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 !!