Baptisms are on the horizon!

TERE!!!

This week, I sang for a man on the street, and we met with people from Nigeria, Vietnam (shout out to Elder Brandon Knight), the Middle East, and France (shout out Elder Ethan Walch and others there in France!). It was a GREAT week!

SHOUT OUT TO MY WARD!! Thank you SO much for this present!! 
I feel your prayers and support, thank you!!

The work:

Two of our investigators want to be BAPTIZED!! They will be baptized next weekend. One of them is a 10-year-old Russian girl. We went out to ice cream this week and travelled to church all together, so she is doing great :) The other is the Ukrainian man we have been meeting with! He is hilarious. In the Baltic Mission, whenever anyone accepts a date to be baptized, we call our mission president. The 10-year-old accepted a baptismal date on Monday night, so we had a dance party to a Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square song, then called our mission president to tell him the good news. The NEXT day, the Ukrainian man accepted a baptismal date. So we had ANOTHER dance party, and called our mission president AGAIN! Hahah he said, "Another one??" We are all so excited! 

We also met with many other people today. We invited many people to be baptized, and many are praying about it! We met with one woman for the first time, and when we asked why she wanted to meet, she said, "I have an interest towards the Book of Mormon...what it is?" Well, you better believe we explained the Book of Mormon! She has already started reading it and loves it. 

COOLEST STORY! Õde Goodell talked to a Vietnamese woman on the tram who invited us to her restaurant. We went that night, and she and her husband (from Italy) talked to us for a while! They made us pizza, and invited us to eat it in their upstairs room (because they don’t have tables for people...it’s a corner cafe). So this is a picture we took in their upstairs room! We met with the woman from Vietnam the next morning at an Asian cafe, and she wants to take the lessons with the missionaries in Vietnam! We are working on getting in touch with missionaries there to Skype with her :)

One of my favorite miracles from this week happened on Saturday. We were waiting outside one of the library rooms, and I heard a young man wearing a cool coat speaking on his phone. The only words I actually heard from the conversation were "church" and "God." I turned to the sisters and said, "He is talking about church and God. We have to talk to him." Unfortunately, he walked back into the quiet library room very quickly, so we couldn’t talk to him. We went downstairs and called people to set up lessons. We started getting our coats to leave, and I headed towards the restroom. Before I went inside the restroom, I looked back at Sister Goodell, and she was making hand signals at me to come back. She pointed with her finger, and I followed her eyes to...guess who?? The young man! He had come downstairs with his friend! They were at the vending machine, so I of course decided to go buy something at the vending machine so I would have a chance to talk to them. :) Long story short, I complimented his coat, and we started talking. He said he was on the way to church for his father’s funeral. He said his mom had died when he was 13. So now he is an orphan. We testified to him he would see them again, and we set up to meet for another day! Amazing that we talked with him just as he was on his way to his own father’s funeral. 

On top of everything, I was really sick this week, so I stayed in bed for a while! 

(Mom comment: She got to watch the movie called "Ephraim's Rescue" about a person who helped save pioneers 
trapped in a snowstorm while crossing the American plains.

Culture:

• In Russian, a "couple minutes" is actually 30 minutes hahahah.

• I’ve never seen a drinking fountain here before...

• Sidewalks are not shoveled, so we slip and slide everywhere!

• The movies are all correct....people wear big furry hats and huge winter coats here!! :)

Funny:

Õde Mischenko thinks herself a rapper..."If we pray, God provides the way!"

Our feet were cold after being outside contacting people, so we ate lunch with our feet in a hot bath :) 
I love my sisters!

Spiritual thought:

I realized something really interesting studying 1 Nephi 4 in the Book of Mormon this week. Nephi and his brothers go back to Jerusalem to get the plates, and that was a hard journey. Nephi had to give his brothers many "pump-up" speeches to encourage them to keep the Lord’s commandments with full purpose of heart! And when Nephi got the plates in Jerusalem from Laban, Laban's servant came back with Nephi. Nephi had to give another "pump up" speech to the servant in order to convince him to go with Nephi and his brothers. 

Well, I realized an interesting difference in Nephi’s language to "pump up" his brothers and the servant. His brothers had grown up religious, so they had heard about faith their whole lives. So when Nephi was trying to convince them to follow the Lord’s commandments, he used language such as "let us be faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord." (1 Nephi 4:1). That phrase made sense to them because they had heard about faith their whole lives. 

The servant, on the other hand, probably did not grow up "religious," seeing as how his master, Laban (whom he has lived with), may not have been as religious. So we can assume the servant did not know what "faith" even was. So when Nephi was "pumping up" the servant and encouraging and convincing him to come with them, Nephi used language such as, "Shall we not be diligent in keeping the commandments of the Lord?" (1 Nephi 4:34). We can see that Nephi changed his language slightly to meet the servant's needs. The servant may not have understood the concept of faith. But being a servant, he surely understood what diligence and hard work were. So Nephi changed his language to touch the servant’s heart.

Nephi is a  great example of coming to where others are and encouraging and convincing them in their language...a language they will understand.

So if there is someone in your life right now (a child, spouse, friend, grandparent, parent) whom you don’t get along with, evaluate the way you communicate with them. Perhaps the reason they are not responding is because you are not "speaking their language." 

I invite us all to pray to know how to better communicate with each other. We will be blessed for our efforts!

Trust in the Lord. Choose joy. Find peace.

Õde Smith-Driggs

2 Nephi 32:3 - Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, they speak the words of Christ. Wherefore, I said unto you, feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do.