June 24, 2013 Change is in the air

Hello everyone!!  Honestly this week has been so strange, but ended well!  First and foremost, as I alluded to last week, I am officially being transfered!  I'll be going to Sestoretsk which is about some unknown be me amount of time north of St. Petersburg.  It apparently is on the coast and was, before the revolution, Finnish land.  Should be interesting.  My new companion is already there, but here's the catch... this will be his second transfer.  The new missionary training program is 12 weeks long which equals 2 transfers.  This means I am going to be finishing training him... Im just a little stressed out about it.  Luckily, it's the second half so he's basically already trained haha.  Anyways, I'll be moving up there Wednesday.  I actually found out that i would be getting transfered earlier in the week when I had an interview with President Clark.  I'm being transfered because of our investigator.  Apparently last week when the Clarks were at church with us she told sister Clark that she had a "crush" on me.  Kinda explains some of the weird things she did this week.  Anyways - point of the story is that I'm being transfered.  And I'm excited about it.  Should be awesome.

So... hmm what else happened this week.  We had a really awesome zone training on Tuesday!  We basically just reviewed what we talked about when the Lawrences were here.  Really awesome.  Super strong spirit there.

We were contacted by 2 Jehova's witnesses (old бабушки) and they invited us to their "General Conference" if you will.  haha.  That was funny.

Then just after that some drunk guy came up and told us he was Jesus... then decided that no, he isn't but that he had been enlightened by the holy spirit.  Also wanted to know when we got to be Elders and he's not even though we were clearly younger than him and obviously not as intelligent...  Then he told our investigator sitting with us that we are only here to get people to send their money to Salt Lake.  Finally I got so angry so I stood up and told him to leave.  He did finally, reluctantly, but it probably didn't help that our investigator is seriously so nice that she wanted him to explain this reasoning and opinions behind everything that he said.  She was most interested in his claim that he was enlightened.  I don't really know what he meant by that, but it was weird.  Not a new thing for this part of the field, but still.  And it put a really weird mood and the rest of our meeting with her was just strange.

Despite all this, we continue to see little miracles everyday that remind us that God really is watching over us.  It's always so amazing to me - I think literally every time we've had a not so pleasant interaction on the street and it kinda gets us down, just after then some one will come up and talk to us and we'll have a really good conversation or something and I just feel automatically better.  There's one situation that I remember really well.  We said hi to the guy as he walked by and he swore at us a few times in English, but just kept walking.  Thatwasn't so much discouraging as it was annoying and I could feel the spirit just leaving and then I think literally after about 30 more steps some guy stopped us and told us that he always loves seeing the missionaries on the street.  He didn't want to meet with us or anything, but just said how it always makes him happy to see the missionaries out.  Just small little things like that that I know weren't coincidences, but it was God placing that man in our path to lift us back up.  I'll never forget that experience.

I think that's probably all for this week.  A good one overall, just really strange haha.

Love you all!

Til'next week!

Старейшина Робисон