday. He's such an awesome guy! So Friday night, Galya called us and said to meet on the train station platform at 5:30 am. I quickly handed the phone to my companion, hoping I misunderstood. But no, So we were at the train station platform at 5:30 am the next morning because it was Galya who asked. The next thing we knew we were at another members dacha (cabin), way outside the city. About 75 km outside of Moscow. This was definitely against the rules, we were not supposed to travel that far outside of our area. My shoes were soaking wet from the hike through the rain to the dacha, it was very wet and cold outside. The TV was put on and we watched bananas in pajamas, (it sucks even worse in Russian). The gal who owned the dacha fed us while we watched the show. I still didn't understand why we were there, until I saw Andrei digging a hole with a manual boar auger. Then I understood, we came to put in a fence around a members dacha. It took all day but we worked hard and played hard collecting frogs. We caught 13, 5 of which were pretty big.
I asked my companion at one point, so do you think President Wright would approve us putting up a fence at a members dacha, this far outside of our area? He responded, no, we'd have a better chance getting approval to go buy pirated CD's at the CD market (which was forbidden). Although, if there was anyone I'd break the rules for to do service, it would definitely have been Andrei and Galya. They fed us every night and loved us like we were their own.
At the end of the long day, we were out way past our curfew. We were saying our goodbyes to Andrei and he broke down and said, "Guys! Don't be mad at me!" How could we be mad? They were doing everything they could to survive after the Ruble devalued. There only motive was to simply keep their family fed. They had no money, this was their answer to how we could help. And I was happy to oblige, even if it broke a few mission rules. I was good at breaking mission rules anyway.
 |
| Our day at the dacha. |
 |
| Could have been dinner. |
 |
| Exhausted on the way home. |
 |
| Digging post holes for the fence. |
 |
| Felix before his baptism. The Ruble crashing did a number on Felix. As a manual laborer, he didn't make much money to start. He was let go, his girlfriend broke up with him. Yet he kept on trudging along. He was baptised through this difficult time as well. |
No comments:
Post a Comment