4.28.10

Hello my amazing family and friends,

Well it of course has been another amazing week. Well first is first, transfer info!!!!!!!!!!!!! I will be staying here in Irkutsk, but i am getting a new companion. Her name in Sister Antoniva. She from Ukraine. I dont know her, well i think i met her once, but anyway i hear she is way awesome, so i am excited to be companions with her. I think this transfer is going to be great and that some great things are going to happen.

Well we have 6 investigator, that area all progressing. Two have said they want to get baptized and the others are very interested. It will be great to see how they progress this next transfer. I have 2 cool stories to tell about 2 investigators. So the first one is about Kostia. Well he has a lot of questions about the resurrection. Some days he feels like he beliefs it and some days she doesnt. Well he has always been really excited to meet with us and then all of a sudden he stared not coming to meeting. We would call him and he would kind of make excuses not to come. Well on sunday we had a meeting with him and talk AGAIN about the ressurection. At the end he said that lesson had given him alot of answers and he was really happy he came and he said he felt like resurrection was possible. In our previous lessons we had committed him to pray about our message and ask god if it was true. So on sunday we asked him if he prayed and her said, "WELL........ You know..........(right then i thought oh here comes another excuse why he didnt pray)..... Yes i did pray....... and i was told to come to this meeting"!!!!!!! WOW EEEEEE then they continued to say that he didnt really want to come because he was having doubts about what we had taught him and about what he had read in th Book of Mormon. So he said he prayed about it if he should go to the meeting and he said said he really felt like he needed to come. Then he realized that god wanted him to hear our message. He is a great guy. That is a great example how prayer is real and it does work. God always listens and he gives us answers.

Ok well the other story is about our new investigator Diana. Well last wednesday we had set up a meeting with another investigator Gelya and we had asked a young girl whos name is also Diana who is the branch presidents daughter to help us with this meeting. Well she was going to come a half hour early so we could have a small lesson with her before our lesson with Gelya. So at 6:30 as we are waiting for Diana, in walks a girl that we dont know into the branch building. There were 2 elders there too and i though maybe they knew her. Well to make the story short none of us knew her. so i asked her what her name was and she said DIANA!!!! We thought what another Dianna. Well what happened was that we thought we had called Diana(the presidents daughter) but really we called and this other Diana who was a old investigator of some elders a couple years ago hahaha well the cool thing was that she was way excited to meet with us and very interested in the gospel. What a coincidence, I think not, it was a miracle. Sometimes the lord works in interesting ways. Sometimes he leds people to us.

Missionary work is great. So often i see this small miracles and realized AGAIN that this really is the lords work and he knows what he is doing and knows what we as missionaries can do to be successful. I love being a missionary and i love being here in Russia. The gospel is so important and it needs to be shared with all. I feel and see myself changing everyday and growing closer to my savior and gaining a great understanding of this gospel. The gospel is amazing and wonderful and beautiful and PERFECT!!!!!! Its true and its our way to happiness and eternal life. OHHHH man i am just so thankful and i have never been so happy!!!!!!

Well the weather here is great!!! Its getting warmer and warmer!!! YAY i am tired of the cold weather. Some days we dont even need jackets.

So life is good and i hope all is well for all of you. i love you all so much!!! Well i cant wait to hear from you all next wednesday!!!!!

love always,

Sister Mindy Gneiting

4.21.10

Hello everyone amazing who is reading this!!!!!!

Well life is great!!! Thanks for all the photos you sent. Its was so great to see everyone, I'll just say everyone has changed. You all look so great, not saying you didnt look great before!! haha Oh i just have an amazing family, i love you all so much. I loved the picture of the whole family together. It looks like your having fun with out me, haha thats good. Im glad you dont miss me to much :)

