Interesting Fact # 44 - When you go to a grocery store, plastic bags are not free. You have to tell them how many you want and they scan them in and you pay a little extra for them. They are not much. Maybe 3 rubles a piece, which is a little less than a dime.
Well goodness gracious. Busy week! On Wednesday was transfer, so I had to pack up all of my bags (which is getting hard to pack now because of the stuff I have been accumulating), and went off to the mission office. Normally, on transfer day, you take all your bags with you, meet at the mission office, and then you take your bags and take them across the city, or across the mission, to your area. Luckily, my apartment is right next to the mission office, so it really felt like a one trip stop. Twas nice. Well nonetheless, as soon as Wednesday rolled around, I was running around doing all sorts of stuff. We had to figure out all of this cell phone stuff for missionaries, figuring out plane tickets for those going to Kaliningrad, dentist bills, and all sorts of random stuff in one day. So my new responsibilities now are sometimes a giant random to do list. But that's not really what we are here for, to be someone's patsy and running around. We are here to lead the mission along with the president. So, that part I am exciting for.
My new companion is Elder Hill. I mentioned a little bit about it him last email, but an interesting thing about him is that he was at BYU at the same time as me. Not only that, he was in the same Dorm Building, and in the same Hallway in Budge, but in the opposite wing, with a mezzanine separating us. We have several mutual friends and it's been awesome working with him. He is hilarious and wants to work hard. A great companion right there! He is from the Sacramento area, but before BYU, he lived in Slovenia for a year because his dad was a mission president there. We both have visions to transform our area because for the past howsoever-long, this area has been neglected because of some of the random busy work we have to do. We hope to change that and get this area blooming with investigators and baptisms. We are here to find, teach, and baptize. I shall do just that!
One of things that we have to organize now, which has been quite tricky this week, are all those visa trips that happen every 3 months (those are the trips that we sometimes have to take to Estonia to renew our visas). But basically we have to organize when people have to come to the city and stay at our apartment for those. We had one this week, and we have 2 more coming up this week which has proved rather difficult and tricky to organize since ALL of them that have to go on the trip do not live in the city. We have to organize the two Christmas activities coming up for the missionaries. The past few days have been a lot of organizing and planning, but we have been spending a lot of time finding as well.
In this mission, there are some laws that limit our use of tracting. But we decided to try to follow those laws and try to tract. Its pretty funny. I am 10 months in my mission and I am now beginning to tract, a usual practice in most missions. I went tracting once for a little bit a while ago. OH! I forgot to mention. I am back in Center branch! I am in the same branch that I was in a few months ago, but it has been combined and now it is a huge solid branch preparing to become a ward to support a stake. But, at any rate, we went tracting last night and it was SO FUN! We would call through the domaphone/apartment telephone thing and would share our message through it. Occasionally we would get let inside the stairwells where the doors for the apartments are located. We found one lady whose name is Lydmila who we talked to for a while. She explained to us her trials and tragedies and she was so grateful for our Christmas message that we shared with her, insomuch that she cried a little bit. We gave her a Book of Mormon and we explained that it was from God and that it was Holy Scripture. Soon thereafter, she kissed the cover. She is a nice little lady who has been living a hard life but was touched by our message. We hope to come back soon to teach her. On a funnier note, a man opened the door and he was missing pants. It was a bit alarming, but he was one of the more nicer men we spoked to that night.
This week, we are planning to Signboard in the busier parts of the city. It will be quite a blast. Elder Hill and I have a lot of cool ideas and we are going to try them out this week. Christmas is coming up! Oh, and because of the visa trips, we will be having about 6 elders over at our apartment for their visa trip the next morning. So it is going to be a big Christmas Calling family party! Yay! I found a lot of Root Beer extract in the apartment and we are going to make home made rootbeer floats. Grandiouse it shall be.
Well that's it for this week! I love you all. I can't wait to talk to you so soon!
Love,
Elder Tekulve
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