Banana Battlestation

Another lovely week in Perm! This week was a great learning experience for me trying to plan our week to have 16 meetings this week and make them all work out and if not have an effective back up plan. It worked out and I was surprised how much time and effort I had to put into making it work, because I had to understand the Russian. Ha-ha.  Just stick with yes or no questions. Ha-ha. You are all wondering why I placed a title for this week and why the Star Wars connotation. Me and Elder H have been working with a few investigators and trying to get them to church and this week we had four come to church from our area!  We are working hard and one of our investigators invited us to come to a conference where people will be talking on faith, hope and charity. I thought that it was going to be totally harmless and interesting. Well I can say that it turned out to be totally interesting. We arrived with a member who thought that we could go and it wouldn't be dangerous. We went up the stairwell in the apartment building and entered the rented out space on the seventh floor and realized that we were late and that she was leading the meeting already. We quietly entered and saw that she was talking about faith hope and charity and that God gives us all kinds of blessings. It was all doctrinally true in some areas until a few pieces about reincarnation and how all religions have their path of righteousness and all are good. Ha-ha. My companion had no idea what was going on. Ha-ha.  I realized that we were sitting in a fireside meeting introducing their "Program" which was established by the "Master Takbar" and how they quit smoking and are the path to peace. Then they talked about food as a source of power and how they don't eat meat and that they especially love bananas. I got up and I called Elder R and in a quiet voice said, "hey, umm so we are here and it is kind of weird. There are tons of pictures of this dude in a turban with a funny smile in white robes, and in the clouds and they were talking about bananas!?."  I decided with Elder R that we should go and I used the call as an excuse to go even though they persisted on us staying or taking food with us. Ha-ha.  I told the member we are going to leave because we have another meeting and he said that he would stay. It turns out that he stayed and bore testimony and people there were amazed and felt his spirit and the Holy Ghost testify to them of the truth. So it was super cool to hear that and it turned out that she accepted our invitation to come to our church and see what we are all about. She loved it and will be coming every week! Ha-ha.

Then our progressing investigator has been having a tough time and she started to cry before the meeting and telling us about her problems she was having at home. We had a great lesson and watched the Restoration and testified about the gospel in general. She is working on gaining a testimony that God loves her and that she can communicate with him. Missionary work is so cool!! This week was full of miracles!
LOVE YA ALL!
Elder LeFevre

I love Perm !

The goal this past week was to get 19 meetings in the week and unfortunately we fell short. We got 9 meetings! AGHHH ha-ha-ha.  Last week started off with the rest of our P-day, when Elder H and I went downtown for some cologne then we went bowling at the fancy hotel with the rest of the Elders from Perm. I love Perm! Everyone asks me how living in Las Vegas was and I reply, "Hotter than this!!" ha-ha

At the beginning of last week I was trying to be more organized and better with setting up meetings with people but I think the Lord had a lesson for us this week because most of them fell through. Tuesday began with two meetings planned to them becoming canceled then I set up another then changed it then I decided we needed to turn the day around! I said to my companion, "This calls for KFC!."

After I figured that we could contact our referral by stopping by there house and see what happens. We stopped by and they were super, super, super excited! We introduced ourselves and then we sat there for two hours!!! The White Handbook states that dinner appointments are to be 1 hour at the most, but I got some advice and an exception. If they don't want you to leave and free food is placed in front of you and you try to be polite here in Russia then you will leave on bad terms.  They let us in and the lady said, "SIT! EAT and don't be polite!" (all in command form!) All I could say was that we wouldn’t be shy ha-ha. They brought out jam, Russian pancakes, tea after tea after tea, cookies, and pelmeni! (ooooh boy!)

The rest of the week was great with things shaping up and meeting with investigators and in actives in our area. We have one investigator who runs a well-known yoga class here and we had a good lesson with her yesterday and we extended the baptismal commitment. I felt like it had to have been the most spiritual meeting of my whole mission so far, but she said, “No." It was disappointing, but she expressed a piece of why she didn't want to and all we did was testify, testify, and testify! She is so great!

This week looks great and I learned that setting weekly goals attached to how you are going to achieve them is a great help and that winging is inconvenient. Pictures of the ballet and my new area will be on next weeks email. So stay tuned! 

из Россий с любовью Старейшина ЛеФивэр ,

From Russia with Love Elder LeFevre

LOVE YOU ALL! Happy Thanksgiving!

Walkin in a Winter Wonderland

Everyone! It is a winter wonderland here in Perm and I am actually loving the temperature because a while back it was super windy and that was cold, but lately it has been nice! A ton has happened in our area this week as Elder H and I have been technically "white washing" the area. We have hit our usual ups and downs here in the mission field and trying to make success happen.

Or week started out well when we met with President A's family and shared a spiritual thought with them. It was a super great lesson as me and my companion testified of the gospel and how we can receive personal revelation when we apply its principles. We are planning to do a tacos vs Armenian dish night for family home evening next time to talk with the rest of the family about taking the lessons with us and maybe sneak in a couple games of UNO!? ha-ha I am super excited for that and it is been pretty awesome learning the Russian language everyday here and the members see that and they start to have trust in our teaching abilities.

I am loving it here in the new apartment which has not only a sweet queen bed for me to sleep on and the new EFY CD is legit! I work out to "The Work" CD every morning, because the apartment has a natural pull-up bar and perfect pushup stuff.

