Baptisms and a transfer

 

Sorry for the late email!  Had to cut email short today due to helping an investigator move.  

anyway!!!  New area!!!

 Podolsk is wayyy awesome in the fact I DONT HAVE TO RIDE THE METRO!!!!  :D  But there's a lot more walking, and now I have to go like an hour away by train to get to investigators or members houses sometimes.  It's kinda nuts.  ANd my new comp?  He's pretty cool :)

It's cold.  Like way cold.  And Moscow isn't even considered that cold compared to the rest of Russia.  We were walking with  an Investigator, who's got this mustache, and as we were walking his spit, or snot or something was collecting on his mustache in within 20 min he had an Ice-stache.  haha.  And about that investigator.....

We gave him a baptismal date!!!! Way awesome, and came out of nowhere!  We just called him out of the area book, and he said he knows the BoM is true, and he believes that Joseph Smith is a prophet, and our church is better than any others!

And we have another investigator who got a baptismal date the day before I arrived in Podolsk!  So we have two dates!  One for feb 15 and one for March 1.  Way awesome!

Ya right now, it's awesome!  I gotta a visa trip this week, gonna go to Riga for a full hour or so ;)

Well family!!  Have a great week!!

Love, Will

Service, an important part of the mission

 

Yvonne!!!  How has school been going for ya??  Any better?  Work your hardest and take the harder classes earlier in high school, so you can take it easier your senior year ;)  oh yaaaaaa. 

How was Mexico for you and Mom?  Did it make you sick at all?  It was an awesome experience for me.  Thinking back on it, I'd do it again in a heartbeat.  I really do enjoy doing service for other people.  We don't get a lot of opportunities in Moscow, for whatever reason, besides helping people as we see them on the go.  

I feel like that's something a lot of missionaries forget about a lot of the purposes of why we're serving missions.  A lot of them get caught up in the "talk to everyone"  routine and decide that that's all they need to be doing their whole mission, when, in reality, we have been told again and again by leaders of the church that we need to be talking to people on the go, while we are traveling to other and more productive things.  Such as lessons with investigators, members, meetings, and doing service!!!  

Well, Yvonne, I hope life's going good for you!!!  I love you!

Love Will

New area: Podolsk

 

Hey family! 

      We're outside a lot, walking the streets talkiing to people.  Had a sweet sacrifice I think I already told you about.  Our area presidency has said that they don't think we have had enough sacrifice in this mission so we sacrificed sweets this transfer as a zone to show God we are serious about making a certain goal. We didn't make our goal, but we put forth a big effort to get 40 member present lessons together as a zone in one week.  We got 29 in our zone, which is way better than it's been in the past, especially this time of year!  

      To make the goal we would have had to get 4 or 5 as a companionship this week, but we got 2.  We got a lot of figs (where people just don't show up to an appointment) that is very common here.  People set up an appointment, and we even make sure the very day of the appt. that it will still work, and they just don't show up.  Then usually, we can never get a hold of them again.  Happened twice to us.  Also had a lesson with an investigator we've had since I got here, and we dropped her.  We started talking about her coming to church, and she said our members and bishop could go to h...  And started talking to us about anti mormon But she says she likes us and wants us to come back.  (We won't.)  As is missionary life in Moscow :)  

      Well, I'm getting transferred out of my first area!!  I'm going to Podolsk.  It's about 45 min south of the metro (I think) on an electrishka train.  But it's still technically considered Moscow.  I'm pretty excited to go to a knew area.  

Oh ya, it's cold now.  About -21 c yesterday.  

Ok, that's really it for now.  I'll be thinking an praying for Yvonne!  Let me know what she thinks of her patriarchal blessing!

Love you all!  

Will, Elder Bass

Appreciate Living in America!

Hey family!!!

So not much new to talk about.  Just normal stuff.  It's starting to get colder (finally)  Theres a lot of ice on the ground, so there have been people falling down everywhere.  I fell on my butt and squished some milk last week haha.  It's been snowing consistantly for the past 4 days or so.  Apparantly that's what Russian Winters are supposed to be like, with a constant light snow and occasionally a big snow storm here and there.  

Transfers are in a week!  I'll find out where I'm going by saturday.  I'm way excited!  I've loved my area, but I've been here for 5+ months already so I'm kinda ready for a change.  (I hope I go to an outer city to be honest.  Away from the metro!  hahaha ;) )  

I have to say, living here has made me appreciate living in America a lot more! Anyone who talks bad about America that lives there has gotta get out and see what the rest of the world is like

Things Are Looking Up!

Transfers are this week, and I'm losing Elder Marx. I'm staying in Арбатский for another transfer with Elder Davis, he's coming up from Воронеж (Voronezh??) He's a zone leader down there, which is pretty cool.  I'm pretty excited. 

