March 21,2011
Dear Family,
I've been here in Lithuania for over a year now! I hit my one year mark this past week. It's really weird to think back to that scared missionary a year ago that had no idea where he was or what he had gotten himself into. Now, a year later, everything here is second nature and it seems like home. Obviously, Utah is my home in my heart, but this is all normal now. It's so weird to think about though. I've come a long way with my personal growth and I hope that I can keep growing over the next... I guess almost nine months. But this mission has been a blessing to me and I hope to many others. It is a great opportunity to serve the Lord and His children here in Lithuania. This week was pretty good. I went on an exchange with Elder Lindell on Tuesday and that was fun. It was fun being with him again. He has been here in Vilnius since I was with him last summer, so it was kind of like old times. He's a great guy. We were able to teach a man named Vitas while on the exchange. I taught him last year with Elder Cox and he went to Canada. Do you remember that? He said that he wanted to be baptized there, and said that he would be returning in six months to Lithuania. Elder Lindell and called to see if he was back cause I had told him to follow up on Vitas, and he wanted to meet with us! So we had our first meeting with him since he has been back and I was there for it! How cool is that? He walked in and remembered me right off. It was nice this time though cause I could actually talk to him. :) I thought it was a little miracle that I was able to be there in that meeting to meet with him again. The other Elders will be teaching him, but it was good to see him. He didn't end up getting baptized in Canada cause he was really busy, but he is so ready and I hope that he will get baptized here. He just has a problem with coming to church cause he works on Sundays. Anyways, it was cool. That night Elder Lindell and I were knocking and a guy let us in and we taught about the restoration. The guy was really cool and he had some big speakers in his house. Maybe about hip height, and they were older, but they still looked pretty nice. That was the first time that I have really seen speakers in someone's house. But I asked after the lesson if he really like music, and he was like, "oh yeah! You want to hear my speakers?" So we said sure and in my head I was really happy about it. :) So he put on a song with a lot of bass that would get the speakers going and it was awesome! Not as good as our system back at home, but it was good. It really made me miss those good old times sitting on the couch downstairs listening to music on our surround sound system, Dad. I love pro audio!!! I can't wait until we can do that again and build some more awesome speakers. That was so much fun and is and always will be one of the things that I love doing more than anything. Thanks for sharing the wonder of speaker building with me, Dad. :) Anyways, we also had two lessons with that woman that came to church with her friend last week. They were both pretty good, but she is in the hospital and we had to visit her there. She is having some sort of stomach problems. She has a lot of faith and I feel that she is prepared. The only weird thing is that she has this weird Internet boyfriend in Canada and he is like 67 and she is 52 and he wants her to come to Canada. So... That is kind of fishy. We hope she get over that and will embrace the gospel instead. :) She is a really good woman though and loves meeting with us. We weren't able to meet with Pijus this week, but this week hopefully. We had a cool lesson with a man named Mantas though. We had met with him before and he had said that this would be our last meeting with him. So, we wanted to make sure that we taught him the right thing or rather the most important thing. He was atheist and didn't really have a belief in God. This meeting was on Saturday. So, we bore as powerful of a testimony as we could that God lives and that He loves us. The spirit was very strong and I know that he felt something. He still didn't want to meet again, but we did everything that we could and I like that feeling. The feeling that we did our best and it was the person's choice. It is disappointing, but we planted that seed. Hmm... what else... Oh, yesterday at church was fun. I had to translate again and that was interesting. All of the little primary girls in the branch finally warmed up to us and were pulling on our hand, pushing us around, and stealing our name tags. I really miss little kids and how playful they are. They are so cute. We have to be careful as missionaries with little kids, but it's still fun. Oh, one other thing. President Grenevičius took us to go look at apartments on Saturday night because President Dance wants us to move out of our current apartment. I can't remember if I told you guys that. He just doesn't like how there are two floors. So we went and looked at a few apartments and they were pretty nice. We are going to keep looking, but we have to move on April 1st. hopefully we can find a good one! Well, that was pretty much my week.
This morning I was reading in the Book of Mormon in the book of Mormon about the destruction of the Nephites... What a sad ending to that people. It seriously gets me every time! I want to cry when I read that part! I love that part when Mormon in on the top of the hill and said that whole monologue, O ye fair ones... It is so powerful. There are so many things that we can learn from the Book of Mormon. I am amazed at how much it applies to me. the whole book! Every time I read it, I get more out of it and my love for the book deepens and my understanding of the gospel grows. I love this church and all of the opportunities that we have. We are so blessed.
That is great that BYU has done so well! That makes me way happy! I hope that they continue to win and make it far in the tournament! But if not, I am still happy and love that BYU is making a good name for the church. I really love BYU and all that they stand for. I have been downloading some talks to listen to off of the church website and a lot of them are BYU devotionals. We sometimes listen to them during companionship study and they are great and I have been learning a lot! So many of the general authorities say how much they love BYU and what a blessing it is to attend there. I feel blessed that I have the chance to go to a school owned by the church. Anyways, I am way happy that they have done so well this year! I hope they are really good next year as well cause I will be there to see it! Go Cougs! Well, that is it for this week. I hope that you have a great week and that you will be safe in all that you do. I am continually praying that you will be blessed with health and happiness. I love you all! The church is true!
Love, Elder Leishman
432 days down, 298 days to go!
