Hey! What’s up? It is so weird to think that my birthday is in 3 days! I don’t feel any older:)  I feel still young and vibrant! It feels like I don’t have a birthday. We are always hurrying somewhere and rushing to do something. We don’t have a whole lot of time to think about birthdays and stuff :) Haha  

 

Yellow water coming out of our shower.  Yuck.  :)

 

I am glad you liked the pictures! I haven't sent any in a while :(  The Hare Krishnas are SUPER nice people. They are definitely a force for good in the world I just don’t really know what they believe in. They have interesting beliefs but strong morals and I think that is great. I didn't know their church was a worldwide thing! Pretty cool, if you see them make sure you say "Hare Krishna" as a hello. That is how they say hello to each other :) 

 

I had the pop rocks in my sumka (my bag) because I wanted to give the poprocks to some Russians on the bus ride over there. They have a form of pop rocks here but it isn't the same. All the people who tried them think they are the coolest thing :) 

 

At the Elder Nelson conference last week we all sang a version of "I know that my Redeemer lives". "Я знаю жив искупитель мой"  or Russian/English  "Ya znayoo zheev eeskoopeetel moi". It was really pretty! I decided the day before the conference that I didn't want to be bothered reading the words off a paper... so I memorized it :) Oh and I didn't know this either but Elder Nelson speaks a bit of Russian. He could bear his testimony in Russian. Pretty awesome!

 

I am not too sure why Elder Nelson was in Russia. After our meeting he flew on out to see Lake Baikal with President and Sister Brinton. Luckyyy! Elder Nelson was really complimentary of us. He finished his talk and stepped down from the podium and right before he walked out the doors he said two things to us. "Tell your parents I love them, and tell them thank you for sending us the very best". At most every zone conference or big training that we have with the missionaries and President Brinton they tell us how great we are as missionaries and they tell us we are the best. I don’t know if that is a common thing in missions, where the president and wife praise the missionaries openly :) But sure does help to keep us enthusiastic about the work... I kind of like it. haha   

We made cake.  Yum.

 

My week was overall pretty good. We had a baptism! Kristina, the one who loves Elder Brown, got baptized. She was making comments this whole week about how she was scared of the water and how she wasn't too pumped about being under the water for a long time. We kept assuring her that it would be quick – just down and up quickly and there would be no problems. When the member who was baptizing her put her under, her leg popped up. As you know, if she isn't completely underwater then you have to do the dunk a 2nd time. The member held her underwater hoping that one of the missionaries would push her leg down.  She started freaking out and came up gasping for air. She got all the way under on the first try but also was really scared. I am sure that now she is VERY scared of water! Wonderful.  hahah. All is well, she is baptized and next week she will receive the Holy Ghost. Missionary work continues in the Motherland. 

 

We also had a big training thing this week for the Presidency of our branch. There is a program on the computer called MLS and it is how the church keeps track of Tithing funds and so forth. We had to set that up this week so we went to Irkutsk, got the computer, brought it back to Angarsk, set it up, hooked up the router and got everything installed and yesterday was the training. A senior couple flew out from Novosibirsk to help us but the only problem is that they don’t speak Russian. Yesterday Elder Brown and I were at the church for 9 hours working nonstop trying to set up for the baptism, do some training, work on the tithing and stuff on the computer, take down the font for the baptism and so on... All the while translating for this senior couple. They are wonderful but boy was it a lot of work :) During the training the Russian people kinda just talked over one another and we had to try to translate their questions and conversations to English for the Senior couple and then translate the answer or instructions into Russian for our members and it was pretty hectic:) I love it!! Yesterday was a really good day:) 

 