So, the mission as a whole this past week can be summed up in the words of Elder F, "The mission is sick. We work out and get swollen everyday, learn with the Spirit, teach by the Spirit, and change lives!" Then later in the week we got out fifth baptism in Perm and all we need is two more to hit the goal we set for our branch by the end of the year. The baptism was an amazing miracle because a part member family is almost fully all members of the church. For years the mom has been not too interested in the missionary lessons after taking them once, along with the other members of the family, but this past transfer they took up the lessons again with the missionaries and now they only have one sibling to go to make that family complete! This is a super cool thing and right now I want to do the same for the family that we are trying to help with as well. I REALLY WANT TO MAKE IT HAPPEN!

After the baptism, we had the opportunity to go see The Nutcracker as a cultural activity as a whole zone and it was pretty legit for a ballet. I liked it a lot, due to the live music and it was a night on the town in Russia, and so can't beat that!

The following day we had the great opportunity of helping a family in our area move to a new apartment. Let me tell you, that was a really exhausting but fun experience.  I was a "beast" ha-ha it was really hot outside and it looked cool cause it was cold and my body temperature made steam come off from me. Ha-ha.  It took us about over four hours to move a ton of furniture down three stories then up seven stories from the street down the way! They moved into a way smaller apartment and there was barely any room to sit as they sat us down and said, "SIT! EAT EAT EAT!" So I found room for some "compote", and a pie with spinach and eggs and spices. One of the pies had fish. Don’t worry I didn’t eat it ha-ha the smell almost made me gag! They were super grateful. She ran around taking our names down and saying that she will never forget.

I talked in Sacrament as the last speaker after my companion Elder H and Elder A. I looked up at the clock and there was about twenty minutes left and immediately told my self it is in the bag yo! I went up there and I shared an analogy in fishing with a worm and how I learned to fish with artificial flies and everyone woke up from their naps when I started connecting with them, it was great! I related it to how we need to realize how the gospel of Jesus Christ can teach us how we can better catch the opportunities and blessings as we live according to the gospel after I shared Ch.4 from Luke in the Bible. It was SWEET! They announced sacrament was over and that there will be a little break in the hall before class and that the sister we helped wanted to say a few words. She went down the whole list and thanked everyone who had helped her move. She got to my name and said, "Where is Elder LeFevre, the fisherman and the hunter, that dear young man was moving furniture with ease and only asked what is next. I want all my grandsons go on missions now without a doubt to become like these boys..."  It was so awesome and all the members who helped got similar recognitions! We got a solid referral from it so it was amazing! So this week was legit, but this next week we are going to be stepping it up, SO BRING IT! 

LOVE YOU ALL!

Elder LeFevre

Congratulations to Austin, Matthew, and Nick to receiving their mission calls. You guys are legit !!

Revolution Day

Well I moved on up to the "big house" in Perm this past week with my new companion Elder H to finish his training and Elder Z is doing work up in вторая вышка с моим старым напарником, старейшина Аллред.  One of the biggest malls in the Urals is here and there is everything you can imagine in there. It is cool to get a little piece of American music walking around the outside of it every once in a while. ha-ha

I am trying to get used to a brand new area and a nicer apartment, but I believe that I will get accustomed quickly as I keep doing that what I was taught to do from my trainers. Right now we have two investigators in our area who are super close to being ready to have a baptismal date and it is super sweet! There have been five baptisms since I began training here in Perm and there will be another this week on Thursday.

This past week has been full of fun and great experiences. Me and Elder H went and visited with a lady whom we thought was going to turn into a progressing investigator, but it went really weird. So I called a church member who I have used on meetings before and knew he had a great testimony on the Book of Mormon to be on the meeting with us to visit this lady who had originally believed in reincarnation. We had planned to teach her a few principles of the first lesson to get her to read and come to church. It started off good about the love of God in our lives, but then we moved onto the next point and then we began to be taught! ha-ha She had planned to teach us her own lesson. Not wanting to be rude we sat there and listened to her on how she has a "master" (btw looks like a Muslim dude who comes out with articles on bananas and how we use a trampoline to get to God.) Anyway, it was super weird and she wasn't going to listen. I looked over at Sasha and I could tell like we need to bounce out of this crazy hocus pocus house. Ha-ha got to love meeting like those because you find out good vocabulary words.

There was a holiday here in Russia last Friday as we went walking around our area for hours on end finding member, less actives, and nonmembers. It was a kind of old revolution celebration, which was being kept down from becoming a riot from the police and their AK-47 guns. It was safe, so no worries! We just took off our badges as we walked through the crowd. Even though we didn't find anyone or we got a doors slammed on us by non-active members, we found two really cheap grocery stores in our area where you can buy SUPER SNICKERS for 26p. I have to send you a picture of these candy bars because they will make you feel like candy bars in America are expensive, small, and you might feel deprived. Russia is awesome!!

We had a couple of other good planned meeting this week and one was with a super investigator who is really into to learning about the Book of Mormon and if this is the right church or not. We don't even have to drag her to sacrament meeting, which is sweet! She came to the Area Conference we had this last Sunday and we will extend the baptismal question to her next time we teach her! I hope it all goes well! I will be super excited to be a part of that. Area conference was good listening to President Uchdorf, Elder Oaks, and a few other general authorities.

All in all the weather is not too bad ha-ha SIKE (hope i spelt that right) The wind is what always does it, but today is warm and not windy. (10 F or feels like -3 F) I look like a baller in my coat! Ha-ha

Love you all and stay warm, unless you are in Vegas then go catch some rays today! I haven't been getting too much sun lately either.

из Россий с любовью, Старейшина ЛеФивэр
(From Russia with Love, Elder LeFevre)