Sergay's Mother

We had an amazing week this week! With the exception of the apartment problems that we had concerning our water heater. There had been a leak in the water pipes for the water heater that had been leaking for a month or maybe longing and no one noticed. The problem is that the water heater is behind this built-in closet and I think I opened that cabinet once before, but apparently it had been dripping for a while and caused the downstairs apartments walls to grow mold and become very wet. So we had to call around, and talk to our apartment representative and landlords to take of this problemo. But like the old wisdoms of The Wizard of Oz state, "Don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain". I felt like it was just a big distraction

So this week, we had some pretty great new investigators and a lot of teaching opportunities with our investigators. We had some amazing lessons with two of our newer investigators Vladimir and Irina, who we have set baptismal dates for the 17th of November. They are some of my favorite investigators. Vladimir is so receptive and just loves the Book of Mormon. He really wants to quit drinking and so we have been setting baby steps for him like: don't drink for 24 hours, 48 hours, etc. Although I wasn't there, we had an exchange and my companion and another missionary went and taught him the Restoration. The other missionary recited the first vision, and Vladimir was so touched by it that he asked him to repeat it. After the other Elder recited the first vision, Vladimir began to cry. He is an amazing man who wants to make steps to become a disciple and a new creature in Christ. He, too, can be made clean from his addictions. 

We also had another really interesting lesson with a man named Sergay who hadn't been showing any signs of interest or progress, but something happened this last lesson. His mother is very old and dying and had called Sergay saying that she wanted to die the day. I asked if we could talk to her on the phone, and I sat and listened. I tried to discerned what was wrong and tried to teach her the meaning of life and that her personal mission is not over. I think I was on the phone with this old grandmother for maybe 20 minutes trying to encourage her not take her own life that day. By the end, she told me she understood very clearly that she is still needed today. If God wanted her back, she would have already died. It was something that makes so much sense, but it becomes so clouded by depression. Sergay was very touched by this and asked a lot of questions and wanted the scriptures from the Book of Mormon that touched on that subject. On that phone, I completely relied on the Spirit to help guide me to know what to say. It was an amazing experience being an instrument in the hands of the Lord. He really just uses us for His own purposes. It's just so awesome to think! One of the mroe amazing experiences on my mission. Sergay called me later that night to tell me how grateful he was that we helped his mother.

We met with another younger man that has been investigator since this summer. His name is Stepan and he comes to EVERYTHING; every activity, comes to church. But last week he stayed for 8 hours of General Conference. He had never wanted to meet before, but we finally got a meeting with him and got him to understand his own answer to the Book of Mormon. He told us he feels peace when he reads, which he never attribruted to his own actual testimony and answer of its truthfulness. And then another man, Karl, came to church agian this week. Last week I mentioned how we were guided to this random apartment that we had felt that we needed to stop by. He came again to church and thoroughly enjoyed it the second time. He asked a lot of very insightful questions and participated in Gospel Principles and also Elders' Quorum as if he was a member. It was awesome-o!!!

I really love this work, and this opportunity to serve these people. 

A great week this week, and not even a broken water heater could have stopped it. I love being a missionary and I know the Church is true! My testimony grows more and more everyday here in the Pskov, Russia!

Love,

Elder Tekulve

Estooonia, Conference, Carl, and stuff

I am absolutely exhausted today! This morning I had my regular visa trip to Estonia. However, we had organized it so that I didn't have to go to Peter. Pskov is really close to the border; almost an hour away. So we had organized it so that I would leave with the branch president this morning and we would take me to Estonia and back to renew my visa. We left this morning at 6, and I got back around 12:30. While there, we had to wait for abus in a city called Pechoriy which has a famous monastery there. So we stopped by the Monastary and it was beautiful but it felt like Disneyland. It looked similar to the castle there. We got back to some awesome lunch cooked by the Gardiners, the senior couple. And now we are here in this interent cafe! I am just so whipped right now. So if there are a few grammatical mistakes, words or sentences that don't make sense, just please bear with me. 

