I forgot my camera!

Okay everyone, yesterday I was pretty excited to show you pictures of me and my new comp, random stuff, and a baptism with Igor, but unfortunately I forgot my camera, and the baptism never happened because he's sick, but hopefully he gets better so we can do it, it was way sad when it couldn't happen and everyone was ready for it, apparently nobody has been baptized in my area for 4 years or so, so it would have been awesome, but hopefully this next Sunday he can be baptized, and hopefully Mesha can be baptized soon to, he just isn't quite ready I guess, so it will be a couple weeks probably until we baptize him. Not a ton of new stuff to report this week, like I wrote earlier, I have a new comp (Elder Belnap) because Elder Tropnikov has health issues among other things. We are the youngest companionship in the whole mission, by a big amount actually, Elder Belnap has only been in Russia a few months more than I have, haha so it's an adventure to do missionary work but I have seen lots of progress in Russian lately, because we have so much responsibility now, and we both have confidence that we can do stuff despite us being such a young companionship. It really builds your testimony, to see how much God lifts us up and makes our weaknesses our strengths and our strengths even better. He is pretty cool though so everything here is good pretty much. 

The weather here is getting better mainly, it's warming up more and it makes missionary work easier to do. I don't think I ever said this to you guys but here's something interesting, the way my name is translated in Russian literally means "Skinhead" like the Nazi gang group, it is spelled the exact same way, it would be like Elder Skinhead in America, can you imagine that? Well you don't have to because it's real, only in a different country ha, ha. In Russia there is a pretty negative connotation that Nazi's carry, even worse than in America, probably because of World War 2 mainly, I usually don't wear my name tag here because of what happened anyways, but I'm fine, don't worry about anything, I'll be okay! It's just a funny thing ha, ha. Anyways, I'll send pics next week, I don't have much more to report though, we have been traveling for the first half of the week mainly, the rail lines here detour everywhere and they aren't that fast, but the roads are about just as windy and indeterminate, so traveling here is kinda slow and you have to stay at other Elder's apartments a lot when you go anywhere, but that's okay because there are so many cool missionaries in this mission, I loved seeing people in Rostov. I've pretty much met and spent time with almost everybody here, all 32 of us ha, ha. I love you guys! Stay safe! Until next week!

-Elder Skene

Just a Quick Note!

Hey so I don't have much time to write this letter this week because I'm in the office in Rostov for another companionship transfer! Elder Tropnikov couldn't stay in Novo because of health issues and other stuff, so my new comp is Elder Belnap, he is from Texas, I just barely met him before I started typing this, he seems chill though, I'll tell you how that goes, we travel back to Novo tonight, 9 hours on a train haha. Igor is getting baptised next Sunday now, and Mesha delayed his date because he didn't feel he was ready, I can't email you all personally because I don't have time but I loved the news and Jake's talk that you sent me, and I loved your emails! I gotta peace though, but I'm safe and all is well! I'll be more detailed next week in my email haha! The Church is TRUE!!!

 

-Elder Skene

Word Up Yo!

Hello everyone! As you all know, I have a new companion now, Elder Tropnikov, like I wrote before, he was born in Northern Russia, relatively close to Moscow. We get along well enough, and things are running smooth, but not as well as me and Elder Reigngard but it's okay, I'm attaching a photo of him, and some more photos of random happenstances as usual. Not a ton of news this week, we have two baptisms scheduled for this Sunday though! So that's exciting. We went to Krasnodar like I said last week and that was way fun, Elder Reigngard and I hung out with my mission grandpa Elder Kuslev for 2 days, you might say it was a family reunion. Other than that however, nothing is super interesting, just the usual no water and power outages every now and then, and our washing machine broke so we're off to find a new one after I write these letters. I hope you're all doing well as usual and from your letters it sounds like it. About the name tag thing, the Mission President already knows and we're all good and getting new ones asap, we don't tell the cops or anything because there wasn't any violence. 

