I love those pictures you sent me! If only I would have known the whole smiling thing, I might have been able to avoid the rabies shots. I agree only slightly with the Russian comment. The older generation is definitely softer in my opinion. I smile at them all the time. They normally receive it well. I think it might be because I am young and they expect the youngsters to be the rebellious teenagers, which most teenagers here are. When they see a nice young man they are taken aback and probably just smile out of confusion J
I had no idea that this Friday was Earth Day! I don't think
Russia celebrates that holiday. I
haven't heard anything about it. They have lots of war holidays and
commemorations of days of victory and things of that nature. But, they seem to have less "silly"
holidays (I use the term silly loosely but I hope it makes sense. In the US we
have national pancake day and siblings day and all those things, whereas Russia
celebrates more of their actual victories and historical feats).
I did get those photos! Thank you so much for sending them!
They are great. Some people seemed super shocked to find out that I was in choir
and had a solo! Some even questioned if they were real and asked "You’re
kidding, you were in choir. Are you serious?" I mean... there are a lot of
things that someone could lie about in life. You could lie about your grades or
what kind of car you drove back in the day. We all know people that lie to
impress others. But, I don't think lying about being in choir or being in a
musical would dazzle that many people. That's just not something you lie about!
We have been having rain for the past 3 days and its wearing
on me haha. I miss the sun! The work is alright but really slow. We had 3 adult
members show up for church. One lady brought her daughter but the daughter just
ran around the halls the entire time. After the sacrament the only male who
came left. So we had 2 people stick around till the end of church. I feel so
bad for them, they are really out here on their own. I wish there was something
more that we could do to get more people coming. The missionaries come and go
and the strong members just get worn out because there is no support here. For church we watched the rest of General
Conference, the Priesthood and Women’s sessions.
We had two men this week let us in to their homes. One was
an ex-convict who was really drunk. He
was just recently let out of prison. He served 5 years for stabbing a guy. He
was really friendly to us though and really drunk. He liked us because we were
American and gave us a big hug when we left. He didn't really want to know
about the gospel because he said he had enough religion in his life. He has a
giant icon up in his apartment of Mary holding baby Jesus and he prayed in
front of it each day. Nice guy, though. The other guy we met was a retired guy, he
liked English but didn't want to know about the Gospel. That is one of the
hardest parts of the work. This message is so great and I have that desire to
share it but we can't force people to open their doors and their ears and
eventually their hearts. Normally they don't open up the first one (the doors)
so we can't work on the other 2 (ears and hearts). 
Elder Gardner
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