Well life is really so great right now. This last week was amazing. This last week we found 3 new GREAT investigators. The first one was Kostia, he is 31 and we found him while contacting on the street one day. He was very interested in hearing more and this last half of the week we meet with him 3 times and he came to church. He is progressing so much. He is excepting everything and loves learning more. When we first meet him he said he didnt believe in life after death, but then in our meeting with him yesterday we asked him what he thought about it now after we have taught him. He said he believed in the Restoration!!!! He still is looking for his answer if the Book of Mormon is true, but he will receive it soon. He is so great though. We asked him to think about when he wants to get baptized, so we will see what happens. The other is this lady named Gelia. So to start of this story there is another lady Tatiana so is not a member but is mom of a member, so anyway we had set up a meeting with this lady to tell her about the church, well she brings her friens Gelia along and we didnt even now Gelia. Well we taught them about the restoration through Joseph Smith. It was a great lesson and at the end Gelia ask. "I was baptized in the russia orthodox church, is that ok?" (by the way we hadnt even talked about baptism yet, all we had said is that our church has the priesthood and the authority to to baptism) so we told her that her baptism wasnt done the right way and not by the authority of Jesus Christ but that out church has that authority. She then told us she want to be baptized that right way and in our church. I asked her is she though our church was true and that JS was a prophet and she said YES!!!! So we set a baptismal date that will be in the beginning of April. We had another lesson with her yesterday and she told us that she has been searching for the truth for soooooo long and now she thinks she found it. We feel so blessed to have found her and now we have the chance to teach her about the gospel. She is amazing and its is so true she has found the truth. Our church is the truth, we have the true gospel, the only true church of jesus christ. We have another meeting with her tonight. Then we have another new investigator Natasha so is really interested in learning more. She came to church and really liked it and wants to meet with us again. And then our other investigator Anna, we are still working with. We had to move back her baptism because she didnt come to church. We not quit ready for baptism, but she wants to, we just need to help get ready for it by teaching her some more stuff. So those are the main people we are working with right now.

Lately we have been on, you could say a dry spell and didnt have many people to teach, but we kept working and tried to do what the lord wanted us to do and tried to find this people to teach and now the lord was blessed us and has led us to this people to teach. This is the lords work, and when we do it his way and recognize this help in the work, we become successful, ITS GREAT!!!!

Well transfers is this next week. We find out transfer info on friday. Im not sure if i will be staying or going, but we will find out soon. So next week i fill you in on the news.

So Russian is coming along well, I am still not fluent, which i dont know if i ever will be haha but i know enough to be a missionary and do the lords work. The cool thing is that i dont need to know perfect russian, as long as i am doing my part and trying, the lord helps me the rest of the way. I have seen and felt that help many times. This is his work and he wants this work to continue so it only makes sense that he would help me.

Yeah mom you can accept those people on facebook haha people i know here are always telling me that they find me on facebook. I tell them, "cool we can be real friends after mt mission!" haha if your friends on facebook that means its a a real friendship, right? :)

Yes there are alot of asian people here, thats alot different than Novosibirsk. The weather is getting warmer. Today i wore no coat!! YAY!!!!

Sorry if my english is really bad, russian is taking over and english is becoming hard to speak and spell haha

Well i love you all so much. Keep being great!!!!

Love,

Sister Gneiting

4.7.10

(Mindy actually sent this email a couple of weeks ago 4/7/10 but I forgot to post it - so here it is a little late. sorry!)

Hello my wonderful everyone!!!!!!!!

Life is great, and i am in Russia which makes things even better!!!! Yes mom i do think time has spead up. Time is flying by!! Mom you GRADUATE next week!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHH thats so AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Im so excited for you. Send me lots of pictures of it. You are amazing mom!!

So this week has been great. We found 2 new investigators this last week. One of them we still arent sure how interested she is, our first meeting was a little weird and she is a little interesting, but she said she would meet again, so we will see what happens. But the other new investigator is Anna, she is 15 and is awesome!!! She is GREAT!!!! Her older sister is a member, but right now leaves in Germany for school. We have had 2 meetings with Anna and she has accepted everything we have taught her and really wants to learn more. I see alot of potential with her and i think she will be ready to set a baptismal date soon. She has started to read the book of mormon and really likes it too. Im so excited about her. Our next meeting with her is tomorrow. Another lady named Nastia we are started to meet with. Her husband is in the branch presidency and she comes to church with him. They have 2 little kids that are just adorable. Anyway she is great and i very nice lady. They are only like in their late 20s. We had FHE with them on Monday and we talked about families and what our church belives about families. It was great. At the end we ask her if she was interested in meeting, but she said "well i have my husband to answer my questions." yeah we were sad about that. Her husband isnt doing much though to helping her learn more about the gospel and to get baptized. So we need to work with him and help him see how important it is that he talks her about the gospel so she will want to get baptized so they can recieve the blessing of being together forever.

