Dear Family,
Well I have been out on the mission for about thirteen weeks now! Time is going by a lot faster than it did in the mtc. It seems like Preparation Day is here so quick. This week hasn't been as eventful as others, but that's ok. This morning we ran to the white crosses again and I almost died. :) Then later we went and played sand volleyball and ultimate frisbee down by the river with all of the missionaries. I'm so exhausted! Haha I've never exercised so much in my life! My companion is just nuts about getting super strong and I guess I am too, but he pushes us way hard. So it's good. Just very tiring. So anyways, the rest of the week was good. We just did the usual contacting and knocking doors for the most part, but some highlights were that we had a good lesson with Segijus and Tanja about the word of wisdom and they accepted to live it! Sergijus actually said he had quite drinking coffee the week before without even knowing that we didn't drink it in our church! What a stud... So that was good and they came to church for the first time this week too. Thank you guys for all of the prayers in their behalf. They are wonderful people. I also went on exchanges with Elder Mock on Friday. He is one of the Russian Elders here in Vilnius so it was cool cause we went knocking and if someone opened the door and spoke Russian he would talk to them and if they spoke Lithuanian I would speak to them. Lets just say that it was a very stressful day for me! The language is still as much a struggle for me as ever.. so it was tough, but I'm still here so it went ok! My companion is the zone leader so he has to go on exchanges with all of the district leaders once a transfer. So I get to go on exchanges a lot too. Anyways, it was an interesting day and Elder Mock is a really funny guy. He's from Texas and went to BYU last year the same time that I went but I didn't know him. My Companion and I play Ultimate with those two Russian Elders every other morning over in the park on Gedimino. Everyone looks at us way funny because they are all walking to work and we are these Americans yelling and running around! haha Lithuanians are a pretty quiet people and mostly stick to themselves. So they just think we are crazy. :)
So other then that, we had a pretty normal missionary week. It's been a little cold here but just on the virge of spring. It has been ok weather but the leaves are just barely starting to bud. But it is getting warmer. I can't wait until we can wear short sleeve shirts! That will be great! This city really is beautiful though... They have tons of cleaning crews out every day cleaning up the city after the winter so it's looking better every day. And it's great where we live because it's the nicer part of town. There is some really cool history here and it's really neat to learn about it all. You can see remnants of the Soviet Union all over the place. It's way sad what they did to this country... The soviets were very corrupt and put this country through a lot. I feel way happy for them that they have their freedom now. Oh one more thing we got to do this week! On Saturday we got to do service! The whole city went out to clean their yards and stuff so help clean up the city so our branch and all of the missionaries went down by the river and cleaned up trash for two hours! That was way nice to get normal cloths on and get a little dirty! So all in all, the week was good... A little hard for lots of reasons. haha missionary work is hard! But it was a good week.
Well, I had better go but I love you guys so much! Stay strong in the faith. I have been doing a really in depth study on the Atonement and it has been really interesting. I've just been going through and writing everything down from the fall of adam to why we need an Atonement and how we can partake of it. It's such a wonderful thing that our savior did for us. We really wouldn't be here without him! So everyone remember to be what Christ would want us to be and remember his Sacrifice for us. That should be motivation enough for all of us to always be our best. I'll write again next week!
Love, Elder Leishman
96 days down, 634 days to go!!!
