Interesting Fact #47 - So here in Russia, we got the Julian and the Gregorian Calenders going on simultaneously. I just had my 2nd Christmas here, and that also means I am going to have my 2nd New Year here soon. It's called the Old New Year. And then there are plenty of Chinese here too, so then we got the Chinese New Year on the 23rd. I just called my friend Fu up last night and seems quite excited. 3 New Years!
So every Preperation Day, Elder Hill and I find an interesting fruit in the exotic fruit section in the grocery store. We try one out every week. The first week, we ate something called a pomelo or something. Then we had dragonfruit. We had some weird fruit called a Kiwaia or something. It had spikes on it and there was this green slime pod stuff inside. It was pretty good too. Last week we had starfruit, which was eh. But it's been fun trying out all these new fruits and such. Russian supermarkets got an awesome produce selection and stuffs.
Well this week, we have found that there is more success is in tracting doors than contacting in the street. There was this big rumor throughout the mission kind of that tracting was a no go here. We decided to judge for ourselves, and we have found some solid investigators through it. This week, in particular, we found a man named Alexiy. He has a super awesome family and he is just such a cool guy. We tracted him last Tuesday after our preperation day ended. (By the way, the Hermitage was AWESOME! More about that later). We were just way surprised. We called a random apartment through the domaphone on the outside of the complex. We told him who we are and he let us right in, which is very rare. He, himself, is part of some other church, of which I can't remember the name to. But he is just a stud. He knows the Bible very well and we talked to him a little bit about the Restoration. His son, who is maybe 11 or so, brought out some raspberry tea and some cake. It was awesome. It was pretty interesting too. We had to organize our training for the Zone Leaders the next day and President Clark told us that we could go in early to plan. We decided to stay and find one last person, and that's when we found Alexiy. Blessings come with faith. This last Sunday, he came to church as well! He was really interested in the Book of Mormon and we gave him up and set up a follow up appointment.
We met with one of those men that wanted to be baptized and the lesson didn't fold out as planned. He got fairly upset about a few things and it was kind of a bummer. BUT! Another cool miracle came out it. That day that we were going to meet with him, we were waiting at the metro exit for him but he never showed up. We ended up talking to a SIM card seller named Pasha who was standing next to us. We talked to him for a while and gave him a broshure with our phone number on it. We left because our investigator never showed up. Andre, the investigator, calls us up late and we eventually meet up with him. We finish the lesson with Andre with little success, and then Pasha called and we met with right after and taught the Restoration, and it went a lot better than the lesson with Andre. Pasha accepted everything so well. He unfortunately didn't make it to church, but is really eager to meet again. He has read a little bit from the Book of Mormon and is super interested still. I hope good things will come from our hard work in finding! Next it's teaching, and then baptizing!
So yeah it's getting a bit nippy here, but you can easily do well with a hat, gloves, and a scarf, and a nice coat. But, it's definitely looking like what I expected Russia to be like. It just happened a lot later than expected. That's all. But at any rate. I love it, and I love these people here too.
Well I love you all too! I pray for you everyday.
Love,
Elder Tekulve
P.S.: Oh yeah almost forgot. Yeah. So the Hermitage. Amazing. I never seen a more beautiful interior/art. There are quite a few Lionardo Da Vinci originals and a few other good ones. We didnt' have much time, but I made sure I went inside the Winter Palace. I went in few of the rooms that little miss Anastasia danced it. The palace is a lot better in real life. It was so cool. Hermitage is really a treasure here in St. Petersburg.
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