Missionary Service of Elder Benjamin Moore: Mothers' Day & Victory Day

Hello Everyone!!

I hope all of you mothers had a great Mothers' Day yesterday! It was great Skyping all of you yesterday! I guess we'll talk again in seven months. :)

We were pretty busy this week, which is weird because we had fewer meetings than maybe any other week in my mission. We only had one lesson with a member present. The first nine days of May for Russia are all leading up to Victory Day, so not many people were willing to meet, and those that were willing, didn't show up. So that's a bit of a bummer.

All of our English contacting and sign boarding has paid off though! We had about 25 people at English this week! That's up from about 6 regulars the first week I was here in Omsk. :) AnnaMarie asked me what sign boarding is. It's also called street boarding? But we have a little 3 or 4 foot tall stand with a chalk board on one side and a white board on the other that we set up on a sidewalk or down by the river where it'll catch people's eyes. Then we talk to people and get their numbers.

We work a lot with the youth here as Omsk has a lot! Every Wednesday we go to the youth night and invite our younger investigators. This week on Saturday we had an additional youth fireside. President Gibbons (mission president), President Drachov (Novosibirsk District President), and Elder Gushin (A member of the Seventy in our mission) drove to Omsk (about an 8 hour drive, but Elder Gushin makes it in 6) and did a fireside as well as Branch Conference on Sunday.

Our branch got kinda re-organized. We now have a full branch presidency! Before it was President Karazin with Senior Elder Walker as his councilor...and me as the translator between them as Elder Walker doesn't speak enough Russian. Now though, we've got Brother Yuri as the first councilor and Ivan Akulov as the second councilor. Ivan, or Vanya in "short form," is a 19-year-old guy who was baptized a little over a year ago, received the Melchizedek Priesthood a few weeks ago, and has yet to serve a mission. He's great and always willing to help the missionaries. I've sent pictures of him before.

We've looked at a few more apartments lately, and found one for the sisters that's pretty nice! So if everything goes to plan, we're meeting tonight to sign the contract. Now we've just got to find a new apartment for ourselves.

President Gibbons is an amazing man. Since we are not yet a Stake, he is the President over the mission and the District. Since we are a Preparatory District, the burden is shared a bit by President Drachov. President was at church early on Sunday doing interviews for a bunch of the members, and after church, he interviewed all eight of the missionaries, as well as about 8 or 9 members who needed interviews as well. So he was pretty busy! Interviews with President are few and far between because of how crazy our mission is. This is only the third one I've had since getting to the field. It was good though. He talks us up and makes us feel like we're the best! He also told us all that he wants to meet our wives and hold our children. :)

So Easter was a while ago, but there is a really cool video.. that you all probably know about already. But go to this link and watch the video they have there! in ENGLISH and for all of you with some language skills!!... in RUSSIAN and in SPANISH (for Christy!),PORTUGUESE and GERMAN and FRENCH and JAPANESE and KOREAN. Sorry.. no Bulgarian, Serbian or Greek. :)

And this is where I run out of things to say and just send you all my pictures. :)

I'm doing well, enjoying my time here and working hard.

Lots of Love,

Elder Benjamin Moore