I just have one bit of advice to give this week. We had some news come up within our branch, and now missionaries won’t be playing games with the members each Friday. It will now be the members’ responsibility to run our Game Night. As soon as we told our members, a few of them freaked out. They got very upset that such a change could be made without their permission and they were starting to make rude comments. It was kind of sad to see how quickly people could get insulted and upset - especially over such a small thing. Another example happened when we were setting up the baptismal font. We set it out and filled it half way up with water on Saturday night. If we tried to fill it all up on Sunday we wouldn't have enough time. We would fill it halfway on Saturday night and Sunday morning we would fill the rest with warm water to keep it from being too cold. One of the members came in all upset Saturday night. They demanded to know why we were filling it up a day early. It would get cold overnight they explained to us. They asked if we were trying to freeze Kristina and it was just a bit rude how they spoke to us. When the member heard the rest of our plan, they calmed down and all was good. These experiences reminded me of 2 scriptures in the New Testament:  James 1:19 and James 3:5

 

I hope we always are keeping our ears more open than our mouths. I can learn something new from EVERY person that I meet. I know that is true for each one of us and I urge each one of you to remember that:) I know we can be more happy and we will avoid contention a lot easier if we listen to the whole story before we talk.

 

I love you all! I know the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the true Church of God on the Earth today. I miss you all :)

Stay Frosty

Elder Gardner

A Visit From Elder Nelson

This week was good!  It is hard to measure success sometimes here. We had less lessons than normal, and not as many new investigators but we were able to set a baptismal date with a man named V____. He is about 50 and lives alone here in Angarsk. He is way cool. So far we have only had one lesson with him but he seems very ready to accept the Gospel. 

 

The weather has been good, but we just found out this weekend that we should be wearing suit coats all the time unless the temperature exceeds 27 Celsius. (About 80 degrees F) 25 degrees Celsius is pretty warm so I think we will be getting a lot hotter here in the future. Thats okay though, just a tiny thing. Nothing to worry about.

 

We are moving into the last week of May! Wow... Then it will be June and Elder Brown's and my birthdays are soon :) His is June 3rd just like Jared. We are planning on having Sushi and Coke and watching some videos from "The District" as a special birthday treat :)

 

The sun is up all the time nowadays. I haven't seen the moon in a few weeks haha :) Right now the sun sets around 9:30 at night.  That's good though, because there are a bunch of hooligans running around.  Hopefully the sunlight will keep the hooligans from being silly.

 

Yesterday was the 24th here and was the 23rd for you guys. We had a pretty special day... I mean I don't want to brag but we spent the whole day with a pretty cool guy. He was with us for our Sacrament meeting and we had a missionary meeting afterwards.  At the end of our meetings, he said "Please tell your parents that I love them"... You may be wondering who it is... Oh, it was just my close and personal friend Russell M. Nelson.  He came down to say hi :) Haha yeah I am not too sure why he came down but it was way cool. I shook his hand 2 times!  It is pretty weird to see him from the side or from the back. Normally we only see his face when he speaks at General Conference. His wife is actually really cool, I never knew! She spoke to us for about 15 minutes before Elder Nelson spoke and she had great ideas. Really cool. For both of their talks during sacrament meeting there was a translator and that was cool being able to understand both in English and in Russian. Some of the sentences I would have translated a different way, but it was a cool experience nonetheless. It was a very sad weekend though, Since they leave in July, this weekend was probably the last time many of us will see President Brinton and Sister Brinton. I am sad to see them go but I am excited to have a new Mission President coming in. 

 

I am excited to hear about the new Lakewood Presidency (*He means Bishopric, but he has been dealing with Branch Presidencies)! I thought they just recently did some reorganizing.. maybe I am mistaken but I thought changes recently were made. 

Last week was a good week, but this week was pretty good too:) We go to feed homeless people every Tuesday, I don't know if I have told you. There is a church here called "Harry Krishna" or something like that, I don't know how it would be spelled in English. They are way nice people but they are a mix between Bhuddist and Christian and Hindu and its a bit weird. Super nice people though. They make good food too. Each week they feed us some soup, oatmeal, and tea and then we feed homeless people for an hour. Normally the homeless people are nice but sometimes they are SUPER impatient. They often bring jars with them and we can fill them up so they will have extra food for later in the week. Normally we will grab two jars from a person and go to fill them up but on the way we will get at least 5 more people shouting and holding jars up "Fill mine up!" We have to say "Hold your horses and we will be back in 2 minutes after we fill these jars". Some are very kind and thankful and that is such a blessing. It is always wonderful to work with nice people.  Those are the best kinds of people in all aspects of life :)

Serving the Hare Krishna

Oh and by the way, the jacket that I am wearing in the picture of me palming a basketball is new. I bought a cool track suit with Russia written on it. All the cool kids and hooligans here wear track suits so I got one!