We got another investigator,t we actually have some hope for him; he's been talking to a member online through mormon.org.  Her name's Надя (Nadya), she and her twin sister actually have a mormon message.  We had a lesson with him with her on the lesson.  She was a lot of help!  We are right now just hoping he's not just interested in the church cuz he's got a crush on her or something

     Things are looking up I think.  Yesterday we had 2 lessons with our friend who left for Armenia a while, but came back!  Hes never been to church, and has had a hard time meeting with us in the past, but now he is committed to coming to church and wants to meet with us everyweek.  He gave his book of Mormon in Armenian away to his family while he was down there, because he said that he didn't know of any way they could get in contact with the missionaries down there to get one.  He's pretty awesome!!!  We also met with this guy named Maxim, who has been kind of skeptical about the church and missionaries, and religion in general.  We invited him to our FHE that we have every week, and no one else who was supposed to come showed up except one member, Artyom (Артём) and the senior couple (cuz it's held at their apartment) and we just played games and stuff with him.  It was a blast!!!  We built a great foundation with him, and we had some great discussions about the church with him as well.  He is now very willing to meet with us to talk about our purpose here, and discuss the church. Very cool!!

Ok, Love you guys!!!

Doing the work with doughnuts!

 

Hey family!

Sorry my emails are always so short and without pictures.  I just don't take pictures very often, and I just don't have a lot of time to email..  I think I'm slow at emailing.  And our day is just always so packed as is;  The metro just sucks our day away, everyday.  You have to ride the metro anywhere you go.  

So this week we have been planning a party for our English clubbers.  Also for investigators and for members of course.  Me and Elder Marx have been put in charge it, it's for pretty much all of the missionaries in Moscow.  We've recruited the sister's help in our district (and they're pretty much planning it, while having us run around and do the errands :) )

Me and Elder Marx have been put in charge of a big party for pretty much all of the missionaries in Moscow. (at least half of Moscow...the bigger half)  It's for English club, but we're inviting all of our investigators and Members.  We've been working hard to try and get this put together.  We have a bunch of games that we're planning on doing. One of them is doughnut eating on a string.  So today we have the job of finding cheap doughnuts!  Which will be a huge task all in itself.  Doughnuts don't exist in Moscow, and where they do they are VERY expensive.  Well, everything is expensive in Moscow.

We've been getting shut down a lot.  It's kind of depressing to be honest.  No one likes to talk to us, and we're losing investigators fast.  I told you about our golden investigator.  He won't answer the phone anymore.  It's getting harder and harder out here.  I still love it here in Russia, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.  But it's been hard.

 It's defintely a different world over here.  A lot of neat culture and things to see, it's defintely a place that I think you'd like to see!  

Love you family!!! 

Старейшина Bass

Will

Intense Missionary Work in Russia

 

Hey Family!!!  

Well, this week is pretty normal.  It's been getting down to freezing regularly, till a couple days ago it shot up to about 12 degrees (c) and been staying there.

Me and my comp have really been trying to work on the members.  One of the biggest challenges here in Russia has definitely been working with members.  There aren't a whole lot of members here in Russia, and everyone here is always super super busy.  The way of living in Russia, isn't to know or even talk to your neighbor.  So member missionary work is difficult.  But we have been really pushing trying to get the members to help us out, so Elder Marx and I put together a little plan of our own, and at the same time our mission area has been pushing for Member Missionary work.  So that ended up working really well!!  In the past 2 weeks we have received 5 referrals from members we have been trying to work with.  Which is twice as much as my companion has received his entire mission, and he's been out for a year!

Anyway, I think everyone is pretty confident that the missionary work is gonna start picking up here.  Pretty excited about that.

Ya, and this transfer is over on thursday, and I'm staying in Арбатский Приход (Arbatski Ward) with my companion still!!  I'm actually really happy about that.  I wanted to stay, cuz I have a feeling we're gonna see some baptisms this transfer.  We're gonna work at it! :)

We have one new "investigator" who is from Uzbekistan.  He's actually a member; he got baptized about 10 years ago.  But right after he got baptized he moved back to Uzbekistan, and the church doesn't exist there.  So he came back here, and we got a call from his nephew saying he wanted to meet with us and come to church.  We had no idea he was a member, we thought he was muslim (cuz ALL "Stanians" are muslim) Well, we asked him to start working towards becoming worthy for the priesthood, but he can't read the BoM.  He lives with a bunch of other Stanians, and they are all muslim. He said that if they knew he had a BoM and he was Christian, they would kill him.  Pretty intense!  

Anyway, I love you guys.  I'm loving Russia, and I'm way happy to be here.  It's really flying by!

Love you!!