So, this week we had a cool experience of listening to the Spirit. We walked past this apartment building and we saw a light on upstairs in one of the apartments, but for some reason it had something really spiritually distinct about it. That apartment just stood out from the rest of them; not physically, but something was telling us that we need to talk to that person that lived there. So we decided to follow that feeling, so we get to where his apartment stairwell could possibly be, but we couldn't find it. A man politely that was close by asked us to leave, so we did. It was weird that we were led to a place to where a man told us to leave. Later that night, we talked to another man from whcih we got the complete opposite feeling, as in "get out of here", but we didn't listen to it. Even though it seemed even more clear than the previous feeling we had. He invited us over and it turned out that he was a Satanist or something crazy like that, and with that we left just with a weird feeling of fear a little bit. So we got home and judged both situations and discussed and decided to drop by the first man that we had felt needed our message. So the next time, we stopped by his apartment. We knocked on the door and waited. An older man came and opened the door. He seemed to know a lot about the true and wasn't terribly interested in listening to our message. but nonetheless we invited him to conference. Almost forgetting about it, Sunday comes around for Conference. This man, Carl, came in a suit, had read the brochure that we had given him, and came to church to watch conference. He felt a little skeptical at first but during Elder Holland's talk about Our Savior's conversation with Peter, Carl too began to cry. The Spirit was just so strong there during conference and he really began to open up after the conference. He is really interested to know more about the Book of Mormon, and mostly about the Church.It was a really cool lesson about listening to the Spirit, because it can really guide you to prepared people. We are hopefully going to meet this week with him.

Another investigator of ours, Stepan, who has been investtigating since July, came not only to conference, but all EIGHT hours of conference, on both days. He really enjoyed it. The really awesome thing this weekend was that we all watched it as a branch famiy. Between sessions we had two awesome lunchs and we all just ate like a family. I really love Pskov. This might be my favorite branch and area. I just absolutely love these people. I learned a lot from conference this weekend as it was my last conference. I watched it entirely in Russian this year around and I absolutely loved it. It was interesting to hear it go though another speaker, because there were times when the translator would be touched by something he had translated and he too even got emotional at some points. It just goes to show that you can feel the same Spirit even though a translation and even through the fact that some information gets lost in translation.

This week was awesome. We found a lot of great people to work with, had some good (and some bad) lessons and teaching experiences. But all in all, this week was great. I love being here! And I am exhausted right now. That's all for now.

I love you all

Love,

Elder Tekulve

P.S. - Congratulations Sammy!!!!! That's awesome news!!! Tell Benji Rasmussen that even after you two are married, I still got to make sure he is A-OK in the books. I am sure he is. He's a Rasmus! An Elder Rasmussen was my favorite companion! Anywho, CONGRATULATIONS SAMWISE GAMJ!!! :) I'm Happy for ya

Train Station Insanity

This is going to be a shorter letter this week because I have to print out a lot of stuff for Zone Leader stuff and also my voting ballot things. So bear with me!

Anyway, this week kind of took us out of our area for a long time. We were in Saint Petersburg for a majority of this week. I am really tired of taking busses and trains to and fro and I just want to stay and focus in my area haha. So we didn't have too much time in our area unfortunately. But with the few days that we had, we have found 2 new investigators, and got our new convert who was falling into less-activity, Byacheslav, back to church and he fulfilled his calling yesterday! He came early to missionary coordination meeting yesterday and helped us coordinate our missionary work with the branch here in Pskov. He also taught gospel principles and did an awesome job. He was in a situation with someone that was forcing him not to go to church, so he didn't for a few weeks. But he decided that he needed to go and he came back. It was awesome! I was way happy. 

Some other news about Pskov. We just got sister missionaries here! Finally! For a long period of time, like 3 or 4 years it has been just one set of elders in this little city. But this past year, there have been two sets of Elders here. And then this week, we moved out one of the companionships of Elders and moved in a companionship of Sisters into their new apartment. It's Sister Schlant and Sister Kafalas. We have given them a lot to work with since there is a lot of women in the branch who Elders can't meet with without the help of another male. So came in to a full area and they are excited.

On Friday, when we were all moving back down to Pskov, we ran into those kind of "everything that could go wrong went wrong" kind of days. Me and my new companion, Elder Sherman, the two new sisters, and the Senior Couple here all woke up early at 5 to take a train back. We were supposed to knock on the sisters apartment door and  help them move their suitcases to the train station. But we got there, but no one was picking up, and it turned out that they were in another apartment closer to where we came from. So we sent the Senior Couple, Elder and Sister Gardiner to go buy tickets, while we helped the sisters. We get there at their place at around 6:20 and they had accidentally left a suitcase in an elevator before the door closed and they couldn't get it. So we had to retrieve it and left around 6:30. Our train was to leave at 7:25. So we tried to race to the metro with these HEAVIER THAN WHALES suitcases that they had. I don't care what someone can pack that causes such a bag to weight that much. It didn't help that one of them wasn't a rolly suitcase and had to be attatched to a smaller one. We finally get to the metro at about 6:45 and it usually takes about 40 minutes to get to the stop we need to get to the train station. We got there at 7:10 just in time. The Gardiners has saved spots so it was fine. But I accidentally tooked the cramped sit with no leg room. Whoops. But we finally get there to Pskov. We leave the train and then the train leaves and Sister Gardiner realizes that she left her scriptures on the train but it left already. She goes and runs after it, but it was too late. Her husband, Elder Gardiner kind of just stood there, but we got him on a taxi and told the taxi driver to wait. So Elder Sherman and I went to go find Sister Gardiner and try to arrange with the Train Station about the last item, but we couldn't find her. After about 5 minutes walking back and forth in side the station, we found her and somehow she took care of it and they told her to come back at 5. She doesn't know Russian, but somehow she got that all figured out. It was kind of a miracle. So we get back to find the taxi, but the taxi driver left.... And we needed to get the Gardiners to the Sisters apartment to unlock it, but Sister Gardner had the keys. We finally just get on a bus and leave to help the sisters move and Elder Gardiner had to wait inside the stairwell for about 30 minutes. It was rather fun... haha. The awsome thing is that Sister Gardiner got her scriptures back! She came back to the train station and found them right where she left them. So the story ends well, but it was a very very tiring day haha.

