Elder Alex Bennett's Mission Blog

Look out Martha Stewart.........I was pretty proud with the meal that I made for us yesterday, I know it might not be the 1st pick in the Martha Stewart or Rachel Ray "Make a Delicious Dish" contest, but it was pretty tasty. It just looked good on a plate, i grilled up some chicken, there were mashed potatoes (instant though) :), grilled carrots, cherry tomatoes, and finished it off with some snickerdoodles. Well enough about yesterdays ужин (dinner), what about all of you. It sounds like this hurricane is rockin' the east coast, that's pretty scary stuff. I love the pictures of the kids, ahhhhh they're all so cute in their school and ballerina clothes. Give them all a big hug from me. Also, that's great to hear that Mike has all A's in school, way to go bro, but the whole Rugby thing is kinda sketch.... :) Mike's a Tank though, I think he'll do great, but my friends who played Rugby in high school always came from the games with their eyebrows split open or broken noses, etc. just sayin'... Tell TIM HAPPY BIRTHDAY! from his брат in Siberia.... Living away from home, very very far away from home, has made me really, really appreciate soooo many more things. I would like to give a shout out to you both,, being the head of a home (apartment in this case) is a ton of responsibility and it really teaches you a lot. Speaking of doing things for other people. Saturday was a HUGE day for service. We all met at the Aftovoksal (Rushlish again, Train/Bus station) early in the morning and took a train to this member's dacha (summer home) and dug some potatoes. There were buckets and buckets and buckets of potatoes, there was so much! And you all know how much I love them. I will send a picture of them next time. After that we took a bus back into the main city and helped a companionship chop wood at an investigators home. We all participated in giving a lesson to her after and it was great, she agreed to read from the Book of Mormon. We headed to our weekly sports night location to play some frisbee with members, something unfortunate happened. We were playing ultimate frisbee like i said, and my companion was running for a catch and really pulled his hamstring really bad. He went limping of the field and layed on the cement and looked like he was in a ton of pain. We all went over and Elder Erickson and I gave him a blessing. It was an experience that strengthened my testimony of the priesthood and how we always need to be prepared to give one at any moment. We went and got some crutches today before email and he says that he thinks it is healing alright so that's good and he finishes his mission in like 3 weeks so he'll get professional help soon if he needs additional help. Yesterday on the way to the branch, the main path is trees on both sides and its somewhat closed off from a ton of people, there was a guy getting held by two others and punched in the face. They were beating him up and he asked us for help, but we just had you turn off a little bit and keep walking. Dang, :( it's way hard to just walk away from stuff like that and not help, but we have to. There were two meetings this past week that were awesome (well there were obviously more that were awesome but i'm just going to talk about these for a sec.) Lyosha had a little short church related movie that he wanted to show us. It was called "Most" or bridge in Russian, and you've probably heard it, but its the one where this father is the conductor person in charge of switching the the train tracks and his son wanted to come help him so he was on the tracks and a train is coming and the father has to choose whether to save his son or the whole train of people. It is representative of Heavenly Father's sacrifice of his son to save all of us. It was just a power-house movie/story that really expresses how painful of a choice is must have been, the spirit was way strong and prosta (simply) just a great lesson. The other was family night at Chamaras. I used that glove thing to teach about the Holy Ghost and how it testifies of all of those stick on things. Misha was my volunteer and everyone thought it was cool, thanks for sending that. Also I played bananagrams for the first time last P-day, its an awesome game! English Club topics this week: Fantasy & Fiction and The Hollister, California beach life. Both went really well and everybody liked 'em. Oh the police came to our door and wanted us to say that we saw something that we didn't, there was an older man on the street that talked to us about the school system and airplanes for about 10-15 mins., and we had exchanges, i was with Elder Sodja for a day. We also had a Skype conference thing with the President and it was really cool. He is so awesome! I just love him, he taught us a ton of great things and really got us pumped up for missionary work.
Well, time is running out so i better finish this pretty soon. I love you all, thanks for all of your support, it has been a tremendous help. Hope everyone has a great week! Talk to strangers, i know they tell you not to :), but do, share the gospel, never be afraid to share your testimonies.
It's starting to get pretty chilly some days! So pray that i'll be able to survive this Siberian climate! Love Elder Bennett :) :) :)