By the way. I got my birthday package!! Super cool:) Thank you so much! I opened it up early I hope you're all right with that. We have a member here who was asking us the difference between a burrito and a taco. They don't have those here. He has never seen either one and we told him that we would make some. Now I've got that sweet taco shell gadget and some El Pato and we are making tacos this week:)

Elder Cluff saw the El Pato and asked "Why did your parents send you a random can of sauce?" And I was trying to explain to him that it was super good and we ate it often at home. Then Elder Brown came into the room, saw the can and got very excited "Elder Gardner! Do you know how much I love this stuff?! This is home for me! I ate this ALL THE TIME!" Hahah Elder Brown was very excited to see it again but Elder Cluff just didn't get it...  Thank you for the sauce:)   

This desk has a lot going on!

Korea will not be this week. We should have Kristina's Baptism later this week. She is doing good even though the Sisters are now teaching her. She still loves Elder Brown though... haha.  And I am not going to Korea the week after that. That is our birthdays. I think I have to go the next week:) That is my guess. 

Making Dinner in a bag! Chicken legs with vegetables and seasonings and cook it for an hour:) 

Real quick to end this letter, I heard a great joke from a Russian this week. What is similiar about a divorce in the Southern States of America and a tornado in the Southern States?  Both will take your trailer away from you:) Hahaha.  Those Russians think they are funny.  :)

 

I miss you all and hope you are doing good! You're in my prayers, and I hope youre all staying frosty.

Elder Gardner

Warming up!

This week was a good week:)   I am so glad we got the chance to talk last week:) It was great seeing and Skyping with you all! A well deserved treat if I do say so myself. I am super happy. 

 

I had a busy travel week last week.  I left Monday night at about 6:30 pm.  I took a train to another town about an hour and a half away - that's where the airport is. At midnight we caught a flight to Khabarovsk, then had a few hours of layover before our flight to Vlad. We got there about 6:30 am. We expected to meet the other elders in the airport but they didn't show up until about 11 am -  haha - so we did some people watching :) There were about 100 sailors that marched into the airport with their rucksacks and uniforms and stuff. Pretty cool:)

Ironically, I never made it into the city of Vladivostok. From the airport I took another train to Artyom (the small city about an hour away from Vlad). I still don't know if there were any packages waiting for me at the mission office.  But when I called there I was told that there wasn't anything waiting for me. Hopefully next time! President Brinton is flying out to visit us this week so hopefully he will bring some mail if there is any. If the president doesn't bring anything then I can check again in 2 weeks when I go to Korea.  

 

Anyways, I worked in Artyom from Tuesday until Thursday and then Thursday night at 8 pm or so we started our flights back to Angarsk. This is probably all superrrr boring to read so I will stop there! Haha but you get the point. 9 hours of flying each way plus layovers and no real food to eat. Only Kit-Kats and Coke. Terrible: p

Crazy 4 am sunrise from the plane:)

Our work in Artyom was pretty average. We were on the street most of the day in the rain. Good thing I brought my blue jacket. It isn't waterproof but it helped:) We met a big guy who was probably 30 or so. He told us ALLL about his days in the Army and how he was the best shooter and this and that and we listened very intently. Russians tend to be able to talk... and talk... and talk.. hahaha it is really quite impressive I dont think I could talk for a long time about nothing like they do:)

The second day in Artyom(Wednesday) while I was getting dressed one of the elders told me that I had a rip in my pants. I took them off to look and it turns out I had a GIANT rip in my pants. Probably a foot and a half long. This went all the way along the back of my pants from the belt line and down. ahahaha I dont know how long that has been there! I hope not too long... I was wearing a jacket the day before, but who knows what the people walking behind us saw! Hahaha whoops:) There was a seamstress close by though so she fixed them for 100 rubles:) (About $2.00)

Ripped Pants!



