A work in progress...

This is a cool sign that says "Glory to the Heroes of the People" and a cool babooshka (older woman).

This is a view of the city we live in. I'ts a lot bigger than it looks in this picture. We live on the outskirts.
This is a road of mud my companion and I had to walk along. Kurgan is a very mudding city, but not all roads are like this.

Hey Everyone,

Things are going great here in Kurgan. Elder O and I are now on our second week and things are well.

The following is a run down of this past week.

Last Monday for Pday...video & pizza...can't get much better than that! haha! We found the movie Wallie on video, which hasn’t come out yet in the states. We decided to get a little creative with our pizza skills and experimented with palmeni topping…not the best idea. Palmeni is like pasta with some type of meat inside. I’m not so sure it would've won any prize, but it actually wasn't too bad...hungry missionaries will eat just about anything...soup with fish eyes and now palmeni pizza!

Tuesday, we did some contacting and then English, which was fun. After English, we had game night. We played some game where you had to name famous Russian People. The Russians ended up owning me because I knew very few famous Russian people. Next time we will try naming famous American people and see who comes out on top.

Wednesday was an interesting day; it turned out to be an eventful, disastrous, and amazing day wrapped up in one. I had my first district meeting with the Sister’s and because it was just my companion, the two sisters, and myself we needed a fifth person to join us in order to have an odd number. The member that normally joins us, Sister Masha, happened to be in Finland at the temple. As District leader, it’s my job to find that fifth person. After being turned down due to work schedules or sickness, I decided to ask this one member who just so happens to be extremely talkative. We began the meeting with a spiritual thought given by Sister K. As she was finishing, this member started in at her, tempting her. For some reason he seemed to have his own agenda and proceeded to talk extremely negatively about the branch organization and just wouldn’t let up. I knew by what was happening that the best thing that I could do in this situation was to cut the meeting short and end it. I didn’t feel like the meeting would be productive or that the spirit would be with us when there was such a negative tone. After our short meeting, sister K asked if I would give her a blessing. I was somewhat nervous because I‘ve never given the long part in Russian or in English for that matter. She was my first experience in which I have blessed anyone. She said I could do it in English, but because she is a Russian native I wanted it to be in Russian, in her own language and easy for her to understand and remember. So I just prayed in my heart that I would have the ability to give her the blessing that she needed and that would comfort her, and then I proceeded. Afterwards, Sister K said it turned out good and I didn't make any mistakes with the language. Sister K was in my first “Greenie” area when I was still struggling with the language. After her blessing, she told me about how it is so cool to see the progress I have made since she was in my Greenie Zone. This experience was one of those spiritual, uplifting, and faith building experiences I will always remember and be grateful for. The rest of the day, we had contacting and a meeting with Vacya who is a member that wanted to meet with us, he is always interesting and fun to visit with.

In our weekly planning on Thursday we decided that the hours we spend contacting is not the best use of our time, so we decided to get a little more creative in our approch. We are going to come up with different and creative ways to find people, other than just the norm and see if we can increase our numbers.

Friday wasn’t one of our best days, we were both sick. I’m not sure what happened, but we both were not feeling too well. We had a meeting with Stac, an investigator, which turned out great. Stac is a Russian Orthodox, who is really searching for the truth. He has been reading the Book of Mormon and is intrigued by how much it talks about Christ. He also really likes our new church building.

On Saturday, we ended up wandering around in the mud, in the middle of nowhere, again trying to find a former investigator, it was actually a lot of fun. We did some additional contacting and had a few meetings with members and less actives.


Sacrament meeting was the best. Sister K gave an amazing last minute talk about member missionary work and did a great job! We had Leonid, an investigator there with us. After the meeting, Leonid asked how he could become a member of our church. We explained to him that we would need to schedule some additional meetings with him and explain how he can do just that!! Honestly, it was a miracle. I am so excited. He seems like a very sincere and solid guy. After our meetings, we did some contacting and then made the most amazing tacos.

This transfer has been the greatest transfer. Elder O is such a cool guy, easy going and a hard worker.

I hope all of you at home are doing well, living right, and enjoying life. Although it’s cold here in Russia and this AZ kid is freezing his bum off, there is no other place I would rather be than right here serving the Lord.

Have a great week.

Love,
Elder Dewey