Conference Time!

Holy smokes...mom your a running machine. the whole family is running psycho and im only getting slower inhaling about two packs of secondhand smoke a day. The only person in the family i dont have to worry about being faster than me when i get home is Dad! ha ha This past week we had our mission conference and presiding was President Schitzer of the area presidency. He is a really great man with a large reserve of spiritual concrete. We had interviews with him so that was cool! He gave us his ten points of leadership that i found extremely interesting and i bet you would too.Its about time to start finding an appartment in Mitishi, in the moscow oblast where we will open up a new area next transfer. so that means many hours of time wasted being businessmen. but its really not wasted cuz we are expanding our borders. so its kosh.I went on a split this week with my son elder foster and we had a successful day contacting and inactive member searching. some members let us in and we invited them to general conference.speaking of general conference, thats coming up! Im STOKED! heres the deal, when i was back home i was stoked for general conference cuz that ment i got to sleep in and eat general conference coffee cake as a layed on the couch and fell asleep in front of the tube! I was way missing the mark, but now im stoked to here the words of our church leaders and Prophet so that i can improve in all facets of my life and recieve personal revelation that applies to me right now and about what i need to do after my mission. I enjoy reading over my notes from last conference, whereas before my mission, i didnt even have notes from last conference.Vitaly Donosov's mom sends out his weekly email and i made the cut. He is doing great and loving his mission and the area in which he is serving. that guy is awesome!well lots of other stuff happened, but time has once again evaded me. When i read Katrina's and Zanna'z (palindrome), and Delaney's letters i realize how spiritually strong they are. my sisters are spiritual giants, and if i had not served a mission, my spirituality would have been dwarfed in comparison to theirs. what a great thing to have all of my family members so strong in the faith. I love you guys and thank you for your example.
Love,
Elder Paul

The Pool is Not Dry

Well, another good week. We finished everything in podolsk just in the nick of time. after transfer meeting we met the elders down at the train station at the same time that we met the realator to go over and sign the contracts and rent it. Psycho story. this lady, the land lady is the nicest lady you could ever meet. what a lady! and she is offering us tea and bisquits and stuff and we are just lovin it and then i find myself looking at the books in her bookshelf and WHAM! theres a book of mormon just sittin in there! way crazy! I told the other elders who were going to be living there and they freaked out. We didnt bring it up to the land lady though because we were signing documents and handing over huge sums of money, but they are going to ask her about it the next time they see her! so who knows, maybe there was a reason that the first appartment fell through.
Back to our area, we met with the coolest people ever, Alex and Dasha who are good friends living at the south border of Moscow in his parents house who are in the US right now working in the ballet entertainment business. his dad was a famous ballet guy in his youth and was an actor in some movies too and they have a real house! their neighborhood looks lkike some place in america and they have four stories. So we started the first lesson with them. they have a desire to learn more and to find answers to their questions, so i guess they met the right people! they will hopefully make it to church on sunday. Victor is doing well, he hasnt made it to church yet but he is really busy with work right now. this week we met with him and finished the plan of salvation. he said that we introduced a lot of new ideas that interest him a lot. So thats great. of course we are always working on finding new people to teach, but at least the pool is not dry.
Thats awesome that Katrina will be in the same complex and that delaney and Zanna seem to be doing well in track.
I have seen a lot of miracles this week and am grateful for the great opportunity to serve for two years and then for the rest of my life. there were a lot of things that i didnt understand before my mission. I thought i had it all down and everything was good, but how wrong i was. I love the people among whom i serve here and the members are so incredible! I have a lot of great friends who are members here. Vitaly sent me a letter through the missionary in the MTC with him who came to our mission. He is now in St. P being a psycho missionary! man i love that guy!
Well i love you all, enjoy your week, dont forget to read the scriptures!
Love ELder Paul

Back to Square One

So this week was rather eventful. remember that appartment we were getting last monday? well to make a long story short, we got it, Elder started moving in, landlady pulled out, we pulled the luggage out, and last night we officially terminated the agreement. which means we have wasted more than half the week in podolsk and have gotten nothing from it. so the process begins again today as we make our way down to podolsk to look at 5 or 6 potential appartments followed by another hlf day agreeing on one. so these are most of whats we have been occupying time with this week. we also met the two most awesome new investigators at the american center! they are perfect-alex and dasha and they are all about the good ord. they are not married but live together, but they arent in a relationship, so its all good? they invited us to their place tomorrow! bingo bango!In regards to your question of which junk food to send, beef jerky is exquisite as well as 100 grand and butterfinger and a good idea of stuff to hand out to people is those fun size packs of hersheys chocolate, or hersheys kisses. and swedish fish are fantastic.Also BIG NEWS! Finally the new russian translation of the book of mormon D&C and POGP is completed and the first russian triple combination is now available. we will probably be supplied with a standard 3 dollar edition but i was wondering if it is at all possible for you to rder me a leatherbound gold page edition? Apparently it will be faster for you to order it and then send it to me. im not so sure about that but it would be quite the wonderful thing to have. its about 20 bones from what i can tell. If you dont want to gety it, no worries i can get it when i get home and it wont make a big difference really.so heres the deal, this transfer is almost over and then i only have 3 more transfers. thats the worst. But the work keeps going and i notice more and more miracles in this second half of my mission. I love you all and thank you for everything!mom congrats on running pretty good for an old lady.You
KnowLove,
Elder Paul

Last Birthday in the Field

Well, had a good little birthday. We went down to podolsk apartment
hunting. we had several meetings set up with relators and so we
hussled around the thriving town of podolsk looking at potential for
next transfer opening an area so we will soon have elders and sisters
in the old Dolsk. along with that, in a couple hours we will be
heading down to close the deal on the place and lay down a whole
briefcase full of money. thats an exageration, but not a huge one.
Other news this week, we met with Victor again and he loves it,
howevwer he couldnt make it to church on sunday because he was working
through the night. and Also this guy Vadim is incredible! he is all
about telling everyone he knows about the church and we are going to
meet with him with some of his friends who are interested this week if
we get any time! travel is a kick in the butt too it seems like have
the day we are just travelling, but theres really no other way i
suppose.
hats off to Scott Halvorsen he is the man! i miss that guy and cant
wait to see his beautiful self and family.
Katrina sent me all of the facebook notifications for my birthday so
that was nice to see that a few people still remembered me thanks to
the electronic reminder that facebook provides.
Im in the office right now cuz we had to get a whole bunch of money
for the appartment and so i would send pictures quite easily but as it
turns out i just changed my card in my camera and i have no photos. so
your out of luck.
well i love you guys and am grateful for your support and love.
Elder Paul