I had to go to the seamstress dressed like this!

I am super jealous that you met with President Perkinson. He seems like a great guy! It is super weird to think that a ton of the people with whom I have been working will never know him. There are a lot of missionaries going home and they won't have a chance to meet him. Pretty crazy to think about.  I will have almost exactly a year to work with President Perkinson. I am excited!  Without any time to learn the language, I am sure they will be relying on us missionaries to help them understand what is being said.   I have been practicing my translating skills! Hopefully I can keep up and be a blessing instead of a burden:) 

 

You are right, there are not a lot of missionaries in our mission. I heard one time that our mission has the smallest ratio of missionaries per square mile. That means we have the most area to cover per missionary out of all the missions in the world!  I think it is great that President Perkinson is thinking about opening up Yakutsk.  I have heard the city is kinda like the Yeti. We hear stories about it from time to time but I don't know anybody who has ever been there. Of course everyone wants to go there and open it up but in reality there are little chances of it happening. I would love to go hahaha I have no clue what I would do if they asked me to go - but it sounds great!

 

 

We met a cool girl this past week too. Her name is Kristina and she is about 19 or so. We started teaching her the gospel and she was super interested. She was asking questions, coming to church, always asking when the next time we could meet was. Then we got the bad news. She loves Elder Brown... dang it:( Now we can't teach her. We gave her over to the sister missionaries and they teach Kristina now. Oh well, she still is super excited about the Gospel and has a desire to get baptized:) Hopefully she wasn't meeting with us just to get close to Elder Brown. We will find out!

Elder Brown and I went to Papa Johns today! Soup with tea and a calzone for 220 rubles:)  (About $4.50)  Great deal!

That's me palming a basketball haha.  I am super short but I kinda got big hands

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyways, that is about it for this week:) I hope all is well at home, I miss you all <3

 

Stay Frosty 

Elder Gardner 

 

Mother's Day Skype!

*We got to Skype with Ryan for longer than we probably should have for Mother's Day!  His sister, Megan joined us on the call from Utah, so we were all connected, and his aunt Susie and cousins Kreston and Conner came over for the call. 

Ryan was calling from a library in Angarsk.  He looked and sounded great!  He said he's lost 20 lbs since arriving in Russia, but he is working very hard, and he is really enjoying his experiences there.   It was wonderful to see and speak with him!  We can't wait until Christmas to do it again. 

A Crazy Week!

I am doing good! This week was a pretty crazy week:) We sent home Elder Pack last week and this week a new missionary flew in from Vladivostok. His name is Elder Brown. I hate to say it but he isn't an Eagle... He is a Rough Rider! (Do you understand that reference Mom?)

He grew up in Pima, Arizona! Pretty cool guy. He played against Joseph City in football and he probably played against Austin at one point:) Small world!  

After we sent off Elder Pack, Elder Cluff and I cleaned the house and rearranged the furniture! It looks a lot better in our apartment:) We were alone for a few days and then Elder Luekenga (pronounced Lookingay) and Elder Brown came back. We got about 3 days of work in before Elder Luekenga received a call from President Brinton telling him that he got transferred. Random:)  Anyway, now Elder Luekenga is gone and I am with Elder Brown and Elder Cluff  is going to be with Elder Lusk. Everything got switched up, but President Brinton knows best:) I am sure we will find success despite the chaos!

Send my love to the Nakhodka branch! I miss them, it feels so weird. I was there for about 6 months but time just flew by!

Thanks for the photos of family.  I noticed Donna's arms in that picture! She is ripped! I need to work out harder here, maybe she could send me a workout plan:)

I have been bragging to everyone that my parents know the new Mission President and are going to breakfast with him:) Everyone is jealous! Haha that is so cool.

