Miracle!

Hey I wrote you guys already quite a bit but this will refer more to my week here. This week I experienced what I would consider a miracle. We have an investigator in her 40's named Natalia who is to be baptized on the 24th of February, and we have completed all of the lessons but the last half of lesson 4, and all have been with a member present. She was planning to come to church and have another lesson with us but she had to go to the hospital because she drank some solution that looked like water and it messed with her body. We went to the hospital on Friday at the time we originally schedule the lesson and towards the end of the lesson I felt inspired to tell her that if she would exercise enough faith, she would be able to attend sacrament meeting. The next day Elder Cook and I were on the street walking contacting and we received a phone call informing us that she wouldn't be released from the hospital until the following Monday, thus she wasn't able to come to church. I honestly wasn't 100 percent sure what to think after that, I knew that the prompting that I received wasn't something that I just thought up in my mind, it was something that she needed to hear. Sunday morning broke, and she was at church attentive as ever, and was able to attend sacrament meeting. She told us that she just left a note at her bedside and came to Church, and then returned to the hospital. We are finishing the lessons this week and have the baptismal interview scheduled, and we're really excited for things to happen. That's about it for this week, until next Monday, stay classy and may the force be with you!

-Elder Skene

The Work Rolls Forward!

Hey! Things here are pretty good in Selmash, I'm just still training the new Elder Cook here. He is from Palm Bay, Florida, 19 years old, a few siblings, one of which is in Hong Kong on a mission right now, and the rest is TBA. By the way my last companion Elder Brinkerhoff is from Grant's Pass, Oregon. Anyways, this week we were just contacting and had a meeting set up where we couldn't get a hold of the people, and we didn't know what we could do to make something happen, and then a random lady in her late 40's named Natalia, (we can say the first name now), stopped us and asked to meet with us, she came when the other people were supposed to, so everything worked out fine. She accepted baptism at the end of the lesson and is supposed to be baptized on the 24th of February, so that's good news, and we are still waiting for Sergei to get out of the hospital, Angelika to finish her exams, and we're still just working with the other potentials that we have. Also, Elder Cook had a couple of warts on his hands and feet, which as far as he knew it was like 3 or 4, well we walked into the dermatologist and it turned out to be like 10, and we got them frozen off, so he couldn't walk a lot but we still managed to do the work like normal for the most part. Well, I gotta get going on the school application but know that I love you guys! Be safe and have a great week!

-Elder Skene

Training!

Hey so I'm not really gonna have time to write you each individually this week due to applying to BYU and all but I'll try to make this as informative as I can, and if there's time left I'll try to send you each something, but as always I loved you emails and it's awesome to get to hear from you and see how things are going. So I got the transfer calls and it looks like I'll be training Elder Cook from Florida, I don't know a lot about him, just that apparently he likes Star Wars so that's a plus. I'm gonna send you guys some stuff soon if I can that I was able to get, like a legit Russian version of monopoly that was in the Severny apartment when I served with Elder Jacobson, but now that board games are against the rules I'm just gonna send it home, it's a smaller box than usual. I think you'll like it.

Other than that this week wasn't super active and full of meetings or anything, it just seemed that a lot of things fell through. We are still waiting on our investigator to get out of the hospital so we can baptism him, and we are still working with the woman who promised to be baptised in February. We recently received a referral from the Severny Elders that's a couple that was interested in the Gospel, the first time the Elders came in contact with them we received the referral but there was a missing digit, so we weren't able to reach them. I woke up in the morning a few days later with a feeling that somehow we were going find an investigator who would show real interest, I really wanted to express faith and confidence in the work and that things would progress here in Selmash. Later that same day I received a call from Severny, after they ran into those same people again after they waved the Elders down. They were asking why the Elders didn't call them and they were excited about and interested in the Church. They then promptly took down there number and gave them a Book of Mormon, and didn't hesitate to pass it on to us, now we are planning to meet with them this week. I know that if we express faith, the Lord will bless us, sometimes it's not always his will for things to go the way that we want, but it seems that if we just ask in faith, we will receive it.

I love you guys, have a great week and be safe!

-Elder Skene