Letter #25 from Russia

Hey Family!

So this week has been great! We had an awesome Zone Conference on my Birthday this past week and I thought I had gotten off safe, until everyone stopped in the middle of it and sang me happy birthday and gave me cookies... haha! It was really cool/embarrassing! It made my day though. Also, in Zone conferences, usually the Zone leaders, Assistants, President and his wife teach things things called "Break outs" essentially two hour lessons/practices with the missionaries, but this time, my companion and I were assigned to do one too for some reason. They've never that before and I thought it was just because my companion was district leader, but none of the other district leaders did it... So that was weird. My comp didn't really want to do it, so I had to do a lot of the planning and get him fired up for it! haha! It was pretty exciting! We did a lesson about Faith Hope and Attitude! If no one in that room got anything out of it, we did at least!
So last week, I was all frustrated at a girl because she called my language bad, but this week the president of our branch told me I should translate more because I speak better than everyone else and my companion was told by another girl that he couldn't speak at all, while she had no problem understanding me... haha! I've come to accept the fact that even to the end of my mission, there will be people who have no idea what I am saying and will tell me speak terribly, and there will be others who say I speak like a native. I've learned I need to ignore all of that because if you're teaching by the spirit, what's coming out of your mouth won't make a difference what language it's in. I think I came out with that in mind, but as I've learned the language, I really have tried to really too much on it.
I'm having a great time! I'm not being blessed with a hundred baptisms like those in PERU!!! But... I'm doing the Lord's work and I know that what I'm doing here will be a force for Good and a devastating force against Satan. I didn't come out here to just to be the Lord's tool, I came out here to be unusually effective in the Lord's hand, to do the things that only I can do.

I've got to go! I love you all!

Elder Svortz!