So we get to watch conference this weekend. We watch it a week later here because we have to wait to get the russian traslation for the branch. We will watch it in english though, it is better because we can actually hear their voices and not someother persons voice. I am so excited though, i have heard it was great! We also have zone conference this week, which is always great.

The pictures are of my zone decorating eggs for easter, the train station in Irkutsk, me and a girl named Angelina from the branch with Charlie Chaplin, me with Alexander II and Stalin haha they were in Moscow, me with my companion and Angelina. Enjoy!

i love you all so so so much and hope you have a great week!!

Love,

Сестра найдинг

4.14.10

Hello everybody!!!!

Well it has been another great week here in Russia. Time is going by faster than ever. We are approaching the end of this transfer, yeah already I know crazy. Next week we will find out transfer info about where we will be next transfer. Well this last week was conference week. First we had zone conference, which was great. President and Sister Trejo and the Assistants came and we had a great conference with them. We were taught how we can teach by the spirit and how we can use the Book of Mormon better in our teaching and why the book of mormon is so important. It was a really great conference. Then on saturday and sunday we got to watch general conference. We watch it a week later because we wait to get it in the russian language. So the members of the branch watched it in russian in one room and we watched it in english in a different room. Conference was GREAT!!!! As usually. So much guidance on strengthening relations within the family. After wards we were talking about how it kind of made all us missionaries trunky with all the talk about family and thinking about out families back home. We overcame our trunkyness though and are back to work :) but conference reminded me how thankful i am for my family. YOU ARE THE BEST AND I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!!!!! I'm so excited to talk to you in a few weeks!!

Well the work is continuing on here in Irkutsk. Our investigator Anna who is a little sister to a member of our branch said she wanted to get baptized!!!! YAY!!!!! She is great. We have only been teaching her for about a week, so we still have a lot more to teach her, but she said she knew the church was true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet. So her baptism will be in a few week. The date isnt forsure, but we have a meeting with her tomorrow and we will set one then. She hasnt come to church yet though and she needs to come twice before she can be baptized. So we are working with getting her to church. She is such a great girl though. Last week we had 2 baptisms here in Irkutsk. It was this older married couple Vladimir and Tamara. It was great to see them baptized together as husband and wife, and maybe in a year they can be sealed in the temple and have the oppurtunity to be together forever. How great this gospel is to give families this wonderful blessing.

Mom you graduated!!!!!!! YOU ARE AWESOME!!!!! I'm so happy for you. I wish i could have been there to celebrate, we will just have to take a rain check and when i get back we will celebrate. Man you are just amazing! You will miss school so much though im sure, you loved it. I will miss seeing your 4.0 grade reports on the fridge :) Good job mom!!!! I just love you so much. Oh no.......... now i cant say "my mom goes to college" like Napoleon Dynamite anymore. oh man sad day haha

So everyone you wont believe it................. tomorrow is my hump day. Tomorrow is the 15 of April which means i have completed half of my mission. I only have 9 months left. I cant believe it, i have so much more to do. I am jealous that elders get 2 years, that would be so nice. Its just that this work is amazing. My time is spent in the work of the lord, and it truly is incredible. The church and this gospel IS TRUE and ALL people need to hear. This work is hard, its the hardest thing i have ever done, yes even harder than nursing school (my friends from nursing i know you cant believe that, but its true :) haha) but all the hard times is worth it. To be honest some days are so hard i feel like quiting, but you know who that is right.... yup Satan, and he wants me to think that i cant do this and that i might as well give up, but when i turn to the lord and allow his love, mercy, and knowledge to become part of me, my attitude changes and i realize I CAN DO THIS and more importantly the lord knows i can do this. The Novosibirsk mission is a hard mission, it is actually considered i think in the top 5 hardest missions, but that doesnt matter. The work is possible anywhere and at anytime. Its possible here for me and its possible for you were ever it is that you are reading this. Every person needs US to share this gospel with them, and the Lord knows we can so it. The work is great!!!

I love you all so much

until next week

Sister Gneiting

3.28.10

Hello everyone -

I hope that you are having a wonderful week. I am and things are great here in Russia!! First I will answer all of your questions mom. Yeah you can add Ganbat Mandu on facebook. She is a member here in Irkutsk. She in an amazing girl!!! She was baptized a couple months ago and so now we are working with her on her after baptism lessons. For the school stuff that you have to take care of. Um my mission officially ends at the beginning of next January. I had told the nursing program that i would be back though to start that winter summer. If i stay until the end of my mission and go home when i am supposed to than i think the semester will have already started. I talked to president Trejo about it when i first got to russia, and he said I could home early to be there for school, but i dont think i want to do that. I want to stay until the end. So I probably wont start until the summer semester. Thats good too because it gives me time to study and remember what i had learned before and to get ready to start again. So thats what i think i will do.

