Missionary Service of Elder Benjamin Moore: V-Day

Happy May!

Exactly 11 months ago today, I entered the MTC. Pretty crazy how fast it goes. Let's see if I can remember what happened this last week.

The first 9 days in Russia are a like a big party. Kinda. Leading up to the 9th of May. (V-Day) Victory day, the people get more and more riled up. On the 9th, the whole mission has to be inside after 6pm. With what's going on in Ukraine, people on the street are a bit edgier than normal against us. Normally it's just because we're missionaries, but now it's because we're missionaries AND Americans. At some point this last week, Elders Stucki and Walker, who live in the northern most area in Omsk, were on their way out of the branch. A couple guys followed them and a couple blocks later cornered them. They got beat up a little bit. Both taking some punches to the face and Elder Walker taking a knee. They were able to get out of there and run away. From that day until the 9th, President advised them to stay in after 7 pm. The Sisters (Sisters Taylor and Cisar) (Sister Cisar is from our Stake!) that are living up in that area have been transfered out and will be in my district and serve in the Southern area and branch here in Omsk. So now our branch and district will have 4 elders and 4 sisters. The northern branch will just have 4 elders.

So with all the changes, We're doing a lot of apartment hunting. We're looking for a new apartment for ourselves, for the sisters who are moving down to our area and for Elder and Sister Walker who need a new place as well.

We have been doing a lot of sign boarding for English down by the river. Since the weather has been so nice, we've gotten a lot of numbers! So hopefully it will really boost our English attendance!

The office elders, Prince and Miller were here on Saturday and Sunday to take care of some work with the branch. It was fun to have Elder Prince over again. All the members loved seeing him on Sunday, and four Babushkas asked him for blessings. That's what happens when you return to somewhere you've served for 8 months I guess!

The Nikiforov family had us over for dinner on Friday along with the other elders. They are one of my favorite families here. You'd almost think they were American. They've got four kids. three daughters and a son. Their two little girls remind me a lot of Katie and Jane and how crazy they can get... except they run around yelling in Russian. Russian has a cutesy form for just about everything. like how AnnaMarie always says boysies instead of boys to Jack and Aiden. So with every other word they say in the cutesy form they're super hard to understand! But you don't really need to understand what they're saying to understand the kids. Kids are the same everywhere.

Well that's about my week!

Have a good one!!

Lots of love!

Elder Moore