Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Christmas Morning

New Years here is the Christmas of America! It is going to be interesting in a few days when we go out to work in the mornings and see no stores open and there’s nobody on the streets. Should be fun times in Russia!

It was so cool to get to talk to you on Christmas/Christmas Eve. I was a little worried it wouldn't work out the first couple of tries, but all is well.  It feels like we aren't even that far away, we can always get a hold of each other if we have to.  It is kind of weird talking over Skype because it feels like a big party just like when I was at home. It is so weird to think I have about 19 months left. That seems like a big number but we are already about the half year mark! 6 months gone, I feel like I just left home.  I will be here in Nakhodka until the end of January, I will have one more transfer after that for sure and then at the end of February it is most likely that I will go to a different city. I don't know exactly where yet but the end of February will be 6 months in Nakhodka.  Weird, spending 1/4 of my mission in one city. It is a great city, though! No complaints!  

Skyping for Christmas!  He looked so good!

I am jealous of the Christmas lunch at Brian and Jane’s house!  We had soup, and raw onions, and weird salad stuff for our Christmas lunch:) It’s cool that you got to Skype with Ashley from her mission while you were up there.  I didn’t know if the connection would have been good enough up in Holbrook.   

I am glad to hear that Chandler is finally out and on a mission! He is going to do great.  He is a born leader!  I think that is so cool that his Uncle Trent was there at church when Chandler talked!  I totally forgot that he served in Russia, Vladivostok!   

Mom note:  Ryan told us via Skype that when he went to South Korea last week, he changed some Rubles (Russian currency) into Won (Korean currency).  He didn’t know the exchange rate, and ended up exchanging ALL of his money for the month into a currency that he can’t even use in Russia.  So, he had to pull some cash out of his home bank account to make up for it.  

I am going to use a little bit of personal money until I get another dose of Missionary Money.  I was silly in pulling out all that Won! It’s okay, I am set for the next couple of Korea trips that I take.  Yeah, it wasn't the smartest thing I have done, but definitely memorable.



Seoul Korea Temple

Burger King Ad in Korea - She is actually crying!

Ryan was impressed with how polite people are in Korea. 
He said in Russia this sign would have said "Stay Out of our way!  We're Doing Stuff!" 

There was a drunk couple that came into church yesterday and they were being loud so we had to kick them out! I was getting ready to throw down and deck a drunk dude but I don't know if that would be appropriate as a missionary:) As we were walking the drunk lady out she tried to hug me... yeah.. I got scared so I like grabbed her arms and pushed her away... haha I felt kind of bad grabbing and man handling this lady, but I really did not want that hug!  

I am so thankful for the chance to be in Russia! It is way cool! So different and such a great opportunity to grow. I love you all! See you in a year and a half,

Elder Gardner

Language is good - food is interesting

I am so happy to be here in Russia:) I must be getting better at speaking the language because I am starting to be able to make jokes with Russian people and I have even made a couple of them laugh! We tried talking to this guy, he was really not interested in talking to us and he started walking away. Elder Sayers asked if he knew anybody who would be interested in talking with us and he said “No”; but as he was walking away I said to him "Maybe you have an enemy, we can go bug them for you!" He chuckled. We didn't talk any more after that but at least he knows we aren't scary or weird people. I count it as a victory!

It looks like they have a picture of the Mesa temple here in our church! Cool

The sun rises about 8:30 or so and sets around 5:30! It’s really weird. I remember being back at home and running around till 8 or so with sunlight left.  I definitely am starting to miss the sun! I am glad to hear Megan has been working hard! If there is something I know, it’s that Hard Work is Good Work. 
 
You may have heard that the Ruble is going down pretty dramatically and we check that as often as occasion permits. So far nothing really has changed. We are expecting the new year to be when all the prices change and such. The Church does give us more money to be able to buy what we need, but thus far nothing has really happened. We are still buying all that we need, all is well on the food side of things.
 

We have had some interesting food lately.  We ate with some locals the other day and they gave us this meat kinda thing... it wasn’t not too bad.  So, I asked what it was and they told me it was pure animal fat that was frozen.   hahaha   Then he said "I would like to make you an onion" so we said alright.  He then cut up an onion and set it in front of us. Just a raw onion... oh OK ... thank you.  Yummmm :)   They also gave us this bread paste stuff.  Imagine you took a cheese grater and a chunk of bread. You then grind up the bread into powder as small as it goes and then you make that bread powder wet...it was just bread paste.  Crazy.   
This week was a pretty good weather week.  I think yesterday was about 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Good times! The cold isn’t too bad as long as there is no wind or humidity... but here in Nakhodka we are right up on the sea... so we have both wind and humidity! Yay!