My companion is Sister Reed. She is from Washington state and she is great. We are each others first american companions, so we like that. We understand american jokes and stuff haha!!!! She is a transfer younger than me. She is great and really loves this work and understands why she is a missionary. It has been great being with her.

So i finally got your Valentines package!!! HAHA i love getting the packages late, it makes things more fun. So i get to have holidays twice!!! I loved the package and all the valentines from everyone and i loved the american candy!! I miss american candy :) In russia they have sneakers and twix and thats about it, there is other good candy here though. By the way Amy and Katie Wilson you both asked if i got your letters, yes I did and I LOVED them. Thanks for sending them. I only get mail when someone comes to Irkutsk from Novosibirsk which only happens like twice a transfer. So i love getting mail, cuz it doesnt happen much :)

Things are going great here in Irkutsk, time is flying by though. This transfer is almost half over already!!!! i cant believe it. Well here is Irkutsk there is 6 missionaries. My companion and I and 4 elders. There is also a senior couple, the Southam, who are from Colorado. The Southams are great and help us out alot. My russian is coming along. It is a very hard language so it does take time. I understand better than i can speak, but it is coming along. I know as i continue to study it the Lord will bless. The Lord has already helped me alot to do this work in the Russian language.

So that investigator that i told you about last well has kind of gone weird on us. She has a friend that is a member of our church, but she is not a very strong member and she still goes to other churches and had a lot of strange ideas. Well we think this member is talking to our investigator and scaring her about our church. We dont know forsure but this investigator went all of a sudden from being way excited to meet with us a talk to us about the gospel to not showing up to meetings and making things alot harder. We are hoping things will work out and that we can meet with her again and help her feel the spirit and the truthfulness of our message. So keep Nadia in your prayers please. We have a couple other investigators that are great but really busy and we cant meet with them enough, so their progression is very slow right now. We are trying to find new investigators, we have some great contacts that we are hoping will turn into new investigator.

Next week we have zone conference again! Yup already! I am excited, they are always great. President will be in town for a few weeks!!! YAY im so excited.

Well im sorry i cant really think of much more to say. Sorry if this letter is a little boring!! I have to go though because we have a meeting with a lady that will hopefully be a new investigator for us!! Thanks for all you love, support, and prayers. They are well needed.