So news from last week that I for some reason forgot to write, from trolling, Elder Reigngard and I found a new investigator, who is now mine and Elder Tropnikov's investigator haha. Let me explain, so when Elder Reigngard and I would take public transport, which is pretty much every day when we need to go somewhere far, we would usually speak in English when we got on the bus and everyone would look around and try to listen in and pretty much we would catch the attention of the whole bus, people would usually then proceed to talk about us in Russian, thinking of course that we couldn't understand them, we then would start talking in Russian and people would be surprised, shocked, and a number of other reactions after hearing us speak their language, it was way funny. When we did this one night some guy walked up to us and started talking to us about things and thought it was pretty interesting, we are now teaching him! With Elder Tropnikov I don't troll though, he's not into that kind of stuff and he's more serious about some stuff and he's really proud of his country so he doesn't like it when people mess around in it. Ah well. Well other than that there's not to much to talk about, the gospel and language stuff is coming along as usual. I love you all! Keep it real!

-Elder Skene

 

 

William Wallace and the Mafia!

This week was, well interesting, really sad, scary, suprising, and just wild. First off, this is super, super, rare, this hardly ever happens, because of an issue with some people in Krasnodar, our zone leader's city, Elder Reigngard won't be finishing my training, we are getting transferred, he's going to Krasnodar to be a zone leader there. It makes me really sad, we got along way well and had so much fun, I learned a lot from him and he was my mission dad, I'll be staying here in this city though and my new companion is Elder Tropnikov, he's from Russia and he is also learning English, but he speaks it pretty good, I've met him a couple of times. He served with Elder Reigngard in Volgograd a while back, they are friends. So 2 native companions in a row at the beginning of the mission, super rare apparantly I guess, but he will be finishing my training and I'll be here for either 1 more transfer, or 3 more, it depends on whether or not he stays with me for the second transfer, because if he does, he will finish his misison here and I'll need to stay to show the next Elder who comes here around.

Haha now people have called me William Wallace because there was an accident when I was growing up and I lost my dad, and then my Dad's old friend comes to raise me haha. I say the Mafia because some guy came on the bus and roughed up me and Elder Reigngard a little bit and was way mad at us and he ripped off our missionary name tags (the clip on ones) and took them and then just got off the bus. This is pretty rare in the mission from what we have been told, but we'll get our tags back. He was wearing a black trenchcoat, black shoes, black suit, and a black shirt, and he wasn't drunk or high or anything, he had some teeth knocked out and he had scars on his arms that looked like burn marks, his clothes were pretty nice and he had really short, almost buzzed hair, he was like 6'5" and was like 280 pounds, so he wasn't a bum. Elder Reigngard and I suspect he was from the because he wasn't from the government or anything. It was pretty sketchy. But I AM FINE, no worries! There's other stuff that's happened this week like crazy people coming up to us all the time but I don't have much time here, I hope you are all doing well! I'm doing fine and we are still working with our Investigators and all that, and we are going to Krasnodar tommorow to switch companions and all that, we'll see what happens. But until then! Peace!

-Elder Skene

A Weird Week!

Hello Everyone! As usual I'll try to answer all of your questions in this email if I can. So I say this week was weird because we saw some crazy stuff, some of it I can't say haha, it was too messed up. But I'll inform you on the rest haha, so yesterday, which was Sunday, we went and walked around and contacted after church, and some random guy raged at us because I'm an American, which happens kind of often with drunk or high people, then we kept walking and some crazy babushka walked up to us and just started crying, and then we cross the street, and some guy is literally just peeing on the sidewalk, and this is on one of the most busy and biggest streets in our town, there are people walking all over the place, and he is just peeing there, for everyone to see, and then he raged at us and tried to swear in English, then another guy asked us if we would go buy bread with him right after that, because he thought we were rich Americans because we are missionaries.

We also saw plenty of other stuff, like a huge Communist protest in front of a war memorial, full of propaganda and stuff, from which I got a legit communist copy of pravda, their newspaper, I'm sending it home in a package asap to you guys with everything else I wanna give you, I'm trying to go lightweight, so for Jake I'm getting a Russian military flag, for Dad I got the newspaper and other communist stuff because I think he would find it interesting and I don't know what else he would want haha, and for Mom and Kiley I don't know yet, we'll see, it's all inexpensive stuff though, so no worries.