People here in Russia pull their kids around on sleds! Haha yeah its a real thing

Earlier in the week we went out to a small town about an hour outside of the main Nakhodka city. We had a great lesson about the armor of God and after the lesson we went out to wait for the bus. Because we were so far away, the busses were few and far between. We got out to the bus stop at 5 oclock and of course... it was cold! All was okay though, I had a scarf and gloves and a beanie and a hood on my jacket. We threw on everything but then the wind came. The wind was really bad... like.. really bad! It was a lot of wind and it didn't ease up at all the whole time we were standing there. Then the best part! It had snowed the day before so there was a lot of loose snow just lying around. The wind picked up the snow and in every gust of wind there was a ton of snow bits! They would hit you in the face, get stuck, melt, and then you have a wet face with more wind making it colder.  Not the best experience:) But all is well! We survived! Oh yeah... I forgot to say, too, I stepped in a giant pile of snow and some snow got in my shoe. It then melted, and my socks were wet. I had frozen piggies! haha Russia is a great place! 

I got some brown shoes:) They are way nice! But they don't help with the cold so I am going to have to wait until summer to wear them

President Brinton came into town the other day and we were riding with him in his car to a lesson of ours. He got a call on the phone and his car does speaker phone so he answered... I looked over to see who had called him... Jorg Klebingat. That is a member of the 70 who spoke at General Conference. His talk was entitled “Approaching the Throne of God with Confidence.”  Ever since the first moment I heard that talk, I fell in love with it. That was probably one of my favorite talks of all Conference. It is so straight-forward and to the point and simple. There is no way to misunderstand what you’ve got to do. It is just super good! And we got to be on a call with him! So basically I was on a phone call with one of the Quorum of the 70. No big deal though. :)

I miss you all so much! I love you!

Love, 

Ryan

Another Great Week!

Family and Friends, 

I had a good week this week.   Some funny things happened. We were talking with one of our members of the church in his apartment hallway when a drunk guy came up to talk to us. He was a nice guy... well he was nice to me... He started talking about his life back 40 years ago and how he served in the navy and how he did this, that, and the other. He was talking with me and it is a Russian thing to talk with someone but be really close to them. He was probably a foot away from me and squared his shoulders and was not breaking eye contact, this is how we stood while he told me his story. I had this big 'ol smile on my face smiling and listening as best I could to his story. He then turned to my companion and said, "Hey you have a good friend here. He is a good kid. I like him." He then put his arm around me and gave me a big Russian hug. He reeked of alcohol, haha, such a good guy:) I hugged him back of course. Then after he let me go he turned to my companion and said "You.. I don't like you. You need to be more like this good boy here."  And after that Elder Sayers tried to have a nice conversation with the guy but he wanted none of it.  Poor Elder Sayers. 

 There was another drunk guy on the street the other day. He started talking to us about his life story, of which I understood almost none. In both of these instances the guy wasn't angry at all. Wasn't upset, just drunk, telling me about his life. But again he did the Russian thing and squared his shoulders and got real close. I mean... It was a little uncomfortable but I wasn't going to step back from this guy. I stood there keeping the eye contact the whole time, maybe I shouldn't have held my ground. Maybe I should’ve stepped back and kept an appropriate distance but I was curious how close he would get... Turns out it’s really close...  The whole time Elder Sayers was just watching me not saying anything. He just let me and this drunk guy stand there for 5 minutes or so.  Moral of the story: Drunk Russians will get real close when they want to talk to you and they won’t back up:)  

The missionary work is getting kind of rough at nights now. It is cold and after the sun sets at 6 the amount of people on the streets drops off dramatically. We had all of our lessons cancel on us the other night and we were stuck on the street for 2 hours. We talked to every person we saw... but that amounted to probably 15 people total. It is definitely cold, and there is snow everywhere, but it is all okay when we get home and our apartment is warm:) They keep the houses here really well heated:) The wind is really a killer when we are out on the streets, the cold isn't bad at all but when you get that cold wind on your face it stinks.  My ears and toes and fingers are chilly but you get walking around a bit and all is well:)

Dad, could you find a way to send me that chapter from “How to Win Friends and Influence People?” We are struggling to inspire and excite some of these people about the gospel message. I think it could help me better work if I read that chapter again:)

 

I got our family Christmas card in the mail this week:) Super cute! The Nesting dolls that I have are way cool! It is a 10 piece set with little kings and Christmas trees on it:) It is also pretty big I don't know how I am going to get it home! I might have to mail it home.  

