Hello Hello!!!!!

Well its that time again to email you!!! The weeks come and go soooooo fast. Well things here in Russia are great! Today was Pday and we spent the day at Lake Baikal, which his so beautiful!! The last time i went there the lake was all frozen and we could walk on it, but this time ice was gone which means i was able to drink the water!!! Lake Baikal is the worlds largest fresh water lake so you can drink right out from it and its as if you are drinking filtered water. Yeah its cool. It was a fun day! I will attack some pictures.
So yes it was my bday yesterday, thank you for all the bday wishes!! I cant believe i am 22, thats a little weird for me to think about and it just means the rest of you are even older then that haha. I still think of Hollie as abut 22 or 23 haha i guess i need to start thinking different. Mom i havent gotten that package yet because no one has come to irkutsk from Novosibirsk for a long time, but there will be some people coming soon. So i will just get to celebrate my birthday twice!!!! I had a great birthday though. In the morning right before my we started companionship study my companion said we need to take the garbage out, so i went and open the door to go out and as i walked out all the elders jumped up and suprised me with balloons and a poster and a gift! It was really cute of them. And then later in the day all us missionaries and the senior couple here had a little party with cake. It is Elder Southam's birthday today, so we celebrated together. Then that night some people from the branch and english club suprised me too with some flowers and a gifts and then when we went home I was suprised again. Diana the branch presidents daughter, who has become my very good friend surpised me with cake and some gifts and flowers. It was really cute what she did, she is just awesome. So it was a good day filled with alot of surprises. The people here are just great and have become like family.
So this week we will have Marina's baptism. It will be on Friday and she is soooooo ready for baptism. We met with her yesterday and she is so excited about getting baptised. Her uncle who she is living with right now is going to baptize her, so that will be special for both of them. So next week I will email you all the details about her baptism. Anya is also supposed to be getting baptised on saturday, but we are not sure that will happen. She is really busy with school right now and has alot of exams, so we will see what happens. We also have 2 new investigator who we found from english club. There names are Katya and Era. We have only taught them a little but they both are interested in learning more. Era has a lot of good questions about God and the gospel. I am really excited about these girls. Oh also i told you about that girl named Alex, well i think i dont you about her. Well she has been very inactive the last year or so. We we have had a couple meeting with her and she came to church on sunday and to some other activities. So I have been very excited to see here start to come back and i hope we can continue to help her strengthen her testimony.
So in a couple weeks Elder Scott is coming to our mission. He is having a confernece in Novosibirsk and all the missionaries that are serving near Novo will be able to go to it..... but Irkutsk is so far away that we cant go. Elder Scott have a rule that has long as the missionaries can get to the confernce and back and only miss one day of missionary work then they can come. Well since we travel on train from irkutsk to novo it takes almost 3 days... so we cant go :( but its right on transfer so if im tranfsred i might be able to go, but if not that is ok. I think they will broadcast it or something so we can see it, but it would be cool to see him. I did meet him while i was in the MTC though, so its ok if i dont make it to it. Its cool to know that he is coming to our mission though. He will give us some great advice and I know our mission will be strengthed by his visit.
Well onve again I love you all soooooooooooo much and miss you all to. Just know everything is great here in russia !!!!! I attached some pictures one with Diana, some of my bday, and some at Baikal. Enjoy!!!!!!

Love always,
Sister Mindy Gneiting

5.19.10

Hello everyone!!!!!
I hope you all are doing great. I love you all so much. Well first and most important thing is first HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well actually I think when you read this it will not be your birthday yet, but it russia it is your birthday today!!!!!!!!! So you can celebraty for a little longer than normal. Well iu hope you have a great birthday and that everyone does something nice for you. So hint hint everyone haha. I just love you so much mom, thanks for everything you do for me. You will be getting a package (who nows when though) and there will be some bday presents for you. I LOVE YOU SOOOOO MUCH MOMMY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well things are great here in Irkutsk. Two of our investigators we have set dates with for them to get baptized next week!!! Marina and Anya. They are two young girls and are just great!! Marina is the one that we met last week, she is just amazing and so ready for the gospel. She accepts everything we teach her and is so willing to follow the commandments we teach her about, even if they are new to her. She is a miricle. Anya is also great. We have been meeting with her for 2 transfers and she had progressed alot. There has been some things we have had to work through with her but she is ready know for baptism. So we are praying this baptisms happen next week and everything is great. We would appreciate your prayers aswell for this two girls. Prayer are mighty! We have another young girl named Natasha, who we think will be ready for baptism soon too, but its really hard to meet with her cuz she doesnt have a phone. She is really excited about the gospel and has been to church and really like it. So we are praying everything goes well with her. Also last night this girl, who is a member, came to english club. She hasnt been to church or english club for like a year. She is a great girl though and we are going to start meeting with her and try and help her stregthen her testimony and come back to church. I really feel we can help her. A big part of our work is the less actives here and its great when they start coming back to church after a long period of time. They just have to be reminded about the gospel and remember that it is true. Thats why it is so important that we go to church every week. If we miss only 1 or 2 sundays,. its easier to miss more. Satan really workd on us and tempts us and the longer we are away for church and for hearing and studying the gospel the more he is able to lead us away. Every sunday we are able to stregthen ourselves and each other. THe gospel is SOOOOOO important but sometimes its easy to forget parts of it. I am just so thankful for the gospel and im so greatful to be on a mission. I can see that i have changed a lot since last July 15th when i entered the MTC. The gospel changes us and makes us better. THe Lord is our example and when we strive to follow him and his commandment life is just so much better. We need to always keep the savior as the center of our lives.

