MAY 2011

We had the opportunity to TALK to Jeff yesterday for Mothers Day!! It was SO FUN :) He is doing really well. The next time we talk to him will be at the airport!! YAY, so excited! Here are some pictures that he sent today in his email.

Elder Manning and Elder Williams with Erik, he is a professional soccer player from Brazil (he is a member) and his girlfriend.

A random car that just blew up

The Sister missionaries had a baptism on Saturday! How exciting!

Hey everyone!!!

This week was normal week. It started off with a 'pass off lesson' where the Russian Elders passed a Lithuanian kid over to us to teach. That was fun and it was nice to just be given an investigator. Then on Tuesday it was a pretty packed day full of events. We had President Dance come down and do a combined activity with the Russian and Lithuanian Districts here. It was fun and it was great hearing from him and learning.
After that, we had an exchange down here with Elder Graham (now assistant). He seemed a little sad he had his language switched to full time Russian and said it's been hard for him up there lately. So he was really happy to be back here in Lithuania. It's one thing to work with both Lith. and Russian languages but to not be able to speak Lithuanian in Latvia would be hard. Glad it's not me haha
Anyway, so that night we went knocking... A quick recap of events leading up to this... Elder Lindell and I back in March took a little area of the map of Vilnius and gave it to the Branch President to help promote member missionary work. We then asked him to pray about where we should go to find the prepared people. 2 months later he gives it back to us and said that he and his wife prayed separately, but came up with the same street name. It was a little hidden street, we were having troubles finding it and to know for sure where to go. I knew the general direction and we just figured we'd ask people along the way how to get there. We cut through a little ghetto area and I saw some domes that I wanted to knock if we couldn't find it. We were really struggling to find it. As we started walking to this school, we ran into a lady and asked her. She led us to it and was really kind and nice. Next thing I knew, she had taken us to the dome I wanted to knock earlier and told us that it was the street. We went to the door as an old man was just about to open the door, and we contacted him but he wasn't interested, but, he let us in to knock the others. 5 doors from the top this way cool guy with a great family opened up and we were able to teach him. He said we could come back but he'd be really busy until this week. So we have something set up with him mid week. He's excited to meet and we're very happy as well! It was just a really really cool and amazing experience.
This week we will be going on 2 exchanges, one of them will be here in Vilnius with Elder Whicker caompanionship and the other with Elder Sherman's in Kaunas. I'm excited to get to go back to kaun-town :)! (there's just something special about that first area.)
We also have a lady that is preparing to be baptized on June 4th. We are really happy and excited. She is really wanting to, so I hope we can help her be baptized that day!
That is about it for this week... Oh yeah and Dedukas, the little, older guy we baptized here in Vilnius, passed the sacrament for the first time this Sunday!!!! It was AWESOME. It is so wonderful to see the changes in people's lives that accept the Gospel!!!
Well, I love you guys! Catch up with ya next week!!! LOVE YOU GUYS!

Su Meile,
Vyresnysis Meningukas