The weather this week was bad.  One day it was super hot, but we had to wear our suit coats and jackets. Our rule is that we wear jackets as long as the majority of people are still wearing jackets too. Super lame. Some of these old ladies wear their big heavy jackets literally all year round. They never take them off. Ever. Ha ha ha So one day it was hot, the next day it was raining and cold and windy. The next day it rained all night, the rain stopped in the morning and snow came down. Then it stopped snowing and it rained again. After that we had small snow balls, they looked like BB gun pellets. Almost like hail, but it didn't hurt. We were just sitting there thinking... "What the.... hail? (Read it quickly and it becomes funny:)) Hopefully the weather evens out pretty soon, we have been in the cold for long enough!

I can't wait to skype you for Mother’s Day! Hope everything works out! I miss you all and love you too:) Happy Mother’s day to all.

Elder Gardner

Nine Months

My week was good! We had a good day yesterday! Right at dinner time all of our plans for the night fell through, we were stuck on the street for the last 3 hours of the night. It wasn't too bad because we met a lot of cool people who seem to be interested.

I again ask for forgiveness;  I haven't been all too good about writing the things that happen here in Russia. I should do better at that. You asked about the wedding we attended.  Nobody was wearing name tags because we took them off for the wedding:) Probably better without those at a Russian wedding/government building kinda thing. 

We spend part of our time in Angarsk, but also part of our time in Irkutsk.  When we go to Irkutsk we pack an overnight kinda bag, and go out on the street to the nearest bus stop. We just have to wait about 10 minutes for a big greyhound type bus to roll up. It’s got a sign stuck in the window saying "Angarsk to Irkutsk" and we hop on pay our fee and take the hour long ride over to Irkutsk. The bus just drives through the city of Irkutsk so you have to be observant. You walk to the front of the bus so the driver knows you want to get off and then he stops at the bus stop of your choosing:) Pretty easy. Normally we are only there for a day or so. 

Mom asked about cats.  We have a lot fewer stray cats here in Angarsk. There are more stray dogs though. We were talking to one of our friends here named V___.   We are trying to help him quit smoking. He is old and smoked for 40+ years. We need to help him find an activity to keep his mind busy. His eyes don’t work very well, so he can't read. Any ideas? Anyway, as we were talking outside his apartment on a park bench, a cat strolled on up. I reached down to pet the cat and it really liked me. The cat jumped up on my lap and got dirt on my pants. Dang Cat! Anyway, I kept petting it and it was cute. That’s about all the cat experience I have had here so far in Angarsk. 

 

I am sorry I wasn’t able to attend Michael Hopper’s Farewell talk in church.  I would have loved to go.  He is such a good guy, he is definitely going to make a difference in the lives of many:)  I am sad that I missed it but I will be home for his homecoming talk.  It’s cool that they had his ward and anyone who wanted to come up and sing in the choir.   Every time we have a big missionary conference in Vladivostok, we sing that Army of Helaman/Sisters in Zion song... But we sing it in Russian:) It’s really cool.  Our church is up on the 3rd and 4th floors of a big highrise in downtown Vlad. We open up the windows of the church building and sing out to the people in the center of town. Pretty awesome! 

Michael Hopper spoke in church before leaving for Panama.  Cameron and Aubrey got in on the photo op.

How are our home teaching families doing? Please send a big Privyet to all of them for me:)

I am super excited to skype with you all for Mother’s Day in a few short weeks:) I hope all is well. My companion told me that Google Plus does multi camera skyping. You can chat with different people in different locations. Maybe that could be useful! I will see you all soon, and don’t forget to 

Stay frosty!

Elder Gardner

Good Week

I am so sorry about last week.  I wrote a letter to the Schindele’s for their birthday and then Mrs. Schindele replied and mentioned a talk that she was going to be giving at her church soon about the parables. I started writing a note to her about the parables and what I thought and the time totally slipped away from me. I am sorry. This week will be good though.

Our week was a good one! The work is going good. The Assistants to the President came and visited us and we worked with them for 2 days. I really enjoy working with them. Do you remember Elder Jaeckel? His mom sent me the camera battery and I brought it to him. He is one of the APs and he goes home in a month!