Well i love you all so much. Thank you for everything. Keep being amazing!!!!! Sorry this email wasnt very long

Ok the picture are 1st: my companion and i with marina our investigator, 2nd: at a sevice project, 3rd: standing by the wall (its funny because every once in a while we find funny english words on the walls) 4th: with the branch president, his wife, and daughter, and the southams who are the senior couple here

love always,

Sister Mindy Gneiting

Pictures Pictures Pictures!!!!

5.13.10

Hello Hello Hello!!!!!!

It was so great to talk to you on Sunday and hear your voices. I feel like i have told you everything already, so i am trying to think whats new to write in this email. Well i guess i can start with the weather :) haha well it stinks right now, well not literally, but it is cold again. The good thing is that it is only raining and not snowing. We had some really nice warm days last week. Its really nice when i dont have to wear a coat!!!!!

So i have a new amazing person to tell you about. Well her name is Marina. She came to church on sunday and we didnt know who she was. Well we started talking to her and found out she is our elders quorum president's neice. She is not a member but is very interested in the church. We went later that day and taught her and then have been teacher her very day since. She is SOOOOOO ready for the gospel and to be baptised. She is only 18 and has battled with leukemia. At one point she was in stage 4 of cancer, but now is doing better. When you talk to her you can tell that because of her battle with cancer she has become a very strong person and has developed a strong testimony with the Lord. She told us that at one point the doctors has no hope for her, and she said that is when she turned her life over to god and started reading the bible and praying and soon received a miracle and was healed and recovered and know is doing great. After that she decided she wanted to find the truth church and through her uncle she found out about our church. She is amazing and is soaking everything up that we teach her. She is such a great example for all of us. Life is hard, we all have things that weigh us down, and we can choice how we will respond to this tribulations. We should all learn from Marina and always allow the Lord to led our lives. The gospel brings so much happiness to our lives, if we allow it to. We need to live everyday the way the Lord wants us to. Not only will he bless us as we follow him, but he will use us as instruments in his hand in bring others to this great happiness we acquire from the gospel. The gospel is true, so why not share it with all. I am so thankful for the gospel and to be serving a mission. Everyday my testimony is strengthened and i learn new things that i know i never would have learned if i wouldnt have gone on this mission. IF anyone has the opportunity to serve a mission, DO IT!!! You will never regret it. Oh and by the way for all you married older couples with grown children, my mission president has asked us to tell everyone that we know that our mission needs new senior couples. If any married couple are interested in serving a mission or if you know of any couples who are thinking about it, let me know because my mission president can request them and then most likely they will be called here. This is the best mission is the world to serve in and because our mission is bigger then the united states, its very hard for president to get around to all the cities and take care of everything, so senior couple are a HUGE blessing to our mission and to the missionaries here. So yeah let me know.
Mom thats way cool about your friend from your youth that was baptised and way cool that he lives in scotts ward. Oh by the way scott i gave mom that info about that lady who lives in costa mesa and is the daughter of Galina, a member in my branch here. You should try to get a hold of them. I hope they speak english. The next time i see Galina i will take a picture with her so you can show them. Anyway that would be cool if you could help them receive the gospel because they arent members. I expect a report from you on your effort.

Dad i am sorry the Jazz lost. There is always next year though and now you have baseball to watch!! GO YANKEES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! People here dont no really anything about baseball, its really sad. Also they dont now how to play american football, its very funny to watch them try. But the are great at soccer!!!

Well im sorry i cant think of anything else to say. I should start keeping notes of things that happen through out the week so i can remember to tell you about them. Well maybe i will do that for next week!!! Well ofcourse i love you all and cant wait to hear from you next week!!!! Have a great week.

Love,

Sister Mindy Gneiting

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