Week 12: September 16, 2013

Hey everybody! 

It's been another great week here in Vilnius. Kind of insane. I forgot to tell you that last week we did a chalk drawing of the Plan of Salvation with Elders Packham and Hall (big surprise, we work with them alll the time because they're the Lithuanian elders that we share our area with and it's more convenient to do finding activities with them because we can talk to waaay more people...also they're our besties4lyf). It went really well and I finally felt like I was actually contributing something, haha. 

I also forgot to tell you that we went to Trakai to visit the Elanskaya family. It's about forty minutes away from Vilnius and it's SO pretty. It's got a lake and people just randomly riding horses down the road, plus it's also got the castle that I'm pretty sure I pinned on Pinterest. Haha we only saw the castle from across the lake because the Elanskaya family lives on the opposite side but it is such a cool place. We were given the task of preparing their eight year old (as of today! It's her bday up in herr) for baptism. Her name is Alena and she's adorable. We watched the Swan Princess with her in Russian for a few minutes and it was adorable because she knew every word--not just to the songs but to the actual movie. It was one of those moments that it hit me: I'm in Lithuania watching a Disney movie in Russian with a little Russian girl, sipping Russian tea and eating freshly picked Lithuanian plums. And I fed their goat later, so that was even more weird to me. Haha I'm still not used to all of this. Sometimes I'll get on a bus and the bus driver will have a Russian rug hanging behind his seat for decoration and there will be really loud Lithuanian pop music blasting and I am kind of blown away that I'm here. I love it. 

Anywho, we are going to Trakai again today to tour the castle and also because we have another lesson scheduled with Alena. It's going to be a pain to get there because you have to walk forty minutes on foot to get to their house--did I mention it's kind of in the middle of nowhere? The Elanskaya family live in really humble circumstances. They don't have running water and their house is pretty small and they don't have glass windows; just plastic coverings. They are awesome though. They don't have enough money to come to church every Sunday but the branch has been able to pick them all up in a van for the past couple of weeks.

Things have been going so well for Galena! We started the quit smoking program with her this past week. The best feeling was when she tossed her cigarettes in the trash and there was this lovely swooshing sound. Haha she is the most sincere person I've ever met. She's been smoking for forty years so she has a lot of will power and desire to quit. It's really cool to me that I'm helping someone to quit smoking. That's just an experience I never thought I'd have/want to have.

Something that was great this Sunday was that she came to church with us. I think she liked it a lot and the members were good about talking to her. Alvidas was awesome, as usual. He's a silver bullet to all women over the age of forty, as Sister Weaver says.

Another lovely thing about this Sunday was that after sacrament, I noticed a bunch of people were gathered in the kitchen. We went in and Tatiana Orlova (used to be in the Relief Society presidency here) shoved me in line and gave me what everyone else was eating. It was this really good bread with peppers, onions, and some other unidentifiable vegetables in a vinegary sauce on top of it. SO GOOD. I got the recipe. And also I got Ludmila's recipe for her apple pie. It's in Russian so I'm hoping that I'll either be able to read it by the time I get home or that Jared will be able to translate it, haha. 

There's this babushka that lives by us that I think I told you about named Maria. We stopped to talk to her the other day because she was sitting on a bench outside Rimi (grocery store) and she gave us these amazing apples. She called them "delicious miracles". She's adorable.

Speaking of food, Sister Weaver and I go through two bottles of hot sauce every week. I don't know whether that's shameful or not.

Something exciting about this week was that I came up with an idea that the branch is actually gonna use! I suggested that we start doing branch family home evening on Mondays because the majority of the members are either single and don't have a family or if they do have family, then they are the only members. The branch is pumped about it so that's cool. Hopefully we can make it effective and fun for everyone.

We have a new investigator named Askoldas, btw. He's the nicest guy I've ever met. Seriously. He texts us almost every day with what we should do to enjoy our time in Vilnius. I don't think he understands that we literally don't have a minute of free time. Haha we told him that we were planning on going to Trakai today and he has texted us every day since with advice on where to eat, where to go hiking, etc. He's awesome. He's a professor at the university here and doesn't have time to meet with us so our lessons are over the phone. It's really hard but he's technically progressing since he reads and he's mostly kept all of the commitments that we've asked him to. He's just funny and kind of hard to gauge (sp?) because he is so nice and smart and he looks at the scriptures really intellectually rather than trying to apply them to his life. I'll let you know how everything goes with him.

Something interesting that I've learned from him and a lot of the people that I talk to here is that they view life much differently than I do or than people generally do in the States. What I've found with the majority of the people that I talk to is that they don't believe in free agency like we do. And what I mean by that is that they live life and if bad things happen to them, they expect to have to struggle through it and life just always has to be hard. It's a difficult concept for Askoldas to grasp that we can choose our attitudes and how we let our trials shape us. He told me the other day that he doesn't like how churches make people feel guilty because then they get depressed and it's not a good thing for them. I tried to explain that I totally agreed, but that the purpose that we have guilt in this life is to recognize when we are doing something that's not making us as happy as we could be and Heavenly Father gave us the ability to feel bad for our sins so that we could recognize that change needs to happen. Guilt is supposed to be very temporary because we have the Atonement of Jesus Christ. We have someone to help us get rid of all that extra baggage and we don't have to carry it around. It was hard for Askoldas to grasp that we can actively change ourselves to be more Christlike. I guess it hit me this week how differently I think from the people that surround me. 

A cool prompting that I had this week was that every time we pray, we should pray as if Christ is beside us--because He is! He helps us to find the right words and explain what we're feeling and what we need. We just need to acknowledge our Mediator because he is so ready to help us out and give power to our prayers.

Anyways, I'm so glad to hear that everyone's doing well. I love you all and most especially Yvey, Riv, and Ashton! Haha paka.

Love,

Cectpa Gooch