I miss the sun

A big Catholic church we visited with one of our investigators

The time is flying by for me, each week I am surprised that it is already Monday again and I can email you again. The work is good here, but I am afraid it might start to slow down a bit. It is starting to get cold. This week we had some half rain/ half snow. My companion called it wet snow. It was cloudy and gloomy all week but it’s not a big deal. It is only going to get more cold and gloomy :)  I realized last winter, when it is cold and cloudy and the days are shorter, that I really missed the sun. It doesn't help to go stand outside in the sun because it is cold and the sun doesn't heat you up very well. I miss that part about Arizona. You can go outside and enjoy feeling the heat from the sun. Of course you can do that in the summer here, but winter time it is too cold to enjoy the sunlight. Anyways, we had our Open Door Day this week and it was a success :) We had a few people show up and we even had the director of Religious Affairs for Irkutsk show up ( I think that is his title). Anyways he seemed to be impressed by what we are doing here and he said that he would see us again. That sounds pretty good to me :)

We visited one of our members today who owns his own pawn shop. He wanted to show us something new that he got and he wanted to sell it to us.  Russian Gas Masks! Pretty cool.  He said they are modern and I think they would make a cool Halloween costume or something. If anyone out there is reading this and wants a 100% authentic Russian Gas mask, they are on sale for 800 rubles and I can get it for you :)  

The green hood is for the winter time, so that you don't freeze. Pretty cool!

I am not too sure what to write this week. We had a good week but not a whole lot happened. We are creating plans, working with people to put the plans into action and we are checking progress to see what needs to be changed in order to continue to succeed. We started a new plan to get the branch here on its own two feet and not leaning on the Missionaries for assistance on easy tasks. It should be fun but it will be a big change and I am not sure everyone will like it.  Oh well. 

Summer mode.

Oh and about the blood moon, I know that about 12 hours ago (Sunday night) it was a Chinese Celebration that had something to do about the moon. The moon was really big here but it wasn't red. Maybe it will be tonight (Monday Night), I will keep my eyes peeled. We have a member here who is Chinese and he speaks English and he told us he would bring us some Moon Cakes that his parents sent him from China. Sweet! 

Anyways I hope you have a wonderful upcoming week and I hope General Conference is inspiring as always. President Perkinson always asks us what we learned at a meeting that wasn't exactly said. Just because you heard something, doesn't mean that is necessarily what you learned. You can learn a lot from listening and thinking about how the teachings of the prophets apply in your life instead of just how it applied to those people in the scriptures.

I love you all. 

Elder Gardner