almost off to russia! Two weeks left at MTC

This week has been a good one. Our P Day is now switched to Tuesday and our new schedule till we leave is really great. I talked to everyone and got them up at this morning so we could get everything done early. It is also good because apparently it gets crazy on Tuesday. We ate with brother seitz on wednesday's Pday up at the temple. It was fun and it is nice how much our teachers and all of us bond.

My laundry on pday didn't wash right. One of the washers i used was broken so it super soaked all of my colored clothes. I had to put them in a dryer then separate them into four separate dryers and then hang some of the thicker clothes over my vent for a while.

Elder Price's birthday was fun. I have pictures i will be sending. I prepared a bunch of stuff from the last month that we could give him as gags, gifts, and for fun. The stuff that i sent back home, i didn't want to waste or throw away and there were a lot of things i found so i thought it would be good to send home before i leave in two weeks.

Our new schedule allows an extra half hour in the morning to get ready and then we have planning, sport, an extra half hour, an hour before bed and then lights out almost every day. It is great. We thought we wouldn't be able to use the field but they opened it this week during early morning and later at night. This is when i know the lord knows both needs and wants because the field had just barely opened but wasn't opened that early or late before. Teaching on Wednesday was great. We had foreigners from Russia and the lesson went really well. They were so nice and funny we got pictures with a man and his son. I hope to send those soon too.

One of the days here, I had a plan, study, teach cycle with one of the teachers. We had a really good lesson. In my companionship, we have been trying to commit oleg to baptism by teaching to his needs. We have been working at it a while and wanted him to understand the big picture of the gospel so he would take the first step and be baptized. The teacher said i really knew how to do everything, it was more of a matter of doing it. Sometimes that is a weakness in my companionship with elder price. If one of you is off task then you can't plan the lesson. I told him i've been working at that and he gave me some tips to talking to elder price again so that he can help us plan better.

I've been pushing him a little at a time and it has been working.

During the actual lesson with oleg, i was able to get him to commit him to baptism through the spirit helping me. The teacher being my companion asked if we should commit him to some kind of reading during the lesson. We had been giving him similar commitments for a while with other things tied in and i felt like i wanted to give him another commitment. I asked him first if it would be alright then i said, "We are holding a baptismal service on May 9th. Do you feel that if we helped you, you could be prepared for baptism and be baptized?"
Then he was thinking for a minute and i told him we would help him. He then responded and said that if he prayed and felt it was right then he would. I asked him to pray right there in a kneeling prayer which we had discussed more of why we kneel. He prayed and i asked him how he felt. He said he felt really good, like when he reads the book of mormon. We had been struggling to get him to share experiences when reading and if he had felt anything so then we knew he had been feeling the Holy Ghost. We explained to him that the feeling was the Holy Ghost and he said that if he kept feeling that, he would be baptized for sure.

In our lesson, we talked about the struggle Enos had with God. We had previously dropped off a note and lots of questions and things to help him read on the chapter of Enos. He had read so we went over a lot of questions and related it all back to him. I know a lot of things we did were skills i had acquired through the spirit, through the mtc and before the mtc with Brother Manning. The spirit was there and it guided our lesson.

Frisbee has been really fun to just play catch. It is good for meeting people in our zone especially the newer ones. All of the new districts think i speak russian and am from russia because they haven't heard english. I finally have the first vision memorized in russian and when i've quoted things we have said in lessons and such, that was also in russian but i put what it would be in english.

We went and taught some new districts how to use the computers this week when they came in because that is our calling. It is fun to speak Russian to them mixed with broken english and watch them understand slowly what i ask them to do. I think the new districts are really nice so far. However, apparently some of the younger districts in the zone have already told them lots of stuff about me. I am like some kind of legend around here. Anytime i walk by or someone else does and sees me then there is some kind of comment or conversation about something i didn't even knew they knew about. It is great because i want to get know the people around me. Sometimes they know my name and heard something about me and they've seen and talked to me but haven't made the connection between name and face yet.

