This was a sweet week! We went off to Saratov, which is 6
hours up north for zone conference and splits. The city is very Russian. It's
the city where the Saratov approach happened and is the only place in our mission
where they have a stake. But the area presidency, President Martino, said that
it is the weakest stake in the world, and is more like a district. But it's
cool that there is a stake. We went on splits with the zone leaders, and it was
sweet - probably the best splits I've been on. We went on this busy street and
split up (but still in sight and sound), and got over 60 numbers in 3 hours
between us, the ZLs, and APs. The hard part though is to actually get people to
come to the branch.
It's crazy how this mission has changed in just 2 years. They
have really cut down the missionaries coming here. In our area there used to be
8 sets of missionaries, but now there are only 2 sets, us and the sisters, to
take care of all this area. I think we are starting to figure out how the Lord
expects us to do missionary work with all these laws and set backs, and my new
goal is learn all that I can help all the other missionaries and learn what
they know and to work my hardest until we start having more work to do than my
brother down in the DR, and they will be forced to start sending tons of
missionaries back over here so that we will be able to take the work load.
It's crazy how so many of the members over here think that
we do nothing here, since after the law the volunteers didn't know what they
were allowed to do. So they just worked with inactives and did service for a
long time, but now the Lord is helping us know how to push his work forward in
this country, but many of the members here still think we do nothing. A women
told us how we can't do anything and how now they have to find and teach for
us, but if that was true they haven't done that yet. The members rely on us to
do everything for them and seem to forget that they have plenty of Melchizedek
priesthood holders who should have some responsibilities. It just gets me so
confused because they think we are hopeless, and have no work, and can’t be
trusted to teach or find or do anything but expect us to plan all of there
activities and call all and meet with all of the people they should be
ministering with and so forth. And when they see us on the streets, because now
we wear our business informal shirts everyday besides Sunday, whenever they see
us outside finding, they thinking we are just wandering around the city; like
this guy that got all mad at us in Saratov because we were finding and he just
assumed that we were walking around, and was mad that we weren't at his house
doing service. So many people think we have nothing else to do but to be their
slaves and do service for them all day. I'm not even kidding they call us
slaves, and they get mad when we tell them after 3 hours of serving them that
we have to leave and do missionary work. I love service, but I want to help the
members realize that we have a work to do, and drives me to work so hard.
We ordained Stefen to be the English group leader, so we
can now switch off with the sisters each week and go to the other branches on
Sundays, so that will be awesome! Stefen our Indian friend, is taking his
calling very seriously and it's even more fun to see a recent convert grow into
a spiritual leader than to do the leadership ourselves!
This last Tuesday before we went on our train up to
Saratov we were able to set up a meeting with a potential we found in the
grocery store from Kenya! He just got here a few months ago and he was very
open to the Book of Mormon, and thought that it would be awesome if God could
speak to him though that book. We also had a meeting with a nice older lady who
found our number online and met with us and we found out that she wanted to be
our pianist, as she told us she used to play in the Armenian temples. We
explained to her how we don't pay people in our church, and she said that she
was still interested in coming to church. She played a bit for us and was very
talented. We brought up the BOM and she said that she would read it before we
got a chance to ask her. So we hope that the sisters will be able to work with
her!
We had a district finding session on Saturday night. We
all met up, got each other excited, shared ideas, set a goal, and went out
for the rest of the night. We received 16 numbers in about 2 hours overall,
and the sisters killed it. I was so proud of them. We are really going to try
to push on always finding; we made a goal as a district of at the very least to
recieve 2 numbers every day, especially on bad or busy days. This District is
awesome. I'm excited to see all the lessons we will learn and the work we can
do!
This week in the Book of Mormon, I was pondering Mosiah18
and the great promises of our baptismal covenant, when it talks about mourning
with those that mourn and to comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and
to bear one another's burdens. The covenants we make are all about looking out
for others, it's about being a tool for the Lord here on earth to comfort those
on his behalf. It is all about charity, and you can't have charity without humility,
because charity is all about looking outside of yourself and seeing others
though the eyes of God, how he sees them. It tells us that we need to love
others no matter what to condemn the sin, but not the sinner. There is never an
excuse or reason valid enough for someone not to forgive and forget. It helps
me realize that life is hard, and God expects his people to be there on his
behalf, to seek out for that loss sheep and to bring them to the fold.
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