10.13.10

HELLO AGAIN!!!!!!!

Well not much has happened since I emailed you last since last week we has pday on saturday. So sorry mom this email might not be to long. Well I have been without a companion since Monday. My companion Sister Antonova was transferred to a different city and they needed her to get there early. So since then I have had to find church members to be my companion. Its a cool experience to have the members as companions. It help them to strengthen their testimonies and well it help us. Since I am not Russian it useful to have these members with me because they can relate with the people we are teaching and can share their experience of when they joined the church, and also the speak russian PERFECTLY!!!!!! haha Well anyway I get my new companion, my greenie, tomorrow afternoon. She got here to Novo from america early this morning but they are with President Trejo and his wife that their house. They are actually probably sleeping right now since the flight over here is so long and you changed so many time zones. Then tonight and tomorrow they have orientation and then after that I will go pick her up at the office. I'm excited to be training. I hope I can help her start off on the right foot here in Russia. Did I tell you she is german. So maybe I will learn some german and make our german ancestors happy!!! So next week I will tell you all about her and how things are going.
So we have had some great lessons with our investigator Marina. She has a baptismal date for the 30th of this month. She is really progressing and is really wanting to get baptized. While teaching her lately we have realized she had some concerns about baptism, but we couldnt figure out what they were and she wasnt flat out telling us. Yesterday she told us though and we are relieved to know it is only because she is scared of the water and being dunked in the water. We talked with her about how there would we an strong, tall elder with her who would make sure she was ok and that the water isnt very high, but she was still scared after talking about that. I have talk with the zone leaders and we think we will have an elder show her how it works and where to put her hands and feet so that she can feel more comfortable. She asked me if before her baptism if she could like be dunked a couple time to practice so she would know what it was like and so she would be ready for her baptism and it would be a surprise. Well I dont know if that is allowed to do, but we are figuring out how we can help her. She is great though and has really accepted the gospel!! Another cool thing happened. Well we have been doing a service for a girl named Nastya and going private english lessons every so often. Well one time after the lesson i asked her if we could do a spiritual thought with her about she said no. Well my comp and I talked about it and wondered if it was worth our time to teach her if she wasnt interested in learning about the church. Well we decided to do it maybe once a week. SO yesterday we had an english lesson with her and at the end she herself ask for us to share a spiritual thought. So we taught about the restoration and Joseph Smith and in the end she was really interested and said she really like what we told her. So we are going to meet with her again and we hope to continue teaching her about the gospel. It helped me to see how doing service and showing our love for someone is a very important part of sharing the gospel. Thats something that all of us can do, if we are full time missionaries or not. Service is always needed around us.

Well i need to get going to meet the other missionaries we are going to go to a park and ride bike today!!! Its been awhile since i rode a bike so hopefully i dont fall off!!! :) well as usual I love you all soo much and hope you have a great day!!

love,
Sister Mindy Gneiting