Austin is so excited to be serving the Lord and working with the people of Russia. He is on an incredible journey and we hope you enjoy reading about his adventures in his blog. This is were you will find his latest pictures and events.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
July 1, 2013 Сестрорецк!!!
Well today I am writing from my new area Sistroretsk!! It is so beautiful here, I love it!! My companion is Elder Wilkins and he is so awesome!! Such a cool, really hard working Elder. It's awesome! I'm super excited about this transfer! This city is right on the coast above St. Petersburg. SO pretty.
Ok this week so many things happened! I went to a really awesome trainer's training meeting on tuesday which was really cool. Learned tons of awesome stuff. Then spend my last night in Gatchina with my favorites - Оля и Юлия. I love them so much!! We were able to have a really good lesson with them on prayer after they stuffed us full of food - the main course being liver... that was exciting haha. I'm going to miss them tons! I already do. Also I had to say good bye to some of the other really cool people that I made friends with in Gatchina. There are some really cool people there. I love them all!
Transfer meeting was awesome! I think there were 9 missionaries that went home - 7 Elders and 2 sisters. We only had 1 new missionary - a sister. I think the official count in our mission now is like 28 Elders and 27 Sisters or something really close to that. After the meeting the mission paid for a taxi to take us all back to our area! Huge blessing cause I didn't really want to haul all of my luggage on the metro twice in the same incredibly hot day. Here in my area, this transfer is the first transfer to have sisters in this city and holy cow- they are killing it! They are having so much success already! I am the district leader as well and since we are all new to the area we have had to work relatively closely this week with them to get things all sorted out and holy smokes. The power of sister missionaries is just amazing. They are so awesome.
The very first night I was there, this woman called us and was interested in doing english. She said that the missionaries contacted her 2 months ago and so I told her when it was but she couldn't come at that time so we set up a different appointment to meet with her. Then the next day at English, she came! Just showed up. So she was able to meet the sisters and they have been meeting with her. She is so cool! Huge miracle just from the very first night we got there.
A couple interesting things have happened to my companion and I in the past few days. Saturday night we were contacting and we had just finished talking to this guy just sitting on a bench thing and we were walking away and we turn around and some other angry Russian man come agressively walking towards us with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and he's yelling at us then he pushed us pretty hard and I smashed heads with Elder Wilkins. Pretty awesome! The first time I've been almost attacted that agressively since being here. My MTC companion got a gun pulled on him his first transfer, Elder Woodhead got punched. President made the Elders in Petergof do an emergency evacuation last transfer as they had had multiple guns pulled on them, got kicked in the face and people found out where they lived and were throwing things at their windows. Then the sisters in that area are still there cause they live in a different part of the area, but aren't allowed to wear their nametags or carry book of Mormons. Pretty crazy stuff.
Then last night here, it was raining and we were walking down the sidewalk and some guy crosses the street from the other side to come and ask us for a cigarette. Of course I told him we don't smoke and tried to engage him in a conversation. Then the police pull up to us and get out of the car and get mad at the guy talking to us cause he was drunk. Then they asked me if he was bothering us and I just told them he wanted a cigarette. Anyways they took him away in the police car (I think they've had problems with this guy before because people walking around intoxicated in public is definitely not a strange thing here) and we scurried off so as to not have to talk to the police again. Also the first time I've been talked to by a police officer here. Pretty exciting stuff!
Anyways, I'm super excited to be in the new area! It's going to be awesome! Love you all, have a great week!
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