Well this week was pretty boring interms of traveling and whatnot. We only went to the city once this week, on tuesday for District Meeting, but after that we went to the center again cause I had to buy a bible (in Russian). So we did that and then just came back home. Nothing exciting happened during that time unfortunately. But now I am equipt with a Russian Bible haha.
The rest of the week we just did loooootss of contacting. I think the climax of the week was Wednesday. We had tried to set up a meeting with my "miracle contact" - remember him? The guy who made me repeat everything in English after I said it in Russian, then took everyhting. Well, we'd been struggling to meet with him. We had an appointement scheduled but he never came and would answer his phone the day of (typical btw). On wednesday morning during study, he called US! Said he wanted to meet with us that day. We were so excited, so we set up an appointment for noon to meet him at the branch (since there are so few members in Гатчина, its more like an office building that we have a couple of rooms rented from. So he shows up and we start and he says he's read everything all the way through (lots of people say that then can't remember anything that they read - translation - they maybe opened the book and read a verse), but anyways, his question was where does it say "Book of Mormon" in the bible. Well obviously it doesn't so we talked about that for a while, then about some other things. I could never get through a point without him saying something and talking about something else. He spent a long time asking why we didn't have an actual church building and he just wouldn't let it go so we finally just told him that it was because the Russian government won't let us (which from what I and Elder Eady knew - is the actual reason). There is a building in Vyborg and maybe 2 in Moscow, but I think those are the only official meetinghouses in Russia. He tried telling us that he knew someone who could build one really easily for us if we wanted and we tried to explain that that's not how we do things and that there are people who are specifically incharge of that kind of stuff. We finally moved past that and got onto prophets. We showed him the little page in the Liahona with the picture of the first presidency and the 12 and the 70's on it. He looked at it for a second then freaked out about it. He would not let go of the fact that President Monson is called "President"... why that is what he was hung up on I cannot possibly imagine. He kept going on and on and on about how stupid it was saying that "president" is a title used in business or government, but not a church. It was so ridiculous. I finally told him that who cares what he's called, the point is that he is a Prophet of God and that really he needs to find that out for himself. And how can he do that? By reading and praying about the Book of Mormon. Because if he finds out that's true, then he will know that Joseph Smith was a prophet which in turn means that President Monson is in fact a Prophet. After that he brought up the fact that there is a hierarchy in church leadership stating that the picture of the church leadership makes a "clean pyramid"... Umm well of course it does dummy! Cause I'm pretty sure that that's how christ sey up his church in the first place. And I'm also pretty sure that there is a pyramid of some sort in ANY sort of organization. In fact, tell me one that doesn't have some sort of leadership or someone in charge. I didn't say all this to him though, but I'm kinda wishing I would have... Then he literally got up and walked out. He said he'd be back in 30 minutes.
I was a little bit terrified, cause I had no idea what had just happened or what he was coming back with (neither of us understood him). So he came back and slammed to books on the table and told us to read them. We said essential "whatever" so we took them (although we shouldn't have) and asked him to come to church on Sunday. He said he would (but didn't - another shocking surprise) so the end of this story is yet to be determined.. dun dun dun.. haha I was so annoyed beyond belief with him. But it made for an exciting (and long) story!
Thursday we got a sink installed in out appartment bathroom finally. Until then we'd been shaving and brushing our teeth in the kitchen sink (the latter we still have to do there since there is no water filter on the bathroom sink) and washing our hands in the bathtub. It's nice, but makes our already cramped bathroom that much smaller. Looks good though.
Saturday we went over to the neighboring town to go contacting. Not a ton of success, but it was a nice change of scenery (in Гатчина we literally only contact on like 3 streets).
Last night we went over to the Ilin's house (one of the 3 active families in the branch) and had a nice evening with them. They're super awesome! Just talked with them, then also talked about how we can help them do missionary work as members. Brother Ilin is always willing to go on lessons with us, but they live like 45 min from the branch so we don't want to ask him to come until like the 2nd or 3rd meeting with someone so we know that they'll actually come. It'll be nice when we can find someone and he can start helping us more. Other than that, it was just a plain week of good ol' fashioned missionary work! Soooo hard, but worth it!
