Peanut Butter is GONE !

CRAZY that this transfer is almost over!  After serving in one area for a while it just seems like that is your area for like two years ha-ha But this next transfer is going to be exciting because we have 9 new elders coming into the mission.

This week was a good week and more celebrations at the apartment at the end of the day which plans had changed dramatically.

So my communication skills in Russian are getting better and more confident on the phone, which is great!! Got this last week set up with awesome meetings where we talked about the temple and got to show some pictures to some of the families here of back home. Talking about the temple so much last week made me just want to go really bad. We had 12 members here in Perm have the privilege to go for a week in Kiev and do work there.  It was cool to see their faces all beaming and better bet us missionaries have them help on meetings to testify, which we had them do. Of course it turns into about forty minutes of talking before the lesson sometimes, but I liked hearing from these modern pioneers and their experience at the temple. I showed my favorite temple, San Diego, to members in my photo album and they thought it was the coolest thing ever. (Because the San Diego is). But I like the Vegas one too, because you can walk around the backside and overlook the city and feel like you are standing on top of the world, which you are in all reality above the world living the standards of the church and above the adversary.

I continued to show the rest of my pictures and people kept saying how I had changed and that I was chunky in MTC and prior to going in but now "I am in RUSSIA" that is what they say ha-ha . So this relates to the fact of how my PEANUT BUTTER is gone and so is my RED HOT SAUCE!!

Oh and one cool thing is that the mission sent every companionship a DVD player to do the New Training on and it is a great way to listen to my inherited MP3's ha-ha (Alex Boye by the way is awesome and encourage you to buy his CD). we listen to it about 10 times a day and it does not get old so pick it up at the Deseret Book today! 

Along with our desserts we make Russian pancakes and have been living off soup! Living the Life here. Our investigators have been tough to meet with due to school starting on September 1st and the cell service is another thing, it is more like "can you call me now?...Now?...Good!" But one investigator has a hard time with smoking and drinking and he is trying to quit and says he will be baptized in this church but we all know we cannot stop there so we are trying to kick him in the behind and draw some steps to getting him there. Never knew how good the gospel and its principles are until we start living and teaching it!

от Россий с любовью Ст. ЛеФивэр
(From Russia with Love, Elder LeFevre)

It is getting HOT, HOT, NOT !!!

It is getting HOT, HOT, NOT!!!!! ha-ha  

Elder F and I go running every morning and get our body temperature up then we come inside and shower and the hot water, which by the way smells like onions, hits and it actually refreshing! ha-ha Last Monday we played basketball with some high school kids out in the neighborhood and it was great. We lost however. ha-ha  My skills were just so good that the "White handbook" prevented me from going to my full potential on the court. Don't want to get injured you know. Plus most of you have seen my skills before and can trust that we could have smashed them.

From there on out the week became COLD! Yes. I was sporting the sweater and the p-jack. My companion laughs when I say this is like winter in Vegas! He can’t wait until true winter hits because he is from Alaska. ha-ha  I am warm blooded!!   ALL THE HOT SAUCE IS GONE! (at least the Cholula) Yes crazy, I know the food is more bland than I thought, but healthier than American. We had splits this past weekend and I went with Elder W. He couldn't believe the amount of habanero Tabasco I put on my eggs yesterday. All I said, "Hey I am from Vegas!"

This past week we have been making our way to less active members and doing family home evenings at people's houses. Great FOOD! I love Family Home Evening. So it has been good and we continue to try to find. It is still nerve racking to talk on the bus with some people but I am proud to just open my mouth at least and ask how it is going. Because you either get three responses.

1-They fall asleep (FAKERS)
2-Stare
3-mumbled Russian
4- GO HOME YANKEE! hahaha

Yep and you haven’t been on a bus ride until you just lose all sense of personal space and cannot do anything about it, especially when a guy is staring at you and breathing his beer breath! yo Bro! Here is a Tic Tac! and by the way the closer you get to my name tag you aren’t gonna read it! Because you are hammered!" haha

I inherited the taco bed last week and I am actually sleeping well! Haha  See tacos are 100% perfect! (Every way, aspect or form). Same with the gospel.  It is like a tortilla shell that holds all the good fillings to make you happy! It can be folded or rolled anyway to fit what that person needs and what blessings they are going to partake.

Transfers were at the end of the week and I got to chill with Elder W.  It was great. We tore the sister's area book apart with phone calls then took a tranbus to go eat at KFC! aka Растикс! Which is totally different menu and a Coke конечно. Then we made our way back and handed a Book of Mormon! Then we had a birthday party with cake, ice cream, tea, and watermelon. We had two meetings and hey I got complemented on how good my Russian is coming along by several members. So that is a plus! Then we came home and hung out with the other elders who are still without an apartment. So it was sick!