The two new investigators we found this week is this man and his wife, Vladimir and Irina. We had talked to Vladimir right before we left on Tuesday to SPB and he wants to quit drinking and change his life. We stopped by on Saturday but they weren't home, so we decided to stop by the address last night and had a wonderful lesson. It really felt like that we started out the lesson really strongly with a strong prayer in the beginning. Vladimir was crying when we spoke about Christ and his Atonement. Those were the highlights of this week. 

I am really excited to be working with Elder Sherman this transfer and we are already seeing some cool stuff!

I gotta go!!

Love,

Elder Tekulve

Back to Novgorod and Mr. Fyodor and TRANSFERS!

Interesting Fact - I am not sure if I told you this one already, but you have to buy your plastic bags. You don't just get plastic bags free for your groceries. You have to tell them how many you want. The grocery store we shop at has awesome plastic bags for 8 rubles, which is maybe 20 cents. We use them as trashbags. Industriousness!

I heard the news. Grandpa and Grandma will be in my prayers, but I am happy that they are safe and in awesome hands, or in other words, under the care of my mom and uncle. Everything will be alright and will work out. I actually learned a new word this morning that means that. Oboidyotsya. It must mean that everything will indeed by okay. Faith in Jesus Christ can heal any wounded soul.

So this week, we had a few exciting things happen. I went on an exchange with another Elder, an Elder Starostin from the city of Penza, Russia. I really enjoy serving with Russian speakers because you just speak Russian all day and all night long. I really find it enjoyable. We met with a few interesting people that day who just love to talk. We met with an older man named Gennady Borisovich on a bench and I think we taught maybe just one principle. I really am not sure, but I just remember we sat quietly and listened to this man tell story after story. He used to serve on a submarine back in the day. Afterwards, we helped the branch help out a less-active member in need and then had an hour and a half to find people. We have a mission standard of talking to at least 10 people a day and inviting them to hear more. It's not terribly difficult, but we had service that morning, so we didnt have much to find people. We had an hour and a half to talk to 10 people, EACH. It was a great teaching moment because he kept on doubting, but I was persistent that we were going to achieve that. It was a very action packed 90 minutes, going to person to person and trying to start a conversation or share our message. Of course there were rejectors, but in the end, at 8:55, 5 minutes for the end of the night, we received our 10 contacts for the night.

We got a call the next day from our mission president, saying that we had to go back down to Novgorod because of an emergency. It is part of my district but it is still 4 hours away (I was so hoping not having to go back there because of the intense bumpy bus ride back). There are two elders who are being bothered by this man on the street regularly. President Clark wanted us four in Pskov to go down and do an emergency transfer of Elders and do 3 there and 3 here. An Elder Sherman from Colorado is serving here in Pskov and he got called to serve in Novgorod in a threesome down there. The great thing is he is quite the buff guy, so President sent him to Novgorod to get that guy to stop bothering the missionaries. So we get to Novgorod, ate a McDonalds, and turned around back home. 

So right now it is a threesome here in Pskov. Elder Barrett and Elder Starostin. It is a pretty hilarious dynamic trio. On Saturday, we got our transfer calls and I am staying here in Pskov and my companion will be Elder Sherman! What do you know! There is a lot of new organizational changes in the mission now that there is a Stake here in St. Pete. There are going to be more missionaries outside of the city, so they organized 3 more zones to prepare for more missionaries to be sent here to this mission. They made Pskov and Novgorod it's own zone (Zone is bigger than a district. District invovles about 4-6 missionaries and there is one District leader. A zone involves anywhere from 12-25 missionaries and involves multiple districts). So I got called... again. to be a zone leader. Haha, I thought I was done, but I guess not. So I am going to be a zone leader with Elder Sherman, but I am still a District Leader in Pskov. So we will see what happens haha. I am excited and looking forward to my next few transfers here. I love Pskov!

That is about it for this week. I am going to email my Grandpa because he is my hero and I love him.

Love,

Elder Tekulve