So Elder Reigngard and I should be here for another 6 or 7 weeks but we won't know until next Friday for sure, so I'll let you know then, to answer your question, he is from Semphviropal, Ukraine. I don't know how to spell it in English, and our address, which I also don't know how to spell in English, is 185 Prospect Derzinskovo, Novorossyissk. The Russian is coming along good here still, I dream and think in Russian a lot haha, it's pretty cool! I'm super lucky to have a native speaker as a trainer, it helps a lot. I'm attaching some photos of the Communist protest, just part of it, and of a Provaslavnic church holiday about pancakes, no joke, it a week-long celebration where you eat pancakes, we had some of course, but their version of pancakes is our version of crepes. I wonder if Luke has had any legit French crepes yet. I wonder if Clark has had some Gual Bertos food equivalent in Mexico yet too haha. How is Cody doing by the way, I don't know his email or anything, I hope he's doing well!

Our investigators are still progressing except for Igor 2, we haven't heard from him in a while sadly. No new investigators this week, there was a ton of rain, people don't like to talk in the rain, so what we do now is we put up a sign at the branch building that says, "I'm American, let's play chess!", the Russians love playing chess, especially the older ones, so I've already played a couple times, and we are gonna go to a chess club and play there and see if we can find someone haha. Did I tell you that I teach English every Thursday here? We both do it, it can be a good way to find investigators, but the weather should be pretty good soon which should help improve missionary work a lot. Well that's all for this week! I love all you guys! Peace!

-Elder Skene

It's getting warmer!!!

Hello again! So it's been pretty cold here lately, it seems that we always go through these cycles of super humid cold to humid cold haha, but it's supposed to get better now so we'll see what happens. I'll try to answer any questions you guys have that you have emailed me we with in this big email to save time. I'll also of course be attaching some photos, which reminds me, I didn't get enough time to send the second email with more photos last week so I'll try to send it for this one. Also, as far as the package goes, the only other thing I need here is more eye drops and vitamins, I'm fine on everything else, and I'm learning how to sew, we all thought it was impossible I know but I guess not haha!

 

So I think I've already said this but maybe not so I'll just tell you again, on P-Day we wake up at the usual time of 6:30 AM and then we go shopping at the grocery store which is like almost a mile away haha, so we walk back with a weeks worth of whatever we need for like a mile, it's epic, I took having a car for granted before my mission for sure! Then we clean the apartment, eat lunch, write home, etc, until P-Day ends at 6:00 PM, but everything doesn't always happen in that exact order but I digress. I'm glad to hear that you are all doing well though! Keep staying safe! So today we went to go get Elder Reigngard a haircut, and so I sat in the place and waited for him. This old guy sat next to me who looked exactly like the old man on "Into the Wild" or the old man on "Up", he was way funny, there was Russian pop music playing and he was drumming to it and rockin' out and head banging, he was way funny, he knew we would get a kick out of it of course, and then he sat down and started telling jokes and stuff to the haircut lady, everyone loved it.

 

So I've also seen some weird stuff, like a baby in a stroller just sitting outside of a store, and then a practically naked man jogging on the beach when it was snowing, and of course more abandoned automobiles and stray animals everywhere! It looks a lot like a video game here, like what people think of when they play things like Call of Duty haha, I think Jake would like seeing some stuff here. We are staying busy as always of course, which reminds me, we went knocking yesterday and this lady walked by us and I felt impressed to stop her, so I did and we ended up giving her our number and a Book of Mormon which is pretty rare, so that was awesome, we'll see what happens there. Igor the Army Man and Mesha are both still on track to be baptised which is awesome of course! Oh also we are seeing if we can get another investigator baptised, her name is Anastasea, and she is totally prepared and everything, her husband just says that he doesn't want her to, so we'll see what happens there, we hope we can get past that. We went to see her in the hospital the other day because she has some like blood pressure disease, but she's fine and she's way cool. Russian hospitals are way scary looking, like super old and broken down, crazy people just walking around unrestrained, the sketchiest things ever haha, and the outside looks like all abandoned and stuff, and we have to take our tags off because it's a public hospital and we can get arrested if we go in as missionaries. The Russian is coming along, it's a very hard language for an Enslish speaker to learn though, haha it's so different, like there are 18 ways to spell and say the word "our" or "your". So looking back, German in High School was rediculously easier than this I think haha.

