Gary Potter and the Stairway to Heaven (Volleyball)
Date
October 2, 2017
Area
Chisinau
Companion
Elder Solov'iov
Gary Potter and the Stairway to Heaven (Volleyball)
Alright everyone it has been another AMAZING week in Chisinau and wow I cant believe its already another pday. The weeks are flying here idk whats going on. Also the keyboard Im on right now has some romanian settings to it so forgive me for all the grammar mistakes. Its not me...its the keyboard.
I dont know where to even begin but I guess Ill start with the title. So we went to a bookstore the other day and I was looking for this one book to help me with Russian and I found HARRY POTTER IN RUSSIAN. YES. It was the greatest and saddest moment of my life because it had the sickest art covers and it was SO CHEAP. (crying bc I cant buy them). Funny thing is that harry potter in Russian is actually Gary Potter for some reason. Hahaha I cant wait to read it someday.
This week we did a lot of service on wednesday. A lot. As in the whole day we did service. Theres this volleyball court that we play on but theres a short steep hill you have to go up and down and theres these really horrible dirt steps so the church bought some concrete so that we could install stairs. A lot more work than I thought it would be for sure. We started about 10 am and ended about 11 pm. My energy was completely gone after the end of it but it was so worth it. I actually had a ton of fun while doing it as well. So we now have stairs that take us to volleyball (woo).
We taught English this week again and its actually one of my favorite things here. It makes me appear actually intelligent so thats fun. Most of the time people will speak to me and Ill just give them this blank face and then theyll speak again slower and Ill still just stare at them until they try speaking broken english haha. SO FUN. But forreal my Russian is improving a lot and Im not doing too bad. I got a haircut today and was able to say, yes, no, a little bit, and thank you and I guess thats pretty much all you need. Not really but Im trying.
When it comes to investigators we have been struggling a lot with that. We have only one real investigator right now but hes always busy and hes only semi-interested. We have a lot of potential investigators but they can never meet with us. We spend most of the time trying to talk to people but noone wants to give us the time of day which is sad because we have this AMAZING GOSPEL. Its weird to think that we could give these people something that will completely change their lives for the better but they think were just trying to make money or something. Its sad. But yeah-interesting story- we called this one guy who was really interested so we set up and appointment with him at the center of the city. He didnt show up and we were pretty bummed but I thought while Im here I might as well do some contacting. We happened to be right by the Chisinau Marathon event going on and so they were blasting some crazy good music I used to listen to back at home and I was handing out english cards. I was standing close to the event so people thought I was some official that worked for the event so they kept coming up to me and I would hand them English cards. I gave away like 50 english cards while listening to good music so it was super cool. After that we went to dinner but the dude who had not shown up called us from a different phone and asked if we were still meeting. Long story short we met with him and his fiance and taught them a little about the book of mormon but it was disappointing because they were both a little drunk and there was just this weird feeling. He started smoking halfway through and didnt even listen to half the stuff we said. So basically at this point Ive taught more people drunk than sober. YIKES.
We had General Conference this week and IT WAS THE GREATEST. General Conference as a Missionary is pretty great. Also its funny because of the time difference we have General Conference at weird times. We watched the Sat. Morning session at 7 pm and priesthood session at noon on sunday, 3 pm was Sat. afternoon and 7 pm was Sunday morning. So that was really fun. The talks were amazing and I especially loved Elder Hollands talk. He talked about not beating ourselves up for not being perfect but for looking for good things instead. But I honestly felt like all of the talks applied to me personally and it was a great experience overall.
Ive been reading in Mosiah recently and Ive been reading about Alma. The stories in the Book of Mormon are so cool and I get so much out of them. My only advice is to READ THE BOOK OF MORMON. And dont just read it to check it off of the list of daily things to do. Read them with purpose and look for things to apply to your own lives. You will feel so much more peace and happiness in your lives I know it. Ive had some amazing experiences this week where I was able to bear my testimony to people on the street and multiple times Ive had to hold back tears on how much I love this gospel and how much I love these people. Its been amazing so far and I cant wait to share more next week.
Love you all!Старейшина Уайтинг