12.1.10

Here is your weekly hello from Russia!!!!

Well another week has come and gone, and it has been a great one!! Well I guess the week started off with Thanksgiving. I hope you all had a great thanksgiving. Out thanksgiving here was great. My zone here in Novosibirsk plus the new missionaries that just got here from the MTC all went to president's house for thanksgiving. We were there from 11 to 4:30 and had a fabulous dinner and played games and watched "Bolt" the disney movie about the little dog. I had never seen it before cuz i think it came out while I have been here. It was a cute movie though and I really liked because Miley Cyrus was one of the voices :) haha anyway I hear she has changed a lot... well nothing i can do about that, to bad. Ok anyway back on subject. So Thanksgiving was great. That night also we had a thanksgiving party at English club which we have every tuesday and thursday. So people brought food and we all just ate and talked and it was great!!!! So even though I was away from you for thanksgiving it was still great, but I did miss your food mom.

So this week has been great and very successful. This week I really saw how the Lord has blessed us for our hard work. The last couple weeks have been hard ones. Our work had come to a peak a few weeks ago and then all of a sudden took a drastic dive. We were struggling to find people to meet with and not much seemed to be happening. Despite this we keep working hard and a lot of the time it was just us putting in effort but nothing really happening. This happened to about 2 weeks but I knew that as we continued to work hard that things would get better and that the Lord would bless us. Well this last week was great and we found 4 new investigators and few more great contacts. These people seemed to just fall in our laps. The Lord truly blessed us. This was a good experience for me to see how we are given trials and difficulties in life for our blessing and when we endure and are diligent and obedient to the Lord he always helps us and blesses us. So we are very excited to start working with these new people that we have found. We have a goal to get 2 more baptisms as a companionship before the end of the year and we are really working to reach this goal.

We have had a couple funny things happen the last few days. Well first last night we were coming home and we live in a 5 storey building and we live on the 5th floor and have no elevator. Also a need to know for this story is that the light on the 5th floor has been burnt out for the last couple of days and then last night the light on the 4th floor was out too. So as were climbing the stairs and got to the 4th floor I though, "Well maybe the lights are just turned off." So I started looking for the light switch. Well I finally found it and went to it and right as I flipped it... we heard a "Ding Dong." haha it wasnt really a light switch it was our neighbors door bell. So as soon as a heard it I was so surprised and i said "AHHH RUN!!!!!" haha so we started running up to our floor but then stoped so that they wouldnt hear us. I made it to the top of the floor but my companion was still on the stairs trying to hide. Our neighbor didnt open the door but just yelled out a few times "who's there!!" we were trying not to laugh and finally made it into our apartment and started laughing so hard. haha it was so funny. We were scared too because that neighbor doesnt like us because we had a water problem with our pipes last month and flooded her. So we were scared of what she would say to us. haha is was so funny though. We should of just stoped and said hello to them but we were so surprised that we just acted on reflex and my reflex said to RUN!!!! haha Well some other funny things happened but i dont have enough time to tell you about them today :( remind me to tell you a story about a cramped bus and my companion getting stuck in the door when i get home in January!!

So speaking of getting home in January... I am sooooooo excited that you are getting endowed Amy and that we will all be in the temple together as a FAMILY!!!!! OMG its going to be so spiritual and amazing. It will feel as if we are all in the celestial kingdom together!!! WOW its going to be wonderful!! A perfect thing to come home to!

So Mom, Dad, Rhiana, Scott, Amy J, Trent, Amy, Hollie, and Cameron....... I AM YOU SECRET PARTNER... What do you want for Christmas!!!!!!! haha So from the emails I guess this is want I am supposed to do. Well let me know so I can be apart of this game.

Well the library is closing so I have to go. Dont forget through out the week that I love you all sooooo much!!!!

Sister Mindy Gneiting