New Water Filter, Berdsk

Hope you're all having as good a P-Day as I am!

This wasn't an overly eventful week. One day was spent on exchanges with the Assistants, and another with the elders from Berdsk. The stories worth telling came from the exchanges. Before that though, we got a new water filter system!! You can't drink water here straight from the tap. You can't even just brush your teeth with tap water. You want everything to go through a filter. The filter systems we use have three towers with filters in each tower that need to be chaged every few months. I don't know that many of the missionaries are good at actually changing the filters. Our system was old so when the office got a shipment of new ones we grabbed one and installed it. As you can see the old filters were grose, and now we have a nice spout to use! The new upgrade may have put us to the nicest elders apartment inthe mission. 

I went to the Palace last Tuesday with Elder Hendryx for our exchanges. We did a lot of Area Book surgery and then had a couple meetings. You'd think the Assistants to the President would have a perfect area book, but it wasn't the case. We got them set on the right track. We had two lessons. One was a first. 

Friday came around and I went on exchanges with Elder Klein in my area. We had four meetings between Friday evening and Saturday day. Two of which became new investigators! It was a quality exchange. 

Just before coming to email today, we were in the center and as we went down into the metro, I saw a couple that were backpacking. Huge backpacks on their backs and a normal backpack on front. So I walked to catch up with them and see what language they were speaking. My initial thought when I see people who are obviously backpacking across Russia is that "Well here you are... in the middle of siberia with huge packs... Backpacking across Russia isn't as fun as you thought it would be is it??". We caught up to them and they were speaking GERMAN! So I started speaking in German with them. They were a couple from Germany. The guy from Berlin and the woman from a city in the north. Ostsea? They were really nice and had just gotten into the city the night before and are leaving tomorrow. They asked us what there was to see here, so we pointed them to the ice sculpture gardens down by the river. Talk about a brain workout. I have been able to speak German a few times on my mission, but rarely to real Germans who speak it natively. I kept throwing in Russian words that they wouldn't understand and then they wouldn't understand of course so I'd have to think real hard for the German word. My mind has been set to Russian for so long, but our few minutes of conversation boosted my confidence that it's all still up in there somwhere! I'm thinking about studying both German and Russian at BYU. I'm sure those two together along with English will have to open some doors for me whether it is in business, government, or the medical field. 

There was a Worldwide devotional the other day featuring Randall L. Ridd, and he Talked a bit about Leo Tolstoy! The Russian Novelist. 

Leo Tolstoy

The life of the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace,illustrates this point. Leo Tolstoy had a rocky youth. His parents died when he was about 13. Educated by his older brothers in the ways of alcohol, gambling, and promiscuity, Leo was less than diligent in his studies. At the age of 22, he began to feel that his life lacked real purpose, and he wrote in his journal, “I am living like a beast.” Two years later he wrote, “I am 24 years old and I still have done nothing.” Tolstoy’s dissatisfaction motivated him to begin a lifelong quest to find, mostly through trial and error, the purpose of his life—the why. Before he died at the age of 82, he concluded in his journal, “‘The whole meaning and joy of life,’ … lay in the search for perfection and understanding God’s will”¹—and, I would add, doing God’s will.

It has been said that “the two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why” you were born.² Because we have the gospel, we don’t have to spend our entire life trying to discover its purpose. Instead, we can focus on fulfilling that purpose.

So I guess that's that! God has already given us our purpose! The real test in life comes to how well we are going to fulfill it. 

Hope you all have a great week. 

Much Love,

Elder Moore

Pictures:

Old filter system: In the way on the counter. 

 The tubes started out white. 

Elder Stucki going to town.

New Filter system! Nice spout, and hidden under the sink.

Also, Dad and Christy sent a Christmas Package two months ago and it just got here the other day!! So Christmas is saved, and all is well. :)