July 19, 2010
Dear Family,
Hey! How's it going? Thanks for the wonderful emails! I always enjoy and love hearing from you guys. I always feel the spirit and learn so much from you and I just love hearing from you anyways! So thank you. I love you guys. So, this week has been pretty uneventful for us here. Monday we got McDonald's (yes I know, gross, but it's the only American food they have here! They have a McDonald's in every city and then they have a Pizza Hut in Kaunas, but that's it!) And then brought it back to our apartment and played settlers for like four hours. I think we're done playing that game for a while. :) Then that night when the other elders left at six they shut the door behind them and somehow the door got jammed! We were just brushing our teeth or something really fast and were going to leave pretty fast soon to go work, but we couldn't get the door open! The doors here have the normal dead bolt and then another lock that has four bars that go into the side of the door frame and then one going into the top and the bottom. They're pretty intense. No one is getting in or OUT of them! But we figured that the bottom one had been jarred loose when the other elders left and had fallen down and the key wouldn't open it. So we were stuck in there the rest of the night pretty much. haha, we called the other elders and had them come back and they couldn't get it open from the outside so they called the family to see if they could call our land lady. She only speaks Russian and the family's mom and dad (Romanas our investigator) speak Russian so they are kind of our contacts so that we can talk to our land lady. SOoo... they called our land lady and she came over and couldn't get it unlocked so Romanas called one of his buddies that is a lock smith and he came over as well as Romanas and his family and after tons of drilling and sawing they got us out! They finally got us out at nine at night! So they were all working on getting us out and we were stuck with nothing to do inside so we made cookies and wrote letters. :) When we called that family they dropped everything to come get us out and it was really funny. Our investigator rescued us! So it took 4 Americans, 6 Lithuanians, and 1 Russian to get us out of our apartment. It was pretty funny! Hope you followed the story ok! So that was Monday. Tuesday, nothing happened and I can't really remember it. I usually write down if something interesting happened. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, just the usual and I really can't remember anything. Sorry... Saturday night we went and stopped by a reception and the church for a member named Victoria. She married a member from Latvia and it was really cool to see the church grow in that way. Weddings are a huge deal here anyways but it's even more exciting when a member gets married cause there are so few youth. But it was pretty much a party and they had all of these cool traditions and stuff. It was interesting to see how they celebrate weddings here. We only stayed for like a half hour cause everyone started dancing so we were like, let’s get out of here before girls start asking us to dance! haha just kidding. But we just wanted to come show our support. They didn't have any cake or anything there and it was all like fish and breads for the little desserts. You know how all we have is sweets at weddings? There was nothing sweet there! It was weird but cool to see how they do it. So that was Saturday and then yesterday we had church and then went over to Lucy's (the Chinese member) house for dinner with the other elders and it was really good. It's so cool that we get real Chinese food here! And that is pretty much it for me here. We had two lessons with Romanas this past week and that was good. I think it was Tuesday and Thursday after English class. But he found the faith to pray on his own this week and he is progressing. I will keep you updated on how everything continues to go with him. Today we will probably not do anything but we have haircuts later so I guess that's exciting? haha... The only other thing that I can think to say about this week was that it was SOOOO HOT!!! I haven't slept with any covers for a week and I am constantly sweating. I don't mean to complain, but it was 40 degrees on Saturday! That is 104 degrees F! NOT including humidity! Haha I got so sun burnt on my arms and it was just so hot! Contacting outside has been miserable. But I guess that's life though. It will be a fun story to tell. :) I just hope that it cools down this week. Oh, one more short story that we had was that on... I can't remember what day it was, but we were waiting outside of the Library for one the less active members that we are working with. We had a meeting with him but he was late coming out of the Library. So we were sitting there and this kid rides up to us on his bike and sits next to us. Weird... That never happens! But he just started taking to us and had all of these questions and wondered if we could answer them for him. So we answered the questions and taught him about the restoration. He told us that he had been ridding all over town to find us cause he had see us before and that was his only purpose in ridding around. Pretty cool huh? That was a little miracle for us and I know that the Lord helped him find us. Well, that is pretty much it for me this week. There really wasn't that much going on, so yeah! It was a good week though. It had its hard and challenging moments and it's good ones. We'll see what this week brings with transfer calls tomorrow morning. I'm not sure what will happen, but I will be either staying here or going to Kaunas. I don't really want to be transferred already, but I'll take whatever comes. Change is hard for me, but it can also be a great learning experience. I'm trying harder to just embrace those things and know that they will help me grow and become a better person. So we will see what happens! I'll let you know what happens next week!
Mom, I love your comments about not coveting. I think that everyone in the world needs to work on that and just be content with what they have. I think that is a major problem here in Lithuania and it might just be what their downfall is. A lot of people think that this country is just going to fall in the toilet soon. I hope not... But the economic situation is not good here and it is just getting worst. I have talked with some of the members about it and we all think that it is because the people are trying to live beyond their means. They see all the things that other countries have and they "Covet" them and want to live like they do. If they would only be happy with what they have and not covet other people, I think this country would be fine. Anyways, I need to always remember not to covet and just be happy with what I have too. So thank you for that reminder. This church is so true and I'm so grateful that I could be part of it and that I could be raised in it. I couldn't imagine living without the gospel in my life. I hope that you have a great week and I'll write next Monday!
Love you guys!
Love, Elder Leishman
187 days down, 543 days to go!!!