 

Me and Elder Reigngard should be together for about 3 months which is 2 transfers from when I got here. I don't know when I will be going to the Ukraine for a Visa Trip, sometime in mid April I guess though. I'm attaching a photo from zone conferance two weeks ago of my mission dad and current companion (Elder Reigngard) and my mission grandpa (Elder Kuslev), both native Russian speakers, on the mission you are born in the first city you are located in, and your trainer is your dad and his trainer is your grandfather and so on and so forth.

 

Well that's all for this week, until next P-Day! Everythings good here! I love you all!

 

-Elder Skene

Всё Хорощо!!!! All is well!!!

So! How is everything? I'll try to answer every one's questions in this one email, because as usual I really don't have too much time unfortunately, we're keeping busy here! Okay so maybe I shouldn't have said the weather was getting better, haha because it got epically cold and windy, Elder Reigngard and I were consistently out of power and water for about 8 or 10 hours or so a couple times because the weather was so bad, the wind is crazy, we were by the beach and you could stand on the ice and the wind would just blow you and you would slide to your destination, that part was pretty cool actually, and the waves were way big and when the water hit the rocks or the levy, it sprayed up and it all turned into ice in mid air, it was awesome, but way cold obviously. We had to go home from a lesson the other night, and the government came on the radio in the Marshutka and told everyone to stay inside because it was going to get really bad, well the only marshutka we could get on was one that took us like maybe around a mile from home, so we walked in the crazy weather, it was like a movie, truly epic. I'll send a picture of the destruction everywhere, there was just like metal and debris flying through the streets, we saw people's roofs completely rip off and blow away it was pretty rad.

Well things are warming up a little know, but there is still a lot of ice everywhere, I'll send some cool photos I took with Elder Ness, he is the mission AP and he and his companion went on splits with me and Elder Reigngard, it's just a routine thing, the AP's are way cool, I spent most of my time with Elder Ness, he is a straight up gentleman/stud, he's way chill. So get a load of this, did I mention there are a lot of drug users/mentally insane homeless people here just wandering the streets? Well there are a lot, and right before we went up and took the pictures, this drunk/high/smoking guy walks up to us and is just like, are you Americans? We said yes, and then he started talking to us and asking us these super bizarre questions, and he wanted us to come into his house, we said no of course and he got a little angry when we told him he had to leave and he tried to "fix my tie" as in reach in my suit pocket, so we stopped him and left. Haha it was just kinda funny but super creepy, although that isn't very uncommon here anyways, and communists sometimes get upset with us too. The cars and drivers here are way crazy too by the way, I have seen like 5 or 6 crashes and there are no speed limits and nobody signals usually, and there are no lanes, it's just every car for itself, and you have a heart attack pretty much every time your in one, and people just cross the streets anywhere super casually and almost get hit all the time, and people just drive on the sidewalks if they wanna get around someone sometimes, haha it's kinda funny to watch people, but I'm pretty used to it by now, but all is well.

No huge news with our investigators lately, we are just still trying to work with them but Igor the army man had to get his baptism date changed to March 18 with our other investigator Mesha, so we're planning on going into the black sea to do it, it'll be cool! My address is hard to write in English, I honestly only know it in Russian, I think and speak a lot in Russian here, and I dream in it too sometimes and my companion says I sleep talk a lot in Russian and English haha, but I live on a street called prospect Dershinkava, close to the edge of town. I eat a lot of Russian food, I eat English stuff maybe once every 2 weeks, but Elder Riegngard cooks pretty well so it's all good, we usually use a lot of onions and peppers in our food and we usually eat Kazak or Russian stuff, like greshka. It's pretty good! Don't worry about anything here though, we're doing great! Oh did I also mention that we have to boil all the water we drink because it's unsanitary? It's either that or water bottles, but I haven't talked to anyone who has ever had issues so it's all good. Well I gotta go, until next week!!!!

-Elder Skene