Elder Drew Tekulve: Week 51 for reals - Zone Conference Week and Jacques

Interesting Fact #51.2 - This is a very important cultural fact here in Russia. After you enter into a home, you have to take off your shoes at the door. So often you will see a big pile of shoes near the door. Quite frankly, it makes perfect sense, and I don't understand why we don't do that in the U.S. The bottom of shoes are disgusting. Especially when they are covered in mud and ice.

I am going to try to send pictures this week, so hopefully it won't take too long so I can write. They are small lil' guys, but they will suffice.

Well, this week was Zone Conference week. Holy smokes was it intense. We had 3 zone conferences back to back from Tuesday to Thursday. So we had to organize and cater food to be brought than to do the usual Papa Johns pizza. We found a member in one of the branches who was apparently a professional and just couldn't find any work. I am glad to say that he was, indeed, a professional. Some of the tastiest Russian food I've ever had. But on Monday, he was running late and the Zone Leaders for the zone got sick and couldn't make it to conference, so we had to run around like chickens with our heads slightly cut off, but still remain calm. We got everything figured out, and then lunch was way late. We rearranged our plans and made everything work out. We then had to transport all of the food from the mission home (where it was made) and then to the branch building, which prooved slightly intense. Carrying a huge pot of soup for 20 minutes is pretty intense, especially doing it 3 times.

But nonetheless, things worked out and we somehow managed to do 3 zone conferences for all three zones here in this mission. I felt like it went really well. We also had our own little spot to teach and present something. President Clark wanted us to teach about the Blessings of Obedience. He had a lot of fun with it. We did some demonstrations about different situations that could come up between companionships that could prevent us from being 100% obedient. As we were planning, we thought of Biff and George Mcfly and what would it be like if they were companions. So, with that thought in our heads, we went with it for a while and decided to put it in a demonstation of us two being those two characters. I was Elder Biff, and Elder Hill was Elder Mcfly. I was the "rebel", and he was the insecure, nonpersistant Mcfly. It was a lot of fun, but it got the point across. We focused our presentation how obedience really gives us freedom, most of all. Sometimes we think that obeying guidance, obeying rules, or obeying commandments or laws gives us less freedom. But in the long run, they give us more opportunities to chose; to exercise our agency. I guess the common man would think that the Word of Wisdom is the greatest inhibitor of freedom, but when he finds himself in some sort of addiction, he would have to think otherwise.

Somehow we managed to do a lot of work in our area this week, among the zone conferences and people staying at our place, and so on. We taught a lot of people this week, which was awesome! Do you remember how we said that we found a man from Africa named Shaq? Well, I was wrong. I didn't hear correctly. His name is actually Jacques, and he speaks French. Makes sense. But we met with him this week. He is a miracle... Absolulte miracle. When we met with him, he was telling us his story about religion. He has been religious his whole life, but it wasn't until recently he started questioning. He starting trying to find the truth. He had been praying that God would show him an answer. The next day, his colleagues from school were talking about Mormons. He told us that he had this burning desire to learn about who these "Mormons" were, because he had never heard of them. The day he heard about us, we found him in the metro. Before we met with him, we raced to the mission library to see if they had any French Books of Mormon. They had 1 left. Another miracle. We gave it to him and he was really excited to have one. The other awesome thing is that he indeed lives in our proselyting area too!!! Usually, when we find people, it turns out they live in another area. I am so excited for him. He is an answer to our prayers, and we are an answer to his.

We also met with Mark again! He lives in another Elders' area, but he also is a golden investigator. We did an exchange meeting where we joint taught him. It was one of the most spiritually guided lessons ever. I just felt like everything was led by the Spirit. It was an amazing meeting. We invited him to be baptized, but he said he will definitely think about it. He is 22 and is studying here. One of the nicest men in this city. I know awesome things are in store him.

Every 5 or so months, there are a group of American English teachers that come to St. Petersburg, most of which are Mormon. They come and teach English to the children here. It's this program thing called ILP or something. But yesterday, they asked us to come over to eat dinner! One of the very few times we have ever been invited to dinner haha. But they made us some awesome Alfredo and BROWNIES! I haven't had those in almost a year. Holy smokes. It's almost been a year. I can't really imagine that. But anyway, there is a guy in the group named Mark and he seems like a stud. We've got a lot of the same interests. We shared a spiritual thought about building a stake here, and they are in. They are going to help, anyway they know how, even if they don't speak a word of Russian. Afterwards, we gave a few of them some blessings. It was an awesome Sunday. We had some investigators come to church.

A good week in general.

Now to explain each picture!!