I miss you all so much! I will see you in 10 days! So soon! I haven’t gotten any information about Skype yet but I will let you know:) I love you!

Starting to get a little cold

Have you been watching our weather?  We can definitely feel this temperature drop! It is rough but I am a real man;) so I can handle it.

 

I am so sorry I won't have time to write Conner and Kreston this week! I know their birthdays are this week! Happy birthday guys!

Dad's Washington trip sounds fun.  It's always good to talk to big wigs.  Although, you were cold at 50 degrees? That is nothing! In one town not too far away, the temperature dropped to way below zero just a few days ago:)

I have gotten a little skinnier over here in Russia:) I haven't really been working out as much as I did when I was back in Tukee. All we really do here are pullups and pushups. We have a few dumbells but nothing big going on in the fitness department:) Don't worry I am not going hungry. We eat great over here. Pasta and Burritos almost every other day. We cook for ourselves.  We eat a lot, but nothing really new or shaking it up. 

Burrito?

I am super sad I missed the Church Christmas party! It sounds like it was a blast:) It seems like the Worthens always do well, whatever they do:) Like that quote from one of the prophets a while back. "What e'er thou art, act well thy part."  That is definitely something I admire about them!

It is so weird to think, Christmas will be about the 5 month mark. That is almost 1/4 of the way done! I just barely got out here! I gotta get to work!

I miss you all. Nothing too crazy is happening here in Russia! At 53 rubles to a dollar, the economy is hurting pretty bad over here. I heard soon it will be up to 60 rubles in a dollar! That doesn't really affect us, we are given a certain amount of money and it is always enough:)

Oh by the way, I got the 2 packages you sent safely.  So thus far I have recieved the 2 regular packages and the 1 Christmas package. The food in the package was great!! That is so tasty! We already broke out the hot sauce can and taco sauce you sent:) Super tasty!!

 

I was on the bus the other day when I looked out the window to see some Russians getting into a fist fight. haha  The bus drove away though:( dang I didn't get to see who won! Mom asked if people like Russia's President. People here LOVE Putin.  They think he is their national hero or something. 

 

Some of these Russians don't really understand why we are here. We said to one guy, "Hey we are missionaries from the church of Jesus Christ" He told us "Sorry we aren't interested, we are Christians".... haha there's nothing you can do about that..  

I bought a giant Russian Nesting doll today. It was sweet! I also got a book full of quotes. It is a bunch of deep quotes. There are some quotes from Ghandi and Ralph Waldo Emerson and the likes. I will have to share some next week:) I miss you all so much!

 

New Nesting Doll

The Church is True and I Love You!

Ryan Gardner

It's December!

We had the first snow today! Crazy:) I am sad I missed the Thanksgiving party! It sounds like a big success. We had some Thanksgiving dinner with our district and the senior missionaries.  Most people here don't celebrate Thanksgiving. 

I go to Seoul on December 23 and 24th:) I will most likely pass through Vladivostok. Hopefully I can get some more mail! My companion will not come with me to Korea. I don't really know what he will be doing yet. I am going with my MTC group that I came in with.  

We will get to Skype from the church on Christmas. I might send home my full memory cards from my camera if you would like. Then you could watch all of the videos I have made. 

I love you all! All is good here, meeting lots of drunk people on the streets and always messing with them. Can't wait to see you soon:)

 

Love,  Ryan

Russian Approved Jacket

New Dolls

New Jacket

This week was a pretty good week, I guess.  I spent about 3,500 rubles on a big fluffy jacket. There are about 50 rubles in a dollar now, so it seemed pretty cheap to me. All the Russians say it is a really, really good jacket. Way fuzzy and fluffy. I got the Russian stamp of approval:)

We had a ton of lessons fall through, like usual. We planned to meet with a guy named Roman.  He said okay I will see you at 7. It was 6:40 and we called him just to make sure he was on his way and he said he was leaving the house. We thought “oh great! This should be a great lesson.”  7 o’clock rolls around and nothing. We call him and he says he is only 5 minutes away. We wait 5 minutes. Nothing. 10 minutes. Nothing. 20 minutes and still nothing. At 7:30 we just left. We can't be waiting all day for him, and we have souls we’ve gotta save! Elder Sayers felt bad that we just left but if Roman wanted to meet with us, he would have been there. We can't be at his mercy the rest of the night just waiting for him. It was hard to just go, but it was necessary.  


