Dear Family,
Hello again. :) Mondays come around so fast. I love getting to hear from you and feeling the spirit from your emails. Thank you for always being faithful in writing! It means a lot to me. Well, I guess I'll start by taking a little about my week. Last Monday we just went and played Frisbee at a park for a long time and that was a lot of fun. It's nice to get above walking speed which we hardly do as missionaries! It was raining as we played though and Elder Cooke, Manning and I ended up getting sick from it which was not fun. I also got your package last Monday too which was great to get! Thank you for sending that! The gel pads have helped a lot this week and Elder Sanford doesn't have to deal with my limping as I walk now! They feel way good, so hopefully I won’t have to get new shoes at all. Also, thank you for the beany! The candy was GREAT! I love score bars of course, and that talk you sent is really a good one. I have learned a lot of good things from it. That music you sent, Mom, looks really good too. Hopefully we will get a chance to use it at some point. Anyways, thank you for the package! It was great to get it! And for future reference, it takes about 20 days for packages to get here, so don't believe what the post office tells you. :) So, Tuesday, we just did the normal and had English class that night. Wednesday, we also had a pretty normal day and just proselyted all day. It’s getting really cold here and I had to put my big coat on again this week and it's probably not coming off for another six months! ugh... Let's get it over with though! This is the only full winter that I have to go through thankfully. I'm grateful for that, Mom! Wednesday I started to get sick and Thursday I has In bed for most of the day cause my cold was so bad. I couldn't hear or breathe and it wasn't fun. But I was feeling ok by the time we had to go to English, so we went and I just sat in the back of the class while Elder Sanford taught. I couldn't really talk cause I was so stuffed up. I usually do a lot of the teaching so our students were asking what was wrong and thought that I just wasn't happy. Funny. I just told them that I was sick. Then we showed them a movie on missionary work, the called to serve video, and they had a ton of questions. In English class they see us normal 'er' people and that we aren't just crazy missionaries that want to talk about God. So it opens them up to us a lot and it's really cool. I really like teaching English. It's nice to serve people in that way. Anyways, so Thursday I was feeling better so we just did normal stuff that day. Then Saturday we were out trying to find some domes that we saw on the map and we ended up in some forest and took some really cool pictures. Haha, then we came out on the other side and found some other domes that we didn't even know were there and there are a ton of them! So that will keep us busy for a while. Yesterday, we just went to church and that was good as always. After we ate lunch, we went out and tried to get into some domes down here in center. The apartments are generally harder to get into down here cause there are a lot of businesses at the bottoms. We were only able to get into a few, but we knocked on this one door and this guy let us in. For one, that doesn't happen very often, and two I guess he had been taught by the sister missionaries about three years ago and once they went home, the missionaries kind f lost track of him he said. Or they didn't call anymore or something. But he has a Book of Mormon and wants to learn more, so we are going to go back and teach him again on Wednesday! Anyways, that was a little miracle that we had this week and I thought it was really cool. But that's about it from my week! it's just getting really cold here and I hope that I can get over MY cold soon!
I wasn't going to tell anyone this until I got home so it would be a surprise, but oh well... haha, I have been learning to play the piano and it's been going really well! I realized that I need to learn how to play if I want to get better at the drums and just at music in general. There are not very many members that can play here and I want to be able to serve in that area too. The Morrells had a few electric pianos that they lend out to those that want to learn to play, so I asked them for one! I've been steadily learning since I was in Klaipeda, but I don't ever have a lot of time to practice! So it's nice to have one in our apartment now. So far I can play almost 2 hymns. The full ones and not the simplified ones anymore. I started with those. It’s WAY hard, but it's going well! It's hard to teach yourself, but I'm determined to learn! Ok... Now you can tell me "I told you SO!" about needing to learn so that I could play on my mission. I know... Mom, I should have listened to you and I now see the importance of knowing how to play the piano. But I'm learning now! Hopefully I will be able to play pretty well by the end of my mission. Anyways... Surprise! Haha... I just wanted to whip out some mad piano skills when I get back and surprise you all. :) Ok, well I need to go. Oh and about BYU... I'm just grateful that I'm on a mission right now. I hope they can get it together and start winning some games! Not much to say there! It just sucks that they aren't doing better! I can't believe that they lost to Utah State. Elder Manning told me about that one on Saturday night cause Elder Morrell told him about it. He was nice enough not to rub it in my face. :) Anyways, I love you guys so much and hope that you have a wonderful week! I am praying for you always! Don't ever get discouraged and don't ever give up! It will all work out. Again, I love you all so much and I know that this church is true!
Love, Elder Leishman
264 days down, 466 days to go!
