Letter #5 from Russia

Heeeeyyy!!

So this week has been a good one. But before I get started I just want to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!! (A few days ago...) This is great! Even if I forget your birthday, I have a while to remember before I write you! haha! Just kidding! I remembered on the day of. I even wrote it down in my journal as proof and so that I would remember to mention it in the email home!

Please underline your questions every time! It helps! To answer your questions:

1) My companion is from St. George.

2) I'm not even using my own bedding, they already had stuff here... haha! In fact I'm not even using any blankets, it gets so hot in our apartment! You can't adjust the heating here, so you either have heat or you don't. They turned the heating on and boy is it hot! It is meant to keep things warm in like, -40 F, so right now, when it is 35 F, it's like an oven.

3) We watched Conference in the branch building on a computer.

4) I made two withdrawals because... I don't remember. There is a limit on how much you can take at one time. That's probably why.

Mary better go on a mish. Just kidding. She can get married. But seriously. Go on a mission. But you can get married if you want. After your mission. No, do what's right... mission.

Also, I should tell you, if a russian guy tries to add any of you as a friend on facebook, it's probably Valyery Belonoshkin. He's wonderful and he has pictures to give you. So family, check your facebooks!

So Russian fact of the week: Milk comes in bags. It makes perfect sense. Also, people here are so superstitious! We saw these two women freak out about a black cat crossing in front of them. We pet it and they were so confused why we would do that! haha!

So we have this investigator, Faina. She is so great. She randomly started singing opera for us in the middle of our lesson. She's really good. We're going to try to get her to help some members here because NO ONE CAN SING IN RUSSIA! it's terrible. I love it. Well, Faina can sing... but other than her... no one. She's so sweet to. She was saying that there were a lot of things that she did not like about our members, (she's very proper and a lot of our members are very poor and... well... not very proper.) and she wasn't sure what was so different about us and different churches. So we asked her why she kept coming and she started crying as she said she came because two young men cared about who she was and bothered to call her every night simply to see how she was doing. it was very sweet and at that moment I realized that we really can make a difference. Even if all I got on my mission was that one experience, the knowledge that just one old woman benefited from our kindness and felt loved, than my mission was a success.

But obviously I want baptisms.

I had a dream that I saw patrick at a restaurant. It was funny.

We ran into this guy who knew English very well and lived in America for a while (When that happens, it is the best day ever.) and we actually got to talk to him!! not just bulldoze him with the gospel because we didn't know what he was saying! It was really funny because as we were talking to him, he said he had a friend from Colorado and he randomly just started talking about these "mormons" (here, we call ourselves the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints so he didn't know that we were in fact "Mormon") Apparently the mormon church was founded in the 1700's by some immigrant from Europe. We tried asking if it was Brigham young or Joseph Smith, but he kept saying it was someone else. He then said that The Mormons were very much like free masons and that they "hardly relate to Christians". It was really funny. We wanted to correct his knowledge, but he suddenly had to go. I wonder if he figured it out by reading the pamphlets we gave him that used the word mormon quite liberally...

Well, I have to go! Pray for me please! I pray for everyone back home everyday! I hope everything is going well! I love you all!

Elder,
Love Swartz. (haha! I thought it was funny.)