My week was great! One cool thing was I and Elder F got to take a member around to throw away garbage, buy groceries, and get water. His wife is in the hospital and he is 100% blind and 70% deaf. So it was great to hang with him! He is an amazing dude. He pointed at me and said, “You ready for the cold warm blood!" ha-ha and then asked if my hair was curly yet because of the humidity. Then we had tea and cookies, which was awesome.

So our whole week was full of rejoicing here in Perm and to top it all off we made the best chocolate shake ever. Super Snickers (100 g), Chocolate ice cream (400 g), sweetened condensed milk, peanut butter, Nutella, 4% Milk, and 2 bananas!! (grams is how we measure) Yeah that will knock your socks off!  ha-ha   So try it out at home! It will put you to sleep really quick!

Love ya'll
Elder LeFevre

HALLO AMERICKA !

Здорово! So basically my outlook after the transfer here has turned from going, "what?" to "that was totally funny." So like I said last week we have been trying to find people to start teaching. I have only actually taught a real first lesson like twice. But hey we got our new investigator and she seems accepting, but she is busy like everyone else is in the summer. Everyone loves to go to the dachas, which are these shacks basically and with tons of plants with flowers vegetables and fruit. It is pretty cool. We went over to an investigator's house and helped with service this past week and helped him in the back in the garden. There we did tricep workouts, pull-ups, and I chopped wood for the winter with my companion. Then of course we sat down for a good cup of tea (herbal don’t worry) that is all they mostly drink for tea out here. I love tea! It was good because it was fresh mint from the garden. Vinegratne tea is the bomb! Yes hot tea on a hot day!

Sweat, sweat, and sweat that is the main outcome of a lot we did this past week. So besides sweating from the tea we have been sweating from walking basically everywhere in our area trying to be moving advertisements and it has been funny. This past week I have gotten, " HALLO AMERICKA!" like at least eight times a day. My language has been coming about well, I can understand a bit more and one guy on the bus was hilarious! He walked up and was like "Hey Yankee! Everything in America alright?! GO HOME!" Then he proceeded to shout, Oklahoma, California, New York! hahaha So I preceded to name off states also.

SO we walked then we walked, and then we walked and set up meetings. The Russian people are really hospitable and kind. We met with this grandma and we had fake coffee, bread, and salad with her.  It was interesting and their salads are different here. They mainly consist of tomatoes; cucumbers, onions, noodles, lettuce and I don’t know what else, I just eat it. Then we had a lesson with her and she followed up with praying to the moon. hahaha

One awesome thing happened this week was we got in contact with a less active member and got him doing the right things again and especially with prayer. That is the first thing to go when you start going off the path to eternal happiness and into the world. Initiating that faith is huge. Our communication between God and us just becomes weak and we become desensitized. We have been meeting with as many in-actives as possible and one meeting was with teenagers who complain, complain, and complain.  I was about to go nuts. I was thinking to myself, "Hey, look I know that what we are teaching may not be new to you but listen because I guarantee you will need it!" then it made me think to myself, well duh you did the same thing! hahaha   Ignorant yes I know.

I have realized that withholding the fact that I am from Vegas from some people is important. Some Russians think it is an awesome city! Yeah I love Vegas because that is where I grew up, but there is more to life than the flashy lights that over time they burnout and you are left in the dark. That is the message to in-actives this week and one of my favorite scripts. 3 Nephi 12: 12-16.  It talks about being the salt of the earth and being the example.

Missionary work on the streets anywhere is tough. The best way is through the members. I have been pondering on this subject and I decided we need an activity that isn’t churchy but fun like a fireside. So I brought up this idea and the zone leaders liked it and we are going to plan and execute. Bringing out the student council skills. hahahaha . Because the members here are in part member homes and they need something every once in a while to look forward to and to unite them. We met with the branch president this week and he has to be one of the nicest people ever. Sort of tells you the importance of marrying in the temple. Plus if you are doing missionary work then try to get the family involved because if not then you create a riff in the relationships of the home. That is something I always been aware of since the MTC.

Love ya’ll and thanks for the letters I enjoy reading them.

Elder LeFevre

August 8

Hope you liked the pictures. There is more of course, but they take a while to load.

