Derek:Captain’s Log Week 38: Boliche

So last week we went bowling for literally 4 bucks so that was super cool.  But other than that, this week kinda went downhill. My comp is applying to BYU so with president’s permission we spent proselytizing time so he could finish his application.  We also had a leadership meeting that took the whole day and really messed with all our lessons. We also spent all of Saturday contacting and only got 2 news. And one of our baptisms last minute had to go out of town, so we had only one this week.  But it’s ok, because we will have another next week.  The baptism went well though.  And I have a feeling that this week will be good because a lot of new, really good investigators came to church on Sunday.

Dylan: Crazies!

EY! Elder Van here,

Not much time, but this has been a GREAT week! 

After a lesson with an inactive, I had an idea to go left instead of right as soon as we went out the door. I didn't know if it was the spirit, but my motto is if it doesn't hurt you go for it. So when I told my comp he was not feeling it. But the thought came up again so I decided to be a little more persistent. After going left we found this young man reading a book, so I went up to talk to him and he ended up being a police officer. But we got his number anyways, hahaha. He is a great guy. We then got 2 other numbers. I just thought it was cool to see a prompting come through, because it's hard to know if you are having a prompting so you just got to go for it anyways. 

We had an amazing week here in Zapadney. We have really been able to witness the Lord do his work; we started of with nothing really to work with and now have now in this transfer alone put Zapadney on the map, having the most new investigators. This week we had been blessed with 7 awesome people, and a few others weren't receptive but we are planning on making this next week our best yet!

Funny of the week:  So I tell my friend Nam from Vietnam in Center that there is a possibility I could be leaving soon. So he pulls me into the kitchen. The lights are off and he grabs a knife and says that he wants to give a piece of his body for me to keep forever... I thought he was going to cut his finger off, but he then puts the knife to his throat and I start telling him to calm down as if he is suicidal, he than tried to cut off his beard hair with the big kitchen knife and after many attempt finally got it off and put in a little bag. So now another cherished emblem to remember my mission is a bag with a man from Vietnam's beard hair...

Also, this guy Sergei came to church just to give us a 9 page hand written declaration to our church; it was some business agreement he wants us to give to the president of the church, saying a bunch of wack stuff. I haven't had time to read it yet, but it should be a quality language study. 

Pics:

 shashleek (barbecue) with some potential outside the church

 Dinner with our awesome senior office couple, taught them the volunteer Russian tradition

Sergei's deceleration to the church!

Hey Mom love you!!!! We haven't really found anyone who is really catching on to the gospel yet, but we will keep finding! Hahaha It is this cookie thing that we suck milk through it and it tastes very good! I got to go Love you so much!!!

Derek: Captain’s Log Week 37: Agua Caliente

So my new area is in the capitol, so it has it’s ups and downs…

Ups: I have one of the only houses in the whole mission with hot water. 

P-days will be a lot more exciting. For example, I’m about to go bowling today.

My comp is super chill.

 We will have 1 or maybe 2 baptisms this week.

Everything is super close.

We get to take the MTC kids on exchanges. 

We order Papa John’s or McDonald’s at district meetings. 

Downs: Our area is super tiny.

Most of it is tiny houses stacked on one another and super gross, (I need pics to explain.)

The other part of our area is just super nice houses, which is cool, but it’s impossible to get in without a reference and because our ward is all really poor so that probably won’t happen soon.

My branch is smaller then my last areas.

I also gave a talk yesterday. It may or may not have been the same talk I gave in my last area.

Everything is more expensive

Con mucho amor, Elder Bambi

I’m on. We are going bowling this afternoon. 

My comp has a year more than me. He’s cool and I may be his last comp. He was born in Nor Cal but moved to Texas in high school. His name is Clark. He’s super cool.

And I never got my package.

Hey, I gotta go bowl.  Love you guys.

Dylan: Depressing zoo, flooded office..

Well this has to be one of my favorite weeks on the mission! First we went to the most amazing lively zoo where all the animals where just jumping with joy!

We did the whole ping-pong-root-beer-floats-then-all-of-a-sudden-a-video-of-Christ-and-a-BoM-in-their-hand-out-of-nowhere-asking-if-they-would-like-to-know-more-about-eternal-salvation-trick 3 times this week, but only 2 of them took the bite. But I'm excited about these 2! We already had another lesson with one of them. They are both like 23 and are cool guys. One of them even texted saying that his friend was reading the "Mormon book" we gave him and he was thankful we gave him it.

