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

A Miracle

Hey this is gonna be short but some cool stuff happened this week, an answer to our prayers and fasts that have gone on for a few weeks, our investigator who seemed to have vanished without a trace a week or two before the baptism came to Church and stayed for all the meetings! It turns out that what we thought was the case, an unexpected problem occurred, he had been in the hospital for some issues with his heart, and now he has to get heart surgery in a couple of days and will be returning to Rostov after it in probably about a month, and then we will baptism him assuming all goes as planned. He came from the hospital just to come to Church and then went right back, and many of the members here were very welcoming to him and they based their lessons around helping him as much as they could as he willingly read and participated with everything, it went pretty well. He will probably go up to Moscow or another city up in the North for the operation, and we will try to keep in contact with him, and before we left we gave him a blessing with Branch President in his office, and it went well. Other than that there isn't a lot to report this week, we have just been working and have gotten a couple appointments and contacts through the area book, but they haven't usually happened due to a cancellation at the last minute. What can you do though, just your best to try to keep working.

Thanks for everything, you guys have a great week and stay safe! I love you!

-Elder Skene

Quick Note for This Week!

Hey I have to make this fast but I got the package, it's awesome! The ZL brought it from the office for me, thanks a bunch! I'll think of things for the next package like you asked me to. Things are fine and moving forward, you got my personal emails to you so you know what's up and how things are I hope. Have a great week and stay safe!

-Elder Skene

Another Week on the Board!

Hey! So as you know, I emailed each of you and tried to answer your questions as much as I could, and I'm pretty rushed for time this week so this will be shorter but transfers are in a couple of weeks so I'll let you know what happens when I find out, and we are just moving forward with the work here and the Baptism happened yesterday with the little girl but we are still waiting on our other investigator and we are trying to work with our investigators still and praying that things will be successful. Not a ton of news this week though, we had Zone Conference and Elder Bennett, one of the counselors in the East Europe Presidency was there, and I personally got to have an interview with him and it was pretty cool, and we have some changes that are interesting, so we'll see how they effect the work here but we are ready to try things out. That's about all for this week though, I gotta run, but thanks for everything, stay safe, and have a great week! I love you!

-Elder Skene

Borsch!

Hey! So this week was good, we met with members, taught lessons, had other meetings, and had a decent new years for only being able to sit home most of the day haha. There are two members here that are awesome, if I could I would tell you their names but I can't on the blog due to the new rules, we met with them for a lesson with a non-member, and they met with us again and made Borsh and Pirozjki in the branch, it was of course a good time, I'll have to make you guys some stuff when I get back. We had a branch Christmas party this week where we had like a dozen non-members show up so it was pretty good. I tried some pickled watermelon and drank a glass of a freshly squeezed tomato, I'm not a huge fan but the watermelon was alright haha. I don't have a lot of time this week to email, I have to spend some time looking at the college stuff but I'll see what I can do, so I'll have to keep this shorter.

The webcam is as far as I can tell on the main street in center Rostov where their will generally always be a lot of people between like lunchtime to like 3 or 4 in the morning, as we write, we are actually probably like 100 yards away from the web cam from the looks of it. The snow is melted or cleared away there but where we will there is a bunch of Ice and slush everywhere, they don't clean that and everything is way dirty, after living in Russia for soon to be a year here I'm starting to realize more and mroe about the meaning of the Lorax and some other novels about taking care of your enviroment, back home is so much cleaner, nicer built, and so much more in order and people don't litter EVERYWHERE like they do here, I have seriously tried to see if I can look in any direction when we are contacting and see if I can't see any trash on the ground or cigarette butts, I nearly always fail, even in the woods.
New Years was cool, just tons of fire works and drunk people, they have parties here and the fireworks are huge and everywhere, I made sure to take some videos so I can show you when I get back or send them on a flash if it works out.

Haha well that's about it for this week, thanks for everything you guys do for me and all the support and the presents and everything, I love you guys, have a great week and stay safe!

-Elder Skene

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