Happy New Year!

Hey! This week was pretty good except for somehow I got sick on Saturday and I'm still pretty sick and out of it haha but what can I do right? This upcoming week have pretty much every day booked so it should be a fun one. I hope you guys have a good time this year, and as of tomorrow, I will have a little of 9 months left! I'm glad that this will be the last New Years that I'm away from home though, it'll be fun not to have to work haha. This New Years we have some free time today and tomorrow to sit in the apartment but other than that we are running errands all day, and the last New Years in the MTC was just 2 normal days, so it will be cool to be able to celebrate it again. But other than that this week was pretty standard and things are going smoothly. To answer Mom's question, my current companions full name is Kameron Brinkerhoff and he is from Grants Pass, Oregon. That's about it for this week though, the two baptisms are schedualed for the 13th, so we'll have to keep working with that and see what happens! I love you guys, stay safe and have great week. Until next Monday!

-Elder Skene

Talk to you in 8 days!

Hey! So about the Christmas call, as of right now we are set up to call you guys using Skype at the Senior Couple's house here in Rostov at 7:00pm our time on Christmas Day, December 25th, so that should be like somewhere between 6:00-8:00 am Christmas morning for you guys. I'm way excited, it should be rad, I'm not sure how long we have but I hope it will be maybe kinda like last time but I would assume probably shorter so along with what I sent in the package this will be Christmas present to you guys that you'll get on Christmas morning. We don't know yet if I'll be emailing you next Monday but we'll see. I don't have a lot of time to write today so I'll make it shorter but this transfer is gonna end in the beginning of Febuary, it's gonna be a longer transfer than normal due to the MTC changes on some things, so I'll be in Selmash with Elder Brinkerhoff until then. This week we have had a lot of meetings and worked with our investigators, we currently have 5, and it's awesome to be able to work with people and bring them the Gospel and watch how it changes their lives. I gotta run, so this will be all for this week, and I'll be emailing you personally, have a good one and I'll be talking to you next week! I love you!

-Elder Skene

A Good Week!

Hey! So I don't have a lot of time but this week have had a couple cool and crazy experiences, I don't have a lot of time to go through them all but the work here is really good, we have multiple investigators who are following up and working with us, and we have had at least one member/investigator meeting almost every day for this entire transfer! It's awesome, it helps the time pass a lot, and it helps you learn to love the people more and helps you serve them and really want to help them and give the best gift that we can, the Gospel. I'm excited to see what happens this week the progress they have been making, and even tonight we have a meeting planned, and we should be looking at a new apartment. I feel like a missionary in Latin America, like Elder Pathakis, at least that's what the stories and stereotypes say. I better wrap this up but I wrote you guys about everything else this week and I hope you got all of it, but know that I love you and miss you all so much, and in 9-10 months I'll be able to tell you all about this stuff face to face, I'm excited for the Christmas call, I gave Mom the details as far as I know them right now but I'll find out more, but until then and next Monday, have a great week and stay safe, I love you!

-Elder Skene

New Investigator(s) and a Baptismal Date!

Hey guys! So I don't have a lot of time to write this but we extended a Baptismal invitation to a younger girl in the branch this week when we taught her with her Grandmother, her Mom in a member but inactive, and we are trying to reactivate her brother so he can do the baptism, but we'll see what happens, either way though she will be baptized soon, way cool! Then we have a new investigator that we met on the street and taught after Church yesterday, he accepted the Book of Mormon and we're meeting with him with the Branch President later this week most likely, he has a marijuana and cigarette problem and promised us that he wouldn't smoke the day we met with him and he wants to quit, and we wanna show him how he can and how much better off he will be and use the example of the day he meets with us to show him the difference it can make and we have one more man who is sorta an investigator, it just depends on what will happen, he used to go to Church for like six months but was never baptized  and he knows a lot about the Church and the Branch knows him, I'll have to ask the Branch President about him to understand why he couldn't be baptized  because he said he was just denied permission because he "wasn't ready", so that could mean a lot of things, so we'll have to find out and keep in touch with him. We're going on splits to Severny this week, and that should be exciting, I'll get to see my old area again. We have an average of around 33-36 members show up here to Sacrament and other meetings, but there aren't a lot of men in the branch so we have gone to the Relief Society meeting the past two weeks haha, we'll have to see if we can change that and get some lessons rolling even if it's just us and the Branch President haha. I can't tell you the names of these people or show you pictures I guess, new rule, I'll see if I can tell you next week in my emails. Well that's about all for this week. I love you guys, have a great week and stay safe!

-Elder Skene