Meet the Mormons

Здравствуйте!

Hello everyone! It's been another great week over here in Stavropol! There's been a lot of fun stuff happening here this past week! This Saturday we had a branch activity(the first since I've been here) where we all got together and ate some pizza and watched Meet the Mormons. We ended up having more investigators and potentials there than we did members, but it all worked out! Everyone seemed to really like the film, and it was hard to get everyone to leave at the end because everyone wanted to sit around and keep talking! It was awesome to see our members helping us out, they play such a big role in the conversion of these people. It's so much easier for people to come to church, and make the decisions that they need to make, when they understand that there are people out there that used to be in their same position, faced with those exact same decisions! 

Ilgar, our investigator with a baptismal date, was even going around telling people to meet with us after the movie! He's gonna be such a strength to this branch! We really need the priesthood over here, as of right now, we only have one worthy Melchezidek in this city, and he technically doesn't even live here. It really makes me appreciate the great blessing that it was to be raised in Gilbert, where the church and the priesthood are so readily available to all those who are in need of it. We've ended up moving his baptismal date back a week, so that our zone leader can come give him a baptismal interview face to face, and so that we have more time to teach him everything! Our other baptismal date, Nikolai, didn't end up being baptized as planned this past Saturday. He's still working to make sure that this is the decision he needs to make right now. While it is sort of sad to see that he wasn't baptized last Saturday, there is still great hope with him, and we'll continue to work with him to help him make that important decision. 

We got a new elder down here this Tuesday, and when they traveled down we ended up doing a short companion exchange. We ended up getting 5 lessons that day, which was beyond incredible for us! We've had entire weeks(a few actually) where we've had less lessons than that! It's been really cool to see this area start to turn around! When we got here, there was an average of 1 to 2 lessons a week, and now we're getting anywhere from 8 to 11, and it's only going up from there! God is preparing people for us everyday and, we just get to do His work and watch him send them to us! I can't really think of much else that's happened over here this week, but rest assured that there are more tender mercies and blessings that we are blessed with every day than I can fit in this e-mails. God knows us, and is very intimately involved in our lives. 

I love you all, and pray for you often! Hope all is well!

Until next time,

-Старейшина кэмптон

(Staryeshina Kempton)

Transfers

May 30, 2016

Здравствуйте!

Hello everyone! This week has been pretty eventful! I'll just start by telling you all about my first Visa trip! Our visas here in Russia are only good for 3 months, so we have to fly out of the country every 3 months, grab our new one, and then go back into Russia and get a new migration card. We ended up flying out to Yerevan, Armenia early Thursday morning and then coming back in early Friday morning. It was a bit of an adventure, to say the least! We ended up having an 8 hour layover at the airport in Yerevan, so we had tons of time to go around and talk to people, and eat at this crazy good restaraunt! For some reason they had a random piano in the middle of the airport that anyone can play if they're just looking for a way to pass some time, so I sat down and played for a few minutes. I ended up having a few people come over and listen, and when I finished I was able to talk with some of them about the church and why we're here. It was just a really fun experience all around, and hopefully they'll run into the missionaries or some church members there someday! They also have a Cinnabon restaraunt there, so naturally I went and got some super tasty cinnamon rolls there. I had a pretty good chat with one of the employees there, and we were pretty good friends by the end of the conversation. He told me if I ever needed a place to live, I could go move in with him at his apartment. He taught me how to say what's up and a couple of other phrases in Armenian, and then gave me all of my food for free! It was pretty awesome, he even added me on facebook so we could chat when I come home! We got home at around 2 a.m., slept for about 4 hours, and then hopped on a bus back to Stavropol for the next 5 hours. I was glad to finally be out and about again after sitting around on transport for so long! Even with all of that, we were able to have 6 lessons this week, which is pretty good for us over here! 

Things are really starting to pick up, and it's just awesome to see! We ended up having 5 investigators at church on Sunday, and 17 people in all which is the most we've had at church in a LONG time! The members did a really good job getting to know them, and hopefully it'll be easier for them to come back! Our investigator, ilgar, is still on track for being baptized on the 11th, and he's just progressing like crazy! He's already read a good amount of the Book of Mormon, and he just really wants to change his life, and he understands that baptism is something that he needs right now!  It'll be awesome to finally have some more priesthood in this branch, for the past year or two the only worthy priesthood holders have been the branch president and his son who is 14. It's going to be such a blessing for our branch to have someone else that can take some of the responsibilities off of the branch president! 

In other news we have a church headquarters referal, Alexander, that we've been teaching over Skype (he lives about 5 hours south of Stavropol) and he's also on track to be baptized! We have to get some of the logistics figured out, because the church just isn't in that area of Russia yet, but we're looking into getting a group organized down there! He's got quite a few friends that have read some of the Book of Mormon that we'll probably be teaching soon. We're sending down a few more copies of the book of mormon so they can all have their own! Apparently they've got a group of friends down there that meet and discuss the bible, and a baptist preacher came down not too long ago and preached out of the book of mormon. They were all super interested, but didn't know where to find more info after he had left, so their group leader (Alexander) searched for a bit and found our website, and requested a book of mormon and to start meeting with us! It'll be interesting to see how it plays out over the next few weeks! That's about it for this week! I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting, but that's about all I have time for! 

I love you all, and pray for you often! Hope all is well!

Until next time,

-Старейшина кэмптон

(Staryeshina Kempton)

PS.  Even thought this email is titled "Transfers" , Dustin didn't even mention transfers in the entire email!  He must've forgotten, haha.   But he is staying in Stavropol for at least another 6 weeks!