Dylan: 4 Language Baptism!

I feel like every week is a great week, but this one was pretty sweet! 

Remember how last week when all of our plans went wrong that day, but God had better plans in store? So after all of our plans got cancelled I was feeling pretty frustrated and totally forgot about that experience last week, where God set us up with even better plans. Well as we went to go finding because we had no plans, we got a call from the sisters saying how there was 2 guys at the church who wanted to talk to us. We get over and I realize it was someone who we just passed by on the street. They wanted to know if our church would like to do some play event with them; they wanted to pay a tribute to Jesus and knew that we were a Christian church, They were interesting guys: one was a actor from Moscow and the other was a director, we just gave them the info of our district president, but we ended giving them a BOM. Then we found 2 awesome guys in a grocery store that day, so after all God's plans are always better. 

-Mission President came for our district conference Sat/Sun.

- Saw the Mormaev Korgan ( the huge statue in remembrance of the great WW2 battle). You should check out the history of Volgograd; it is quite remarkable. Our mission president told us about how his mission president fought on that hill for Germany against Russia and they caught him, but since he was a medic they let him go, so he walked the whole way back from Russia to Germany.

- Went to Volshkey this little city over an hour away, to meet with some other members (there branch is so sketchy you would never be able to find it). 

- Went on 2 lessons an hour out to 2 inactive families with the mission president. I learned a ton from him and his wise words. 

- Remonted some women’s house

- Our landlady finally fixed our water which would shock you hard (like all the way to your toe) when you touched it!

- So during our district conference the district President stands up and does the meeting announcements and says that I will play the piano for the meeting that moment and looks at me and I nod my head in agreement, but I totally blanked out and only heard “Elder?” So I nodded my head, and thought “that sounded pretty important I'll have to ask my companion  after the meeting what he wanted us to do”. So when the chorister got up there to start the hymn everyone started to stare at me and I was so confused, until one of the sisters did some playing piano signs with her hands and I got the idea and jumped up there. It's always funny having no idea what is going on. 

- We met with this guy to play ping pong that we found on the street and we ended up giving him a BOM and invited him to learn more. He was cool, he told us about all his crazy traveling stories and how he says that he is probably in most agreement to Buddhism and Hinduism and had an interesting conversation about that and than he told us how he used to be very into drugs and told us about his "spiritual experiences" with magic mushrooms and so fourth. For some reason this guy reminds me of Johan... But I also feel really good about him. It will be very interesting to see what happens.

So the highlight of the week is that we got to see 2 baptisms! We didn't have anything to do with the baptism, as we met them that day, but I felt blessed to be there. They were from Astrahan which is like 6 hours away, but we are also in charge, but not really because it's to far for us to go down. But it was the coolest baptism I've ever gone to. There was a guy and a girl and they were both from this tiny country on the very west of Africa and were in Russia to study. They only speak Portuguese and a little bit of Russian. Their branch president in Astrahan is from Chilie and only knows Spanish, English, and a little bit of Russian. Somehow out of all the cities in Russia they went to one where someone speaks Spanish and understands Portuguese. There are no missionaries down there so he taught them all the lessons in Spanish. They came up here for a conference and got baptized. The baptism was done in Spanish and I had to witness, and I don't know Spanish, but I felt good that it was done correctly. After, when the African who got baptized wanted to give his testimony he would say it in Portuguese and then the branch president would translate it from Portuguese into English and then one of the volunteers would translate it from English to Russian, it was truly an experience! The spirit was so strong, as we had people from all over the world in one small room from Asia, North and South America, Europe, and Africa. The church is so true, the Lord has his hand in all things, his work will always find a way! 

I miss you all have a great week!

Elder VanBuskirk

Mom: What does “Remounted some women’s house” mean?

Dylan:  “Haha, I forgot that is not the same word in English.  I actually forgot the word, but we did some work on her house.  The sink was actually pretty fun, no worries. Sorry, I don’t have a way to send pictures here. Love you.”