I can’t wait for Mother’s Day in 3 weeks :) It honestly feels like we just skyped a week ago back in Nakhodka! I would have loved to go to DC with you.  That sounds SUPER cool! I could bring some friends and we could follow you around and be your crew. Beat up on the politicians who don’t vote the way you tell them to. Haha I actually really want to go. Maybe when I get back we can go and straighten out DC.  J

Beautiful Day in Angarsk

I will try to be better about the information I share about Angarsk. We aren't near the ocean but it is still pretty windy. We are not too far from Lake Baikal though, the world’s largest fresh water lake :)  The weather here is pretty crazy though. One day was hot, about 25 degrees Celsius and we were sweating all day. The next day we woke up and everything was cloudy, it was snowing hard. About an hour later it was hot again and all the snow melted, and then for the rest of the day it rained. The weather is fickle. Hard to plan for it, we normally just wear our suits and a light coat on top of it. Russians here wear big coats and hats even when it is hot outside. They don’t seem to go by weather conditions.  In their opinion if it is before June then you still should be wearing boots and coats.

Lazy sidewalk builders in Russia.  :)

 

There is a center part of Angarsk and it is pretty cool. It has nice old buildings, cobblestone streets and it looks a bit like old town Puerto Rico but less Hispanic haha. We normally go there to talk to people and sometimes they try to be mean but I don’t think they are mean. They are just kinda silly. This one guy told me "I am Russian so I don’t need what you are trying to tell me" Haha. All we can do is pray for them and love them anyways. Like it says in Og Mandino's book "The Greatest Salesman in the World"   Love is the key to success in all ventures. Without it I will fail though I possess all the skills in the world. There is something I can learn from every man I meet.

Speaking of learning something new... This week I started doing a little bit of studying in the Bible. Now you might say to yourself... This seems pretty late to START studying the word of the Lord... I would answer that I am now studying some passages in Hebrew and Greek. We have some study materials that are written in Hebrew and Greek and it really helps us to understand the original meaning better. Sometimes with the different translations of the Bible and what not it is hard to understand what the author meant. The older translations definitely help :) It’s pretty cool.

There is also this CD that we have here called "Defending the Faith" by Daniel C. Peterson. He is a lecturer and he gives a talk about all the criticisms the Church has encountered over the past 50 or so years and he dissects them. It is a very faith promoting CD. I would recommend it to everyone :)

In our branch we have a lot of newly baptized members. We have had about 4 baptisms in the past month. Lots of good things are happening for this small branch. We don’t have to do as much during Sacrament Meeting here as we did in Nakhodka. The members here seem to pull their own weight and that is really nice to see.

There was a wedding in Angarsk with two of our new members. They are fabulous! The marriage ceremony lasted about 1 minute 30 seconds altogether. We walked into the little wedding chapel, the bride and groom walked to the front by a table set up and a lady standing there. The lady gave a little speech basically saying "Do you promise to love each other forever and be good to each other and stuff?" The bride and groom both said yes then they signed this paper sitting on the table. Music started playing and then everyone formed a line to hug and congratulate the bride and groom. There was about 15 people in our wedding party which was a lot bigger than most other people at the Zaks (The wedding place). We took some pictures and then went to the reception at the church :) Fun stuff!  When we were taking pictures it felt more like prom than a wedding but that’s just an 18 year old guys opinion about it :)

 

We live 4 elders in an apartment and when the APs visited us there were 6 of us there. Fun stuff! It’s always a party. My companion is a small town country boy. He reminds me of Jared and Austin because he grew up in a high school with about 200 kids and a small town. He always went hunting and fishing and mudding in his truck. It is way fun to talk to him, he is Zone leader for the Zone of missionaries out here in the Western part of the mission.

That is so crazy, Michael is going on a mission soon! He is getting so grown up :) Please send my love to the ward and to the Hopper family!

I love you all! Hope all is going well.

Elder Gardner