I love you all,

Sister Gneiting

3.23.10

Well its wednesday, which means time to email my wonderful family!!!! Well Im still in Finland... there was something wrong with my visa so i am stuck here for awhile, im not sure when i will be able to go back to russia...... haha just kidding. Im in Russia, but that does happen every once in a while with missionaries, something happens to their visa or passport and they cant get back into Russia. All is well with me though :) Finland was great though, it was so beautiful and clean there. Russia isnt the cleanest country so being in Finland and breathing fresh, clean air was great and also in Finland we can drink water right from the tap and in russia we can only drink filtered water, so that was great too!! I left early friday morning and got back monday. We flew from Irkutsk to Moscow, which was like 5 or 6 hours and then we flew to Helsinki, which was like maybe 2 hours. In moscow we had a 8 hour lay over so we went to the Red Square. It was AWESOME!!!! I took picture, so i will try to attach some. When we were in Finland we went to the temple, which ofcourse was wonderful. We did a session and the baptisms. The session was in Finnish, but they gave us headphone so we could listen in English, but it also had Russian on it, so I listen to the session in 3 languages. Isnt that so awesome to think that the gospel of Jesus Christ is spreading throughout the whole word and being taught in 100s of languages!!! The Kingdom of God is being built through out the whole world, and its great that we have the oppurtunity to help.
So Scott and Amy I have a contact for you, yes all the way from Russia. There is a lady in my branch here, she has been really sick the last couple of months ( i think she had a stroke) anyway we went and visited her the other day and she started showing us some pictures of her granddaughter and daughter. She had a piece of paper with the pictures and it had their address on it, and guess where they live.......... Costa Mesa!!!! Crazy huh!!! Well i got their address and told her that my brother lives there too. Its is really hard for this lady to communicate right now cuz she is sick, like i said i think she had a stroke. Anyway you should get ahold of them, i dont think they are members. I think she is married and has 2 kids. So tell them that i know her mom and maybe you can become friends with them, and then........... introduce them to the missionaries!!!!!!!!!! I forgot the book the i wrote the address in, but next week i will email it to you. So you have a week to get ready and then you start some missionary work!!! So cool huh!! I am way excited about that.
So we have a new investigator, her name is Nadya. I think i might have mentioned her last week. Anyway we met with her before i went to finland and then while i was gone sister reed met with her again. She is really great, and accepting of what we have taught her. I had talk to her at english club and she was very interested and she wanted a book of mormon, so i gave her one. Then we met with her a couple days latter and she had already started reading it and said she really liked it. We taught her about the Restoration, she had some questions, but seemed to really accepts what we taught. We are meeting with her again tomorrow, so we are excited for that. She still has a few questions, but I see great potential with her. So i will keep you informed. As for our other investigators not much has changed since the last email, since i was in finland for most the week. They work a lot so its hard to find time to meet with them. We are trying to find more investigators and ones who the lord has prepared to accept the gospel. Some really great news is that most of the inactive members that we have been regularly meeting with have started coming back to church, which is great. For the church to go here is russia we need new members but also we need the people who are already members to stay strong. Russia is so new to the gospel, so right now the missionary work here is building a foundation. All them members need to stay strong or come back to activity so that foundation will continue to grow. It is growing though. There have been prophecies given by prophets and apostles that say that someday Russia become one of the strongest nations within the gospel and that there will be villages and towns baptized by the thousands. That time is coming, Russia WILL be like that, but right now we are building that foundation. So the work is hard right now, but I see that future for Russia, and i know that millions will be baptized. So we are continuing the work here is Russia, because we know that what the prophets have said will happen. This work is wonderful and i am so grateful to be a missionary!!!

Well I love you all so much and i am so grateful for you!! I hope you all have a great week!

Love,
Mindy

3.17.10

I cant believe it is time to write again! seriously time is going by so fast!!! This last week was great. We had zone conference and of course it was amazing. The conference started at 9 am and went till 3 pm and Pres and Sis Trejo spoke and they were both very inspiring and then Pres Schwitzer basicall took the rest of the time teaching us about all sorts of stuff. Also the APs (assistance to the president) did some training with us. It was all GREAT!!!! After I just felt to inspired and ready to get back to work and so much harder and better.

I also had a interview with both pres trejo and schwitzer, which were great experinces. They are so smart in the gospel and so spiritual and they were able to answer questions i had about the gospel and how to be a better missionary. So conference was great and i wish all of you could have been there too.

Well the new transfer starts today and i am staying here in Irkutsk. I am glad because there are some great people we are working with here. It is always sad to think about leaving the city I am serving in and that when i leave i may never see this people again, but i am here for another 6 weeks, so all is well.

So last night i started talked to this lady at english club and we were talking about the gospel and she was really interested in hearing more, so we are meeting with her today to teach her about the restoration. Her name is Nadya and i really excited about teaching her. So as for our other investigator, well Natasha and Helen have both been so busy lately, they both want to meet with us, but dont have time. So thats hard but Helen came to english last night and she told us that she read the assignment we had given her to read in the Book of Mormon and that she really likes it. That made us really happy.

We have a couple other investigators too, but they arent really wanting to progress. I guess know is not there time. We need to find new investigators, but english club just started back up and we get alot of investigator for that. So soon we should have new people to teach.

Also we have been working with s few inactive ladies from the branch, and we are seeing great progress with them. Once has been to church 3 weeks in a row, when before she hadnt been for along time. Also another lady said she would go with us to church this sunday. I wont be here because i will be in finland, but my companion is going to meet her before church. So the work is moving along.

This city is a really hard city for missionary work right not. It has only been open to missionaries for 7 years!!!! YAY 7 YEARS!!!! Can you believe that? My interview with Pres Trejo was really good, and he help me to know that even though the work is really hard here is Irkutsk the lord want us here and he will prepare a way. We are working hard here, it is just hard sometimes when we dont see the fruits of our labors. But I still love being a missionary,even through this hard times.

Well I leave in 2 days for Finland. Finland is great and i am so excited to go to the temple. So next week i will tell you how the trip went.

Well i love you all so much!!!!!

Sister Gneiting