Decemeber 10, 2012

Somehow Satan finds little ways to get in the way when someone is trying to do something so meaningful like baptism, attending the temple, watching "The Restoration" DVD. We attended a member baptism yesterday, Saturday, of an eight-year old girl in one of our branches. The elders were telling us about going over to the church ahead of time to fill the font and how dirty and grungy it was. So they took off their shoes and socks, rolled up their suit pants, and started scrubbing. As hard as they scrubbed, it wasn't coming very clean. To make matters worse, the water wasn't draining. So they turned the hot water on as high as it would go and the knob fell off so there was water spraying everywhere and they had to fish for the knob in the gunky water. Sounds like a comedy of errors! But no one would have known anything was worse for the wear because when we all showed up everything was under control and the baptism happened without any further trouble. There was a lot of support from the branch, and this little girl felt so loved and appreciated. She lives with her grandma, mom and two sisters. Her grandma is a counselor in the district RS presidency. Her mom is a less-active member but helped plan the baptism and attended the service. There was a strong spirit there, and I know her mom felt it. One of our investigators attended also so that was good! All of the missionaries sang "I like to look for rainbows," one verse in English (at the family's request) and two in Russian. The primary children don't sing songs from the Children's Songbook so it's good to introduce some of the songs when we can.

We had some good meetings this week. We are still meeting with Suzy and encouraging her to read the Book of Mormon. She is engaged to one of the members of the branch who was baptized last year. She came to church last week for the first time. We were at the other branch, but the missionaries told us she bore her testimony in Relief Society and told about the peace she felt when she was at church and when she hears about the gospel. We also met with someone last night who is a member of the Orthodox church and knows the Bible extremely well. He enjoys talking religion but doesn't seem interested in knowing more about other religions. Standards Night was Saturday night and was quite interesting. It probably would have made a lot more sense if we understood what was being said...but they focused on the importance of modesty and how we can still be fashionable and modest at the same time. For the Strength of Youth pamphlets were distributed and a young married couple from Samara came and talked about the happiness they find from being a family in the gospel. Unfortunately, the only thing missing from the evening was youth! None of the youth ages 12-18 were there, but there were about 10 young single adults.

Today has been a delightful day as the sun has been out all day, the first time in at least two weeks. There's just something about the sun shining that puts a little bounce in your step. The lake in the forest has begun freezing again so it is cold but still no snow. At this same time last year, there was already an accumulation of a few feet of snow. We see pictures of our Utah home where there is snow and icy roads. Hmmm, maybe Russia's weather isn't so bad after all:)