March 10 ~ Колпино:)

Kolpino, Russia

So remember last week how I said that I wasn't super excited about the new area... well at that point I had never actually been here, but now I've been here for a few days and I love it so much!! It's great here and the ward is awesome (73 people yesterday)!!  More people at church yesterday than in the ward I was in in St. Petersburg.  And we have a rock star bishop and lots of families in the ward and one of the guys who works in the mission office is in this ward and he is so hilarious.  We had ward council yesterday and this is the most functioning ward I have been in on my entire mission (like they have presidencies for all the auxileries AND a representative from all of them was there AND we have a ward mission leader!!! finally a ward with one:))  Yeah basically I love everything here.  And we met one of our investigators last night who is super cool and really smart and really gets it, but here's the kicker - in may he is moving to Utah... he got accepted into Dixie State so yeah, he won't be here too much longer.  He wanted to go to BYU as his top choice (he's not even a member I don't know how he found out about it) but they didn't accept him cause they won't accept people going to get their second bachelor's degree (so basically our investigator is overqualified for BYU haha).  He's cool.  Another investigator of ours I met yesterday too for the first time - he came to church, but not sober...  nice guy though.  Apparently he's been around for a few years and has come close to becoming a member a few times, but just doesn't work out yet because of his addictions.

This week is the mission tour and President Malm (from Sweeden) came to do it and it was dynamite!!!  So good!  I loved the whole thing.  We had a really long conference with him on Saturday and then yesterday Presidnet Clark brought him to our ward!!  He gave a stellar talk and it really was just great!  And he sat in on Ward council too and guess who got landed the job of translating for him?.. yeah I did.  I had to translate for an area 70.  Not only did I have to translate from Russian to English for him but everytime he wanted to make a comment on something I had to put it into Russian (which I really don't like doing - too stressful).  President almost made me be the translator for President Malm and his wife during sacrament meeting (the only 2 speakers), but luckily a woman in the ward was brave enough to do it.   I'm honored that people seem to think that I am the most qualified to be the designated translator, but I really don't like it.  Too stressful for me.  But none the less the ward council was great!  The ward council members have a list of the missionaries and investigators and pray for them by name everyday.  President Malm asked how many on the 12 investigators listed were referrals  to us from the members. None of them.  Then he challenged them to have five people on the list of investigators be member referrals by the next ward councilin 2 weeks.  By the end of ward council we had already gotten 3.  The members all seemed super excited about missionary work and it's just the best ever.  And since this was a white wash, the notes that the previous elders had left had a list of like 6 different members that are regualrly willing to go and teach investigators with us.  I am going to really love it here.  This week coming up we don't have much of anything planned, but we are gonna start rolling soon cause we think we have most things figured out now.  I'm so excited.  And it's great to be back with this former comp of mine, he is so hilarious.  This transfer is going to be awesome!!

Have a great week!

Elder Robison

Kopino, Russia