March 14, 2011
Dear Family,
Another week... What a weird thing time is. We had a pretty good week. Yesterday and today have been beautiful days and the snow is melting. I have hope that I will actually be warm soon! I'm excited. This past week we mostly worked with our area book because we are both so new to this area, and we didn't know what had been happening in it. So we felt inspired to go through the entire area book and read all of the records of the people that have been taught. We have made plans to go and visit a lot of the people to see if they are now ready to hear the gospel. The usual things of going contacting on the streets and knocking on doors just don't get us very far, so we have been trying to get some other things going and doing a lot with the area book is one of those things. So, we spent a few days going through that and then started to go visit people. Elder Whicker and I are very hopeful that we will find some great people to teach through this. We are really starting to love this area. Yesterday we had a cool miracle happen at church that I wanted to share with you though. A member from the Russian branch brought a Lithuanian friend to our sacrament meeting and we had the chance to teach her during the second hour. She was totally prepared to hear the gospel and it was a great lesson with her and her member friend! She is really looking for truth and the spirit was very strong. Her name is Vida. She even said that she will be baptized when she comes, to know that the things we teach her are true. And her member friend bore a wonderful testimony about the Book of Mormon. It was just a great lesson. People to teach don't really ever fall into our hands that easy, so, it was a blessing and a miracle. A lot of the members here just don't share the gospel with their friends, or at least, we don't know about it. So, it was wonderful to see the member from the Russian branch bring his friend to church. He seemed to be excited to share the gospel with her. It was a real testimony builder to me of member missionary work. That is the best way for things to happen! Through members. Ideally, the church wouldn't even have missionaries, and the members would do all of the missionary work. Anyways, it was blessing to us and we are very hopeful that we will be able to meet with Vida again and help her progress. Our other investigator, Pijus is doing well. He wasn't able to meet this week, but we are hopeful that he will also keep progressing. Other than that, things are going well. I've been really trying hard to keep being diligent in all the things that I need to do. It is hard to have so many things to do every day and keep it up day after day. Sometimes I just want a break! haha, but this isn't my time right now... It's the Lords. But I have been trying really hard to stay diligent and develop those habits. Oh, this week I was going through some old papers that I had and I found those outlines of our family history that grandma Leishman gave me before I left! I have been reading them and they are great! I love finding out about our heritage and all of the things that they went through. It really gives me a desire to learn a lot more when I get back. Family history is such a great thing. I just thought I would mention that. It has been really cool to read those. Oh and this week will be my one year mark in Lithuania! How weird is that?! I can't believe that. Time is going by so fast. It is really cool to be with my whole mtc group as well. It's great to see how much we have all grown in the last year. It's really fun to be together. Ok, well there really isn't much more to say about my week. It was a pretty normal week, just trying to share the gospel that has blessed all of our lives so much.
We actually did hear about the stuff going on in Japan and I feel so bad for those people. It sounds horrible. I hope that they can recover from it all. It makes me realize how blessed we are to live in the place that we live. Granted we live right in a fault line, but nothing bad has happened yet. Oh, I am glad that BYU did pretty well in the tournament as well. That is too bad that they lost though. Life can't be perfect I guess... Hopefully they will be able to play well in the NCAA Tournament! Well, that's it for me this week. I hope that you guys have a wonderful week and that you are all happy.
Love, Elder Leishman
425 days down, 305 days to go!