We went on splits in Center with the Zone leaders, and we had 5 hours of finding. God put so many people in our path, and we took advantage of that. As soon as we got out of my companion’s doctor appointment there were 2 guys walking down the street and I had this thought that came to me saying “you choose right now what kind of missionary you are going to be today”, then I just found myself talking to these 2 guys asking them where the best Sharma is, and they walk with us and show us. We get their numbers and then as soon as we left we found more people, and then as soon as that conversation was done we found more people. And before we even left the block we got like 8 numbers which is like an amazing day here! But we didn't stop there, we got over 20 numbers in less than 5 hours. We learned to be successful at finding you have to talk to everybody, and than you have to keep the conversation alive, even when they start to walk away; ask them another question and then find out during the conversation what would be the best reason to try to ask or even convince them to give you their number. It was a lot of fun; finding here is just like getting numbers from girls ;)  But we learned a lot - you just have to be persistent. The APs even called us because they thought our stats that day was a typo.

We also made this guy who is half Jamaican/ half African an investigator in Center. He is the funniest guy! We gave him the BOM and was going off on how he was grateful he found this Mormon bible to further his knowledge of Christ. He was quite the character. I can't really explain him in justice. 

We sang Brother Valery, the 65 USSR Scuba diver, a surprise happy birthday and gave him his favorite tomato juice and carbonated buttermilk (but not buttermilk). 

Also we walked into the office and saw that there was a flood from the roof from a mysterious source and that the ceiling panels were drenched and the floor was covered with water. It was a big mess that took a long time cleaning up but miraculously all of the computer and printers were fine.

There was a lot of other fun and eventful thing that happened this week, but I leave it with that. I love you all. 

Elder VanBuskirk

Dylan: Russian People are Nice

хало friends and family and acquaintances, 

It's been a great week here in Russia, I love my companion. We work hard together and are putting in some good work. We tried to find some new finding spots and the first day we didn't find any good spots, but we did find some cool places, like this chill gym spot by the river hidden behind the grass, and some WW2 artillery base by the river. We got two people to come to the branch and we made them investigators.

So how it works is, we like trick people to hearing about the gospel; we go around trying to get people's numbers and try to plan to play ping pong in the branch and then we get them in there (which rarely happens), we play ping pong hopefully get them into a conversation about why we are here, and then we say well we have this really awesome video we could show which explains it well, then we go to the office and watch "Because of Him" and then a BOM Mormon Message, and than next thing they know it they have a BOM in their hand, we are testifying of the church, and inviting them to learn more. We do it every time, and are starting to get our tactic down. But it is just so funny how we do things: people come in wanting to play ping pong and leave with a BOM wondering what the heck just happened. So you never know what you are going to get because we can't be up front with people on the streets of who we are, we just try to do anything to get them into the church building. But one of these days, we will get someone in who is interested. The Lord will prepare them if we keep working hard.

Also this week this guy Sergei came to church who is very interesting; he says he won't be baptized because he wants to "start his own sect" and he believes that our church gets people rich and he wants to make this compromise that if the church helps his business (which is nonexistent) he will get baptized, as if we really want him that badly. He also gave us a letter to give to the president of our church. He's trying to meet with our mission president but we are trying to keep the dude as far a way from him. A bunch of other crazy stuff happened.

Thanks Mom and Dad, and Derek and McKee for all the good in the package, truly appreciated! <3

Oh I also wanted to just say how much I love the people here. A lot of people think that everyone here is a drunk are just very rude, mean, and miserable. But that is not true. Yeah there are some of the "not the nicest people". But I have met so many kind cool wonderful people, so I just want to make that clear, like this week some nice people helped us out and also when we went ice skating some older beast of a man was trying to teach me how to stop properly. So in short, there are many wonderful amazing people here, and I love them. 

Elder VanBuskirk

Hey mom. Wow, sounds like a trip.  Hope you had fun!  I got the package!!! Thank you so much! I love it.  I hope I will have enough room to take it all home with me!  Thanks for the finding tools, that should help a lot. Thanks for the letter.  And it is all good over here.  We are probably working the hardest.  I think we are up there fro leading the mission! And my Russian is getting better. I’ve been working very hard on it with my companion. He is the best.

Yeah the football is awesome, I want to take it back home with me.  Thanks.  I will try to keep working hard. Did Derek send you a tie that you were supposed to send me?

WHATTTTTT? That’s the coolest thing! I’m so proud of Spencer and Gordon! Can you find a way to get me their emails?

Derek: Captain´s Log Week 36: En Blanco

So yeah, my area just got blanked, so tomorrow my comp and I will both be leaving. I was ready, and low-key hoping to leave. But now I’m just concerned about our investigators. But to be honest, the area was slowly dying anyway. None of our investigators where keeping commitments like to read or go to church. It is hard but I think this is really what this area needs: just a good old fresh new start.