Elder Sayers getting in on the Kitty Love

The guy with whom we had a baptismal date, a 70 year old man, met with us this week. We started with a prayer and he cut us off before we could start the lesson. He turned to us and said,  "Look here little boys. You are great, all the stuff you are doing is great, I know you want to preach to me but I don’t need that. I don't need anything from you guys right now. I just need a passport."  He needed a stamp or something in his passport so he could find better work in a different country. So everything we have taught him, the baptismal date he agreed to, the time we spent together, all of it was useless. I was speechless. I was thinking... you have the key to happiness in this life and the life to come; it is right in front of your face. I just wanted to yell at him and say "Open your eyes! You have such a great opportunity in front of you! What do you mean you only need a passport?!" But everybody has freedom to choose and that is hard for us. We can't make them accept it even though we know it is only going to help them.

 A man walking by asked us in English "Hey are you guys CIA?" We laughed and said "No." But then he asked if we were FBI... Of course if we were CIA or FBI then we would say no, so either way he wasn't going to believe us. 

CIA?  FBI?  I don't think so. 

We met a lady this week named Raiciya. I don't know how to spell it in English.   Раися. Imagine you are saying the word "Rice" but put a "Ya" at the end of it.  Anyway, she asked us where the bus stop was so we told her.  But she was a little old lady and we wanted to be nice so we walked with her to the bus stop. She was walking slow and was carefully placing each step she took. We thought she might be a little drunk but we didn't know for sure so we just kept walking. We got to a part in the sidewalk where the sidewalk steeply angled down for a foot or two and then leveled off again. She didn't see it and we didn't realize it would be a problem until she took a normal step and her foot landed a foot lower than she expected. She tumbled and totally ate it. It turns out She was very drunk!  Inside we were laughing but trying to be sensitive. Aww:( We kept walking and we were keeping a super close eye on her. She didn't fall again.   But we walked her within 10 feet of the bus stop. We told her "Alright, there it is. Just go straight on up, sit down and wait for your bus." She said "Thank you my sweets!" As she started walking away towards the bus stop we were watching. It was literally a straight line to the bus stop and then she could sit down.  But, she got about 5 or so feet away, started looking at a tree on the right, started leaning and walking to the right... then she tripped over the curb and belly-flopped flat in the grass again. We picked her up and picked up some of the stuff that fell out of her jacket... like a mason jar full of big orange wet chunks... it was the weirdest thing to see.  We sent her off on a bus, still not too sure she could make it home safely... poor lady. 

Russian Bible

We had an intense lesson with a man of another faith last night. He was trying as hard as he could to prove to us that we were wrong. We were talking and then he just threw scripture after scripture in our face about this that and the other. Pretty intense.. It was like he was trying to convince us using only the Bible and his knowledge/interpretation of it. We had the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and our testimonies. He was cool and all but he only knew the bible in their heads. He didn't have a personal testimony. We were preaching to him and it was the best feeling:) We asked him "So if the world ended tomorrow, would you be able to confidently say "' Yes I know that my church is true 100%'"? and he couldn't even give a simple 'yeah I know its true'. He beat around the bush, started quoting more scriptures from the Bible and even changed the subject to politics. Like dude... youre trying to tell us that we are crazy when we know 100% In our minds and in our hearts that this is true? Haha its so hard to explain but it was a way great experience:) Don't get me wrong, I love these people that believe in God! They are way dedicated to their faith, they read the Bible and study better than most people I have met, they are not afraid to talk to people about religion, but it is rough seeing how close they are to the truth... but yet so far! 

Cool Pot!

All in all, I am having a great time:) This whole mission thing isn't really hard. I mean yeah, we talk to people on the street 24/7 and most of the time they think we are silly little American boys (which truthfully, we are). But this is a great experience!  I am so grateful for this church and the blessing it is in our lives. 

 The Church is True and I Love You

Стареишина Гарднер
Elder Gardner

Having a Blast

Oh man! 3 months in! I am having a blast!  Russia is great! Just one quick side note about those pictures that Ksenya sent, I was probably on my tippy-toes for 90 percent of them.... I haven't grown yet!  We see SO MANY KITTIES here in Russia:) That is probably the reason I got sent here.   I forgot to tell you, I got your Halloween card exactly on Halloween!  Yeah, it was way cool.  We had a big zone training meeting on Halloween in a city about an hour from here. We rode over, had our meeting and on the ride back they gave us our mail. That was a little bit ago.  But, when President Brinton came down from Vladivostok this week he brought mail with him. I got your Christmas package! I am excited to open it.