Hope everyone else had a wonderful week as well! Love you and miss you all!!
Elder Robison
The rest of the week we just did loooootss of contacting. I think the climax of the week was Wednesday. We had tried to set up a meeting with my "miracle contact" - remember him? The guy who made me repeat everything in English after I said it in Russian, then took everyhting. Well, we'd been struggling to meet with him. We had an appointement scheduled but he never came and would answer his phone the day of (typical btw). On wednesday morning during study, he called US! Said he wanted to meet with us that day. We were so excited, so we set up an appointment for noon to meet him at the branch (since there are so few members in Гатчина, its more like an office building that we have a couple of rooms rented from. So he shows up and we start and he says he's read everything all the way through (lots of people say that then can't remember anything that they read - translation - they maybe opened the book and read a verse), but anyways, his question was where does it say "Book of Mormon" in the bible. Well obviously it doesn't so we talked about that for a while, then about some other things. I could never get through a point without him saying something and talking about something else. He spent a long time asking why we didn't have an actual church building and he just wouldn't let it go so we finally just told him that it was because the Russian government won't let us (which from what I and Elder Eady knew - is the actual reason). There is a building in Vyborg and maybe 2 in Moscow, but I think those are the only official meetinghouses in Russia. He tried telling us that he knew someone who could build one really easily for us if we wanted and we tried to explain that that's not how we do things and that there are people who are specifically incharge of that kind of stuff. We finally moved past that and got onto prophets. We showed him the little page in the Liahona with the picture of the first presidency and the 12 and the 70's on it. He looked at it for a second then freaked out about it. He would not let go of the fact that President Monson is called "President"... why that is what he was hung up on I cannot possibly imagine. He kept going on and on and on about how stupid it was saying that "president" is a title used in business or government, but not a church. It was so ridiculous. I finally told him that who cares what he's called, the point is that he is a Prophet of God and that really he needs to find that out for himself. And how can he do that? By reading and praying about the Book of Mormon. Because if he finds out that's true, then he will know that Joseph Smith was a prophet which in turn means that President Monson is in fact a Prophet. After that he brought up the fact that there is a hierarchy in church leadership stating that the picture of the church leadership makes a "clean pyramid"... Umm well of course it does dummy! Cause I'm pretty sure that that's how christ sey up his church in the first place. And I'm also pretty sure that there is a pyramid of some sort in ANY sort of organization. In fact, tell me one that doesn't have some sort of leadership or someone in charge. I didn't say all this to him though, but I'm kinda wishing I would have... Then he literally got up and walked out. He said he'd be back in 30 minutes.
I was a little bit terrified, cause I had no idea what had just happened or what he was coming back with (neither of us understood him). So he came back and slammed to books on the table and told us to read them. We said essential "whatever" so we took them (although we shouldn't have) and asked him to come to church on Sunday. He said he would (but didn't - another shocking surprise) so the end of this story is yet to be determined.. dun dun dun.. haha I was so annoyed beyond belief with him. But it made for an exciting (and long) story!
Thursday we got a sink installed in out appartment bathroom finally. Until then we'd been shaving and brushing our teeth in the kitchen sink (the latter we still have to do there since there is no water filter on the bathroom sink) and washing our hands in the bathtub. It's nice, but makes our already cramped bathroom that much smaller. Looks good though.
Saturday we went over to the neighboring town to go contacting. Not a ton of success, but it was a nice change of scenery (in Гатчина we literally only contact on like 3 streets).
Last night we went over to the Ilin's house (one of the 3 active families in the branch) and had a nice evening with them. They're super awesome! Just talked with them, then also talked about how we can help them do missionary work as members. Brother Ilin is always willing to go on lessons with us, but they live like 45 min from the branch so we don't want to ask him to come until like the 2nd or 3rd meeting with someone so we know that they'll actually come. It'll be nice when we can find someone and he can start helping us more. Other than that, it was just a plain week of good ol' fashioned missionary work! Soooo hard, but worth it!
Hope everyone else had a wonderful week as well! Love you and miss you all!!
Elder Robison
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| Austin trying to make Banana Bread. |
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