I finally got my room key this week after waiting a month. It was right at the front desk so it is good to have that back in my pocket. Alright so here is my funny story. I was going to use the restroom briefly during studying one day. As soon as i started using the toilet, i got a crazy bloody nose just all of the sudden. By the time i got things slowed down, the urinal water was dark red, blood on all my clothes including inside my pants, on shirt, tie, etc. There was blood on the sink, floor and paper towels. Two elders walked in and one said "I sure hope that is from your nose or something". It was way funny. Then i went back to class (we are allowed to go to the bathroom without companion as long as we are on the same floor as adjusted by the branch president and only for the mtc). It looked like i had killed someone in the bathroom or been stabbed apparently. I told elder price that we needed to go back to the residency after pausing in silence in the classroom and everyone looking at me, wondering what had happened between going to the bathroom and now. It was a really funny experience telling Elder Price what happened and everyone else wondering what happened.

I got my birthday package and wishes the other day. I refused to open it the day before my birthday which just about drove the elders crazy. I had one of the sisters reach inside and get Elder Price's water bottle then i had the whole district sign it. Thank you so much for sending that. Thank you for the birthday wishes, cards, notes, presents. I love the frisbee and have already used it but decided i am going to save it for russia to be careful since the field has some. Thank you for the food. With the new schedule, we have way late meals and they close the cafeteria 10-15 minutes after we get there. There is literally almost no food left when we get in there so the treats are great. Thank you grandma and grandpa pace for your letter and everyone else in the family for small notes, cards, etc. I received so much mail and such that I won't have time to respond to a lot of it so i want all of you to know i am grateful for the things you did.

On my birthday, i woke up and was the first person out of bed. I always am so it was funny because i got a bunch of the elders up early on elder price's birthday and he just wanted to sleep. I really wanted to be on time to everything on my birthday and wondered why elder price was being so slow that day. I figured the elders all planned something the night before when i happened to not be in the room and was getting some other stuff done. Finally i get elder price back to the residency so we can grab a few things and i saw all of the elders hiding in the dark from the whole zone before i even walked in. They were wearing and using all of the stuff from elder price's birthday and the stuff my family sent in the package that i set out for the district. They needed to use everything because there were so many elders. I decided the sisters wouldn't get to celebrate as much because they used everything. The elders sure do get excited sometimes haha. We had an amazing lesson on my birthday to Nikita about repentance. I met all of my goals in the lesson for teaching but now we just need to work on timing our lessons better. I pushed elder price and finally got some more effective companionship study in. Everyone from the zone and districts were really nice and i got sung to all day. I am not sure why my birthday was so spoiled. Maybe it was because i wanted the attention the least. I wrote the districts thank you cards for all they did that day.

I practiced a talk in russian on sunday just in case i might have to give it on the topic of baptism since we are randomly picked to talk each week. I practiced more than usual and told everyone i was going to speak. I felt like i was going to, i wrote it in my planner and said a prayer. Then in sacrament i got called to speak. I was ready and probably the only one so far who was excited to speak. The topic was baptism and i had prepared it with preach my gospel and the scriptures. Everyone said i did a good job though i am not sure they understood anything. During the talk, one of the new elders leaned over to elder price and asked if i was from russia or where i was from. I am not sure exactly what he said but i am pretty sure it was yes.

Another funny story that you might have been waiting to hear. I got another huge zit on my back next to the old twice as big one. I knew that maybe one elder would be nice enough to help and i asked elder coulter. He said he helped his brothers all the time with this kind of thing and he has tried to help me. We haven't been able to get it doing much better and barely got anything out so we are going to go to the health clinic today just in case.

The devotional on sunday was good. It got us enthusiastic about missionary work. Then we watched a movie about Joseph Smith. I had never seen this movie before. It was really good and had parts of the Joseph Smith movie in it. I had people write thank you notes to the people working on sunday and then had them send the napkins with the notes on them through the dish area on their trays.

I studied my patriarchal blessing yesterday. I found some interesting things in it and i think it was good for me to read it. We also got our name tags in russian yesterday. Mine was voted the coolest and it is pronounced Elvood. The new schedule yesterday was just really nice. We went and played catch with some people in one of the newer districts. They were like "What? Do you play Ultimate or something?!" and i just responded "da" and they were like "oh" in a way that made it seem like it made a lot more sense in their head. I was able to show them how to throw a little bit because they wanted to know how but didn't really understand how.

Everything has been going well. We are finishing up our laundry then off to the temple and then hopefully will have some extra time today to get things done. Love you all and i hope i can get some pictures sent soon. -elder elwood