Before you exit out of this email,
I'll put the exciting news on the top! We had zone conference this week and
President Martino was there (not the president of the MTC, but ironically his
brother, who is the general Seventy over all of Eastern Europe) and they gave
us the exciting news of how the Samara Mission is conjoining with our mission
June 30! That's so exciting because our mission will be twice as big and we
will have over 60 volunteers, and also I know some awesome missionaries over
there that I am excited to work with! So I will have the rare opportunity of
having 3 different mission presidents throughout my mission!
STORIES:
So on the way home from Zone Conference
I got super pumped and while I was standing and talking to one of the Crimean
sisters, in half part English and part Russian, a young man squeezed into the marshrootka
and I notice he was paying attention to our conversation so I looked at him and
said "Zdrastvooyte" and he said "Hello, how are you? " I
got so excited! We started talking in half Russian, half English for the rest
of the ride. He is 18 and is very cool and fun guy. I invited him to play ping-pong
at the church with us and he was so excited. I even was able to get his number!
It was my first contact so I was stoked! I tried calling him and texting him throughout
the week, but he never answered. But it's ok He went off on our stop where our
apartment is so I have faith we will find him again.
So on Saturday we went to get a
haircut, and I know haircuts are for P-day, but this wasn't for the haircut it
was a finding activity! So we got a haircut from this nice lady in her little
shop about a week ago and she told us how she had a BOM! So all of our lessons
that morning got canceled so we thought it would be a good idea for one of us
to get a haircut so we could have a good conversation with her. She cut my hair
and the whole time I had no idea what they were talking about, but I knew the
conversation wasn't at where we needed, so as we were leaving I said in my very
bad Russian if she need help with anything, which got her confused but than
reminded her that we were volunteers and that lead to a great discussion about
hope and happiness, and Elder Isa even told her she should try reading her BOM.
We left, walked all the way to the church, and realized we were so into our
conversation we forgot to pay her! We called her right away and told her we
were on our way back to pay her, but she insisted that we are fine and the
conversation was enough. She even said she could be the volunteer to the
volunteers, haha! We are going to drop off a thing of brownies and a nice note
at her barbershop though, today or tomorrow, for what she did. She says she is
already set in her church, but also says she has no hope in life and she once
as happy and always smiled but once she moved to Rostov no one smiled and
pretty soon it got to her too. But I am confident that God sent us to her barbershop
because she is ready. We just need to soften her heart. We didn't intentionally
try to go to her shop in the first place; we tried going to another one, but
they were full. So we ended up with her. She is awesome, we are going to all
just keep having haircuts at different times so we have an excuse to meet and
have a good conversation with her once a week. We are always going to have some
sharp hair.
It's always fun here in Russia, saw a
few bizarre things on the streets, but you got to love it, never gets old! It's
crazy how Russia fulfills all of it's stereotypes.
Alma 37:6-7 Now ye may say that it
is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple
things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.
And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about his great and
eternal purposes; and by very small means the Lord doth confound the wise and
bringeth about the salvation of many souls.
Elder VanBuskirk
Hello family, I use a very sketch
computer gamer room to email, and we have a timer on the bottom of our screen,
so I never have time to do my President email, group, and all of you, so I’ll
copy and paste part of my mission president's email I want to share with you.
With other stuff. First off, I love you all so much I think and pray about you
every day. Also I need Grandma Wilbur’s email, I don't have it! And also mom if
you can send me a list of fun clean young single adult games, because you are
creative and you also have the internet ;) This week was awesome! It started
out with a zone conference where President Martino ,the general Seventy over
all of Eastern Europe spoke with us all day. It was awesome! Except I don't think
I'm going to be able to get a better zone conference than that. We had the zone
from Crimea (which is just Russian volunteers) and the zone with Sochi and the
southern cities of our mission come up so it was a party!
I am loving this area, the members
and investigators we have are great. Ivan has passed his baptismal interview last
night and we planned his baptism with him so we are super excited and he is
even more excited than we are. He has been through a lot, so I am really glad
he has gotten to this stage. Aleeyeca is having a really hard time right now. She
is pretty stressed out. I believe she got a new job that she works 2 days on 2
days off. But we went over to her house anyways just to drop them off a thing
of brownies with a picture, scriptures and a note. Then we knocked on the door
and ran away only to be caught by one of her daughters outside. All 4 of her
children showed up to church on Sunday so that was great! She didn't have
enough money for her to make it to church though, she only had enough money to
get her children there. Urie is also having a bit of a hard
time, but he faithfully comes to church every Sunday, and afterwards we always
have a lesson with him, where he asks us many questions that he never lets us
answer becuase he has to much to say. We are trying to
help him that he doesn't need to know the details of all these other things to
gain a testimony of the BOM and quite frankly for his salvation. However
he has told us how his mother is coming into town and he wants to discuss with
her about the gospel, which could be awesome if she looks into it and supports
him, because he is getting no support from his family. Alena and Lubea ,
inctive mother and daughter that we have been working with, showed up to church
this week!
I love my companions we are all fun
and happy people so we are always having a good time. We are really
having a problem with finding people so we tried to come up with a few
activities we can try. We want to have an English game night to try to sell it
to the English class we help at that has 4 17-year olds. So we are going to try
to figure that out, but we want to make sure it is good.
Studies are great. I am on track with
all my goals. I am going to finish the BOM, Penguin, Sila (probably twice), other
scripture marks and studies, flash card system and few other things by
the before the end of training.
I hope all is well, I love you family
and Derek I hope you are enjoying the warm days and the easy language ;)
WOOOOOWWWW I also forgot to tell you!! OUR MISSIONS OUR
CONJOINING WITH THE SAMARA MISSION!!! IT IS HAPPENING JUNE 30, AND THE SAMARA
IS SUBMERGING INTO OURS SO THE MISSION HOME WILL BE IN ROSTOV STILL. So during
my mission I will have 3 Mission Presidents. They said they are going to mix us
all over the place so we are excited to hopefully experience some real Russian
winters! And they are happy to get to the warmest part of Russia, which isn't
that warm haha. They have about 30 missionaries to so we should have just over
60 missionaries when we conjoin.
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