Curse the smell of garlic

In my time here, i have dealt with more cloves of garlic than people! Just kidding, way not true. But anyway, we helped a member the other day (and I'm also talking about other times we have helped other members with food) prepare some food and somehow I am always the one that has my fingers smell like garlic for days! :) I heard that to get rid of this pungent scent you wash your hands with a metal spoon, is this true?! I dunno maybe i'm just gullible and falling for another joke/prank like at the "fireside" yesterday. We all played "do you love your neighbor" after the spiritual thought and eating some wafflely and drinking some apple sok (juice). If any of you are familiar with this game, the person in the middle comes up to you and asks whether you love your neighbors, like the name implies, if no is the answer, then the person in the middle and the two on the sides scramble for a seat. If the answer is yes, you have do say "yeah, except those who....." and whatever you want after that. As you know, i'm still very young on the mission and dont speak or understand Russian perfect, so people can have fun with that. For example, the person in the middle came up to Elder Peterson and asked him the question and he said "i love all my neighbors except for those.. who put on lipstick today" I didn't know what the word for that was yet, so i kinda had rely on if a ton of people were moving or not and just follow the group, but he told me to hurry and find a seat, and when i stood up and changed seats everybody was laughing and then i found out what that meant and was like "Ha, ha, Ok, Ok, ponyatna..... (i understand) i don't know, it was just funny and some of the members tried to do the same thing and trick me, it was fun :) Great news.... WE HAVE HOT WATER AGAIN!!! Oh, it was the happiest day of my life! School started on the first of September, so we saw every girl and boy dressed up in the city. The boys are all in nice suits and the girls wear dresses and cute bonetchkas (things in their hair). There was a picnic/back to school activity for a few of the youth this last week, we all went to that and there was some food and a little scripture scavenger hunt of sorts around the branch building, it was fun. . Way more important and way cooler things happened this week though. There was a baptism for a woman that the sisters have been working with. The sisters asked me to conduct, very scary and my first time conducting something like this in Russian, but I made it through.... The other day we were going to help a member with carrying some things before we went to sports night. By the bus stop, we saw a boy about 13 years old about to smoke a cigarette. Elder P. asked him why he smokes and told him and it really isn't a cool thing to do and we went on our way. Cool part of the story coming up, we ended up in the same spot that day and saw the cigarette that he had (we recognized it because it had like a blueish color to it) not used and it was laying on the ground. How awesome it that?! Also, we were going through the area book and found a woman who we thought was ready to be taught again. We have had three meetings wth her and we set a baptismal date with her yesterday and she seems excited, so we are very happy with that. Today, we had a meeting with a contact that we met on the street. We saw him yesterday on our way to church and asked him if he could meet and he said he would the next day. He told the truth! It was awesome and he received it really well and he says that all that we taught him made sense. And he even agreed to pray at the end of the meeting after we taught him how, he did an amazing job, and he wants to meet with us tomorrow. I am so grateful for these miracles and blessings that we are receiving. Prayer and faith are so powerful. I'm so very thankful for all of your support and email. I send my love and a few pictures, enjoy them :) Love Elder Bennett