Dross!

Hello everyone!  First off, thank you to everyone for your prayers on my behalf.  I am doing better and even though everything with my chest pain is not completely resolved, I am loving the work and able to everything I need to do.  It is awesome to feel the power of prayer working in my life and I am grateful to all of you for caring so much!  Thank you.

This week was great!  We found 4 new investigators and lots of our contacts came to church which is huge here.  It is really hard for the people to get to church and so we are super excited when they make the sacrifice and come.  I love my little branch.  The people here are so SOLID and they are amazing!  My companion and I are in charge of conducting, teaching, presiding over all the meetings etc. for the next two weeks while our branch president is away.  I guess I will see just how far my Russian has come J  But I am kind of excited about it – it will be a great learning experience for sure!

Olga – who was baptized a few weeks ago is coming to church and doing well.  It is so great to see the gospel change people’s lives and it is really humbling to be a part of the Lord’s work.  I can really see the love He has for all His children….pretty incredible.

The snow and ice have finally gone and with it – our hot water!  Now that it is “spring” and getting warmer, we no longer get hot water for our apartment apparently.  We asked our landlord about it and he just was like – yea, there is no hot water….so???  I am learning to take fast showers J  But it really has gotten warm and everything is green instead of white and now the rain has come!  And I mean RAIN!  They call them Russian Power Showers and we get soaked pretty regularly – no hot water in them either – hahaha.

We went to the Rinok (market) last week to buy some peppers and there was a COW on the chopping block... in 4 pieces! legs.. guts... everything... the WHOLE THING!!!! and the head was chopped off... fur and everything still on it... man... it was fresh.... DROSS haha we didn’t buy it don’t worry... but you think a 72 ounce steak is big... try a whole cow!

I was also listening to a talk, and the speaker said something interesting... they said that a lot of the time we believe IN Christ... but we don’t BELIEVE Christ... we believe that he is the Son of God, Redeemer of the world, that he died for us... and that he is the Savior of the world... but some too often don’t believe that he can save them.... WHAT GOOD DOES THAT DO!? What’s the point of having a Savior who doesn’t Save?????? It’s like having a lifeguard that won’t get out of the dang chair!!!! Christ didn’t HAVE to go through with everything he did... he had free agency like us all and chose to do everything because of how much he loves us! and as i started thinking about that and studying it... it really helped me accept Jesus as my Personal Savior.

I hope everything is going great with all of you!

LOVE YOU GUYS!!!

Elder Sven :)