So we had an exciting past week here in Perm. I got to see my old companion off on the train and that meant of course free junk! ha-ha Whooo!   It was different changing companions and hope all is well with Elder H!   So now I am with the former zone leader, Elder F who is my trainer until he goes home after this transfer. I am super excited because he knows the area pretty well and wants to help my language skills become better. I am retaining words, it was just difficult to find an effective system at first, because hearing the word in context in Russian is hard due to the word jumping into a case into a puzzle. But all is well I am picking five words a day and trying to use them in my conversations to master them. We bought a scale and we have been working out even harder everyday running through the forest and up steep hills and say goodbye to all that MTC weight! hahaha 

So my companion and I have been finding, finding, and finding new investigators. We accomplished to stop by and visit one investigator and have a vague first lesson due to her son being there, contradicting every word, even though she was accepting. We did come away with another meeting for next week!  

So a ton is starting to change here for me! There is something I wish to share from my studies on the mission and it is based off the talk given by Elder Wirthlin called, "Come What May and Love It." Change constantly causes a path or paths to be placed before us in life. At many times we are scared of change, whether that be leaving high school and starting college, new teacher for science, or your tire blew out!  I consider all these levels of change, and when the moment presents itself you need to ask yourself, are you ready? It is unavoidable. You either react to the moment or act in the moment, you choose. One only leads us to become battered, torn, beaten, and dizzy. Because you have simply chosen before the choice was laid to be passive. "Do not be a doormat"

Serving in this area has been tough and the language will come, I have no doubt and I dare not doubt my Heavenly Father.  He has sent me here for a reason and it is my job to fulfill my duty and work through the tough times ahead.  Life isn't supposed to be easy. A mission is not supposed to be easy.  I turned to my Father in Heaven in sincere prayer everyday and ask for strength and recognize my weaknesses to allow me opportunities to strengthen me in those areas. Don’t underestimate the comfort we can receive through prayer, and knowing who we are! There have been times where I allowed myself to react to the situation given and not act. When we allow these things to happen we think to ourselves later “hmm what could have been the better outcome if I did do that." Now I am saying basically what Elder Bednar and Bishop Horlacher have said, "Be that good boy or that good girl and don’t worry about it!" and "Be where you are supposed to be and do what you are supposed to do and the Lord will bless you." By doing good deeds and acting through love, the Lord will guide you down the path were we need to be. I relate it to when you first ride a bicycle and your dad has the hand and is helping you then you realize wow I am going. The hardest thing is to focus and not allow your self to fall. Act and don’t react. Because if you react then you are going to crash. It requires us to be humble and when you try to react then when you do fall, I promise it’ll be a humbling experience. Learn and press forward, and take lessons of the past and don't repeat the mistakes. Ether 12:27 (Basically the whole chapter is good!) 

Love you all and I am implementing our mission script everyday D&C 12:8

Старейшина Лефевр

Great Week !

Great week in Perm! Love it! We have had the craziest bipolar weather I have ever seen. (temps went from very humid 90’s to cool 60’s and below)

Our week started out by going to an ancient city in Russia and looking at some old buildings and sweet view of the lake there!  Later we stopped by families of the branch and we attended Sasha's birthday he got a bb gun.  I remember those days!  ha-ha  Too bad you can’t shoot the pigeons here because the "BOB's"(Babushka’s, grandmas) like them too much. They will chase you with their cane. 

We went to the рынок (market) on Tuesday as well and I bought a кепка (cap), which I sport well. I got the see the meat market and mmm did that smell good! ha-ha!  We went around the all the different stands and checked out Harry Potter 7 on DVD. YES on DVD it’s already out! Oh and so is the New Fast and Furious! Hahaha!  Basically they sell many things that could be considered illegal in US. It was great; I got to bargain down my кепка for 200 rubles! ($7.23) That is a deal!  

The rest of the week was nothing but resorting to back up plans and just work, work, and work. That’s all you need in life to have success. Just be happy first OBEDIENCE, then LOVE, Love the people, then last WORK, WORK, and WORK. Then blessings will be granted to your efforts. 

We received one of the coolest contacts the other day from a doctor whom asked us if we were Mormon, and we found out he was in SLC for a conference and saw that our church was nice and the people were nice.  He was super interested and wanted a Book of Mormon, a way to quit smoking, and to come to church!  Super cool!  We had been working so hard to find someone and lo behold it came and so did a former investigator; they want to take the lessons again! Sweet!! 

Well the other morning we woke up to water on the floor and the pipes are busted so I am sorry this is short and we got to go. 

Talk to you next week.
Love all of you!

Elder LeFevre

Kyle's District at MTC, taken back in April.