I had no clue that Uncle Kyle and Mr. DeValk were good friends! That is way cool.   I don't have Mr. DeValk's email, but if you have a chance could you send it to me? Or maybe you could just ask him. I would like to get a copy of the music we used in Junior Year. We sang a song that was in Russian and I want to show it to Ksenya to see if she can translate it or maybe I can even read it now.  I don't know how well I speak Russian yet.

I pulled out 8000 Rubles today of personal money. (That’s about $160 U.S.)  I bought a big coat, a hat, and some leather gloves.  It really isn’t bad here. I love the weather! We don't need anything more than a big coat and maybe a scarf, it is pretty windy.  We had some super small snow the other day! Crazy! It started snowing as we were out talking to people. That makes talking to people harder on the streets because the streets become empty around 6 pm or so every day.

I think the coldest it has gotten so far is negative 5 degrees Celsius. That should be a little below 32... so maybe... 22?  I have no clue.  They don't use Fahrenheit here, pretty frustrating. But don't worry, I know how to calculate the temperature. You just use your two points and create a linear function that intersects both points. We know that 0 Celsius is 32 degrees Fahrenheit and -40 is -40 in both Fahrenheit and Celsius. Not too hard.

It is dark, like midnight kinda dark, at 7 pm every day. Pretty rough, we have to work so much harder during the day to make everything work. 

Our branch was struggling a little bit these past few weeks. But we had a big day yesterday. We had a giant 42 people at church!! That is CRAZY, but way cool!

One of our investigators, well not really an investigator, is named Max. He was a member, he went to New Zealand and met a woman. They got married and it didn't work out so he divorced her and came back to Russia. He married another woman in Russia but the only problem was he didn't fully divorce the woman from New Zealand. So he became technically a polygamist. He divorced the woman in Russia and now he is stuck. Technically he is still married to the woman in New Zealand even though they haven’t seen each other in 10 years or so. It is a dumb, dumb law and we can't get any help from the New Zealand government to do anything about it. All he has to do is contact the lady in NZ and have her sign the divorce paperwork and it can all be over. So if you know anybody who could have any pull with the New Zealand government or anything that might be able to help, please give them a call.   This guy is the strongest member I have ever met! He understands everything and has the strongest testimony but he is stuck in this stupid mess. He actually opened up Nakhodka for missionary work 15 years ago. The first Sacrament Meeting was in his living room. President Brinton's son taught Max 15 years ago, and now we get to teach him. It is a very cool experience. 

Anyways, this week was pretty rough. Not bad or sad or anything but just rough. We worked as hard as we could, talking to as many people as we could see, working on the street all day when all of our plans fell through. It was frustrating standing on the street at 6 o’clock. We were looking through all the names we had, seeing we had tried stopping by or calling every single one of them and every single one of them was busy or did not want to meet.  So we hit the streets, and there was nobody interested. Walking around for 3 hours, talking to everybody and every single person blows you off calling us a sect and stuff.   We were just lost this whole week.   It was all worth it though.  At the end of the week we looked back at our week and we got 3 times the number of new investigators we had wanted and almost reaching our other goals. It was rough being in the thick of it and writing down each night how we only got 1 lesson that day. After Church we looked back and saw that it was a pretty good week, considering everything.

Oh and one last story; we were out talking to people and when we said “Hi” to one man he looked real close at our name tags. He then stood up, backed up and shouted at us in English;  "Mormons?! You are Mormons?! Dude! That’s heresy! That’s heresy man!!"  Hahaha I was so speechless, this guy sounded just like a hippy who wanted to fight against "the man"! Pretty funny.  It put a smile on my face for the rest of the day:)

I miss you a lot! Hope everything is going good.  I love you!!  Don't forget, we get to Skype for Christmas!! Should be good. I don't have any information about that yet though. I will let you know when I find out that stuff. Oh, and also my first Korea trip is a week or two before Christmas! Weird... that will be 3 months in the country, which will be 5 months total.... which is almost 1/4 of my mission gone already. Whoa! I shouldn't be thinking like that. That makes it seem like I will be gone so soon.  Weird thoughts. Anyway, I love you!

Elder Gardner