Monday, April 2, 2012

Kickin' it in Kazan!

Hello family!
I am writing on a warmer and nice and muddy day in Kazan.  There is quite the weather here, I am going to try and get a couple pictures sent.  It is hard when all the functions are in Russian so I don't really know what to do.  But I'm tryin momma!  It has been a good week.  Definitely a wider range of ups and downs, but always a good week on the mission to cash in!

We started the week of course with a P day.  We then left early Tuesday morning to head out to Uleeyanovsk [I think this is Ulyanovsk….south from Kazan].  I don't know how to spell it with English letters.  But we headed out because we have to go on splits with the district due to Elder Christensen being the district leader.  So we headed out for a good 4 hour bus ride to hang with those two elders for a couple days.  It was a blast.  We jump started that area by finding 11 in two days.  What that means is that we teach them something, give a commitment, pray, and set up a return appointment.  The mission goal is to find 1 a day, and we blew that up.  It was so fun.  The area had been a little struggling, so we went to work!  They now sound like a lot of progress is being made.  I had a fun find there, we were on the Marshutka (these crazy little vans that run around the city) on our way home.  I got talkin’ to a guy across with his granddaughter who when his stop came asked to write down my number for them to call!  It was so sweet. Once he left, this other guy across asked me what we're all about.  I told him a bit and totally went ahead and said a prayer with this dude on this little bus/van thing.  It was pretty funny, but hey we find when we can!  My companion was just tearing up the back part of the van as well talking to people and so we were on clouds the rest of the way home.  Good times, funny people.  That's my favorite part.  So we travelled back and got back on Thursday.  We spent that day doing planning for the week and had a couple meetings that went well. We had a little bit of disappointment though.  Our brothers that we are teaching are so stuck in some job that they are just killing themselves to earn some money it sounds like.  Basically, they work about 16 hours a day splitting up the shift.  And they can't work out a schedule because they can't speak Russian.  However, we ran into one of them Friday evening when we were teaching an investigator on the street and one of them ran into us.  We had to ask him how his family was coping with their decision and he hadn't said much to them yet.  Anyways, we couldn't really understand him when we called yesterday because he can't express very well in English, so as of right now we really don't know what’s up with them.  Too bad.  I still can't wait to talk to them again.    The small family moved to Moscow which was too bad, but we had some miracles show up to church that we met with after.  The Spirit was very strong as we told the first vision, so we will see what happens!  All in all a wonderful week as always.  I continue to love this.  The language is hard, but I have learned a lot and will get it down.  What a blessed opportunity I have to serve!  I love you all and hope you know that.  More importantly, I hope you know how much our Heavenly Father loves us.  He truly does.  Hope all is well and c’ya next week!

Elder Nielson

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