Hey family!
So this week went by incredibly fast it feels like. It was a little Mr. Speedy Gonzalez, as they say. I don't have too much time to write this week because I am going to respond to a few of your emails I got! Thanks by the way for those. First off, interesting fact of the week.
Interesting Fact # 2 - People here love to have paintings painted on the side of their car. They are always way ridiculous and always involve some sort of epic animal. I saw some CRV with this polar bear screaming into the friscalating dusklight. The best one yet was this Bloodhound poised in front of the Roman Colloseum. Oh yeah, there were lightning bolts all around the painting too. It was one of the coolest things ever. Who thinks of something like that? Oh ok, Bloodhound dog. Check. Roman Colloseum. Check. Don't forget the lightning. Oh, got it. Check. Interesting combination right there.
Let's see. This week, this week, this week... We had a hike with our branch this last Saturday. They said that we were going to the mountains. I kind of looked around to see that there were none. We hiked maybe .01 of a mile from the branch to this little hill. I suppose that's a mountain to them. There we chopped a lot of wood to make a fire. The thing was that it was all really wet. It's pretty wet here when it rains. I suppose that's a consistant fact that comes whenever it rains, no matter the location. We made a little campfire succesfully and roasted Сосиски (Russian hot dogs) over the fire. I never thought it was possible to make hot dogs faker, but they somehow did it. They actually were pretty good, in my opinion. They are a lot smaller than American hot dogs and they shrink loads when you cook them. It wasn't half bad! We also had this cucumber salad, which was pretty good too.
Sunday was pretty cool. We get there and we had 3 investigators show up to Sacrament meeting. One of them was the husband of this part member family that we are working with. The other was this boy named Слава (or Slava) who has been staying with this family in the branch, well he came too. He is a cool little kid. He's got a mullet too. This lady came as well that the members have been working with. We were supposed to teach the primary on Sunday a lesson of missionary work (go figure, right?) and right before it started, we get a phone call from someone we contacted on the street. We exchanged numbers and he called to see what we called for. Naturally, we told him we were at church and wanted him to come. "I will be there in 20 minutes", says Anton. Sure enough he shows up. But because of our previous engagement to teach primary, we had to go on splits because Anton didn't really know anything about our faith. Elder Hunt and the Branch Mission Leader sit down with him and teach him about the Restoration. He seem to accept everything really well and wanted to meet back again, which is a good sign. Meanwhile... I was left to teach the primary with this 18 year old kid named Shyenya. He doesn't know too much English.. So I was trying to teach primary children... in Russian... 3 weeks into my mission. It was so crazy but so hilarious. It was difficult trying to voice my thoughts while keeping their attention. I had them draw a lot of things, the typical thing to do with kids. I asked them to draw what would be the best gift to give to God. This kid named Nikolai Cummings (His dad is American, and he unintentionally speaks Englussian. English +Russian) drew a robot and a lego. He is also 4 years old. There was this other kid who kept on drawing плохые помадоры, or bad/evil tomatoes. Both things were hilariously awesome.
Afterwords, we had a Missionary Service Day with the branch. A few of us all went out to less actives to give them a Liahona. First person we get to is this guy named Igor who was baptized a while ago and wanted our help. He has been inactive for a while and was really receptive when we got there. He invited us in and we shared a few spirtual thoughts that would help him out. We are meeting with him again tomorrow.
The weather has been so bipolar here. It's perhaps more bipolar than Provo, which I didn't think was possible. It was really hot yesterday, it's perfect today, and 3 days ago it was pouring rain. I haven't quite figured it out yet, no will I ever. We met with one of our investigators, Vladimir, who has a hard time seeing. He says his vision is really bad so he can't read the Book of Mormon. He works as a security guard at the neighboring school (yeah, I still haven't figured that one out too well either, but I suppose it doesn't really matter). We had the idea to give him a General Conference Talk on a CD (translated of course) for him to listen. He sometimes works 24 hours at a time. What better spend that time than to be spiritually fed? We thought so too. We are going to meet with him again soon to see what he thinks.
Some of the families here are so great. We try to meet with members from the branch often so we can support them. We are trying to work with all of the families and encourage them to do missionary work here in Vybourg. This is Elder Hunt's last transfer here in Russia, and I most likely will be staying in Vybourg another transfer after this. He wants me to be well acquainted with the branch here so that we can still progress their missionary efforts.
Well that's the week so far. Things seem to be going well back at home. I forgot Memorial Day existed. We got Victory Day here and a bunch of other random holidays. New Year's is HUGE here and it's not on Jan 1st, but missionaries have to stay home all day. Too many drunky drunk drunks on the street. Anywho. Keep eating some good American Grub, because you got some good stuff there. Keep being awesome family, and I love you all.
Love,
Elder Tekulve
P.S.: I cannot upload pictures. The computers here are slower than molasses. I will try to get them to you as soon as I can!!
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