Monday, June 8, 2009

busy week...

Hello Everyone,

It is starting to warm up here in Ekat, which makes for some great contacting weather. It is much too warm for a jacket of any kind and we are now sporting our short sleeve shirts. We had a pretty great Tuesday with a few successful meetings with some less active members and our contacting went pretty great as well. I was able to get quite a few people to stop and talk with me. Contacting is actually one of my favorite things to do. I am grateful that I have finally reached a point where I am comfortable in speaking freely and carrying on regular conversations without feeling intimated by the Russian language...but the learning never stops.
We had a zone meeting to go over some highlights of last week's meeting and to also discuss our new Mission President’s arrival coming up. We also had an awesome meeting with a family that has a ton of kids, which is very rare here in Russia. It was an awesome meeting. We discussed the meeting last Sunday and asked them about their thoughts. Later, we had a birthday bash for Zhenya, the missionary coordinator. I gave her a few American cd’s that I love, and since I can’t listen to them on my mish, I thought she might enjoy them. She said she really liked it. After lunch, my companion, Daniel(a member), and I went out on the street and sang happy birthday to Zhenya... my companion played his violin while Daniel and I sang. It was awesome...we created quite the funny scene, it was a great time.
Thursday, was a busy day with four meetings of less active members. We also went to visit Kuzma in a nursing home for the elderly. While we were there this elderly lady gave me a poem. She was an interesting and funny elderly lady. I guess for some odd reason she took a liking to me.

Friday, was another busy day, we had a long, hot and sweaty transport ride to visit an older member. We also spent a lot of time contacting.

Saturday, was a sports activity with the members; however the members didn’t turn out, so it was mostly all missionaries. We played soccer and our team won! It was tight! We also went out contacting.

Sunday was kind of a crazy day. First off it was Fast Sunday. We had a 9:00 am meeting with a less active member that we tried our best to get him to come to church with us. He is such a great guy who is struggling with a few things and going through a difficult time. He said he was too tired to go to church. I expressed to him that I am not going to give up on him and that I will be coming for him next week and the weeks after until he is going on his own. I also expressed to him that he needs to go to church and stay active so he is able to receive the blessings the gospel has to offer him. We have a great repore with him and I feel we can make a difference, he just needs a little support and be pushed a long a bit.


Later I had to translate for President and Sister Allen during
Sacrament Meeting and Sunday school. So, I put on my headset (looking all professional…ha-ha!) and translated away. After the meetings I had to translate for President Allen a while longer, so it was about four hours of translating altogether and by the time I was finished my mouth felt like it was full of cotton balls and my brain felt like mush…ha-ha. It was a great time though. Afterwards we rushed home and made some bbq pizza and rushed out again for another meeting with Zhenya (our missionary coordinator) and Sveta, (investigator). It was an interesting meeting. Sveta has some pretty crazy and abstract ideas about God. The meeting stretched me pretty thin with the vocabulary, but it was all good. After the
meeting we went home and I…CRASHED! Ha-ha. All in all it was a pretty good week.

I am leaving for Spain on Tuesday with another Elder to renew our visas. We will return at the end of the week. I will take a few pics and send with next weeks email.

Make it a great week.

Love,
Elder Dewey

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