Though we do have one investigator I’m excited about. I had a dream one night where I was inviting people to a baptism and they asked me who it was for, so I replied with some name of I girl I don’t remember, and I said that she was a friend of a convert named Danny. So that same day I go to Danny’s house to help teach her son. As we get there we found out her son wasn’t there, but her friend was. I have never met this girl before, but the second we walked in and sat down she came in from another room and introduced herself and we contacted her. She said that she lives right next to our house and has always wanted to talk to us, so we went to her house and taught her and her whole family about the Book of Mormon. They were super cool and excited about it, and yesterday they told us that they have been reading it, which is good. Any way maybe the whole dream part was just an coincidence, but when she gets baptized with her family, it wont just be a dream then.

We also had an open house thing on Saturday where my comp and I had to teach the Restoration in under 15 minutes 5 times, so that was tiring.

Hi mom, I’m on.

Dylan said he never got my tie. No, I didn’t send one to Caleb.

That’s how Lations eat mangos, and the skin is actually my favorite part.

Yes, I like that, oh and my package is at customs right now.

Thanks, that means a lot. And next time you ever go to the record store, let me know because I have some requests.  Well, you might forget if you don’t write them down, but: the Guardians of the Galexy mix tape vol.2 and an album by the Black Keyes called El Camino.

Gotta Go. Love you

Derek: Captain's Log Week 35: 4 de julio

" Therefore, choose you by the voice of this people, judges, that ye may be judged according to the laws which have been given you by our fathers, which are correct, and which were given them by the hand of the Lord. " (Mosiah 29: 25)

So this week was good, not much happened but we celebrated 4th of July with a good old fashion BBQ. We went to the store and bought the best stake that we can find for 150 pesos (3 bucks) which wasn't that great. But one of the guys in my house brought some rubbing seasoning from home so it was pretty great. I don’t have picks of that with me right now but maybe this week.  

But the work wasn't that good. So I spent all of Tuesday sick in bed. I was non-stop throwing up or diarrhea. Welcome to the DR. So we got nothing done that day. We literally had no investigators go to church yesterday and my favorite investigator, who has a baptism date this Saturday told us he wasn't interested anymore. But we'll keep pushing it. 

Sincerely, Elder BurgerKing

Tell Nate I said “What’s up?”

Gotta go. Love you.

Dylan: Starting New Fresh Trends

Welcome back comrades,

This week we had our first Zone Conference with our new Mission President, President Ottersen. He is a sweetheart and from So-California. I had the most amazing interview with him and I feel very grateful that out of all of my mission presidents, he is the one that will be with me for a year, because I feel like I can relate to him in many ways. So in short, I love him and his wife. 

They talked about some of the changes of the new mission, and the biggest one, probably, is that we will be having "business informal days" for safety and for more effective finding from Wednesdays to Saturdays. So how it works is we wear normal white shirt and tie from Sunday-Tuesday, and when ever we have a lesson or appointment (we keep our shirt and tie in our bag and throw it on). We have to report how many conversations, numbers, and harassment's we get a day and report and than they send all of our reports to salt lake, we are experimenting this for the church and most likely soon every Russia mission will be doing this. I am very excited. When you are here everyone just stares at you and they don't even try to be secret about it; they think we are a sect or spies, and that we work for the government. For example this week a man came up to us with his 2 little kids and started yelling in our faces using every cuss word telling us to go back home, etc. And later this week we went to find some package and it was in a even more sketchy than usual area, and this guy from across the street asked where we were from and I hesitantly responded California (sometimes we get good responses) and this guy with his 3 friends started cussing in both English and Russian, yelling at the top of his lungs flipping us off as we walked all the way down the street, we went for a while and then crossed but he must have seen us because we tried going around them and we were in this sketch part and he sees us through some sheds and the 3 guys started yelling at us some more following us telling us to stop and come over to them because they wanted to 'talk", we just hastened our pace and went around some buildings until we lost them. 

There was plenty of other stuff that happened this week but I'll just send some pics. This is the greatest work on the planet and I am forever grateful to be a part of it.

Pics:

 views

. sunsets and голад

 1970 СССР (ussr) uniform

 #No2suicide

 

Elder Biedler attempting to jump over the sewer streets

 The bus didn't care that there was tape and went straight through

 This guy has not updated his apartment for 50 years, this is his 50 year old fridge still grinding

USSR MAP

Our boy Brat Valery as a scuba diver for the USSR

Trying too hit that smolder with our man's uniform

New Mission and volunteers