Life Goes On

I haven't written here for a long time because it seems that missionary life goes on here with nothing happening that I think will be of interest to folks at home. Yet for us every day still brings new people and experiences. Of course, as at home, the biggest change in our lives is that it's spring, albeit with forward and backward spurts in temperature. Nothing can make you appreciate spring like a hard winter!

The Iceland volcano has affected us only indirectly. We are still waiting for the ash to hit us but so far the skies are blue. There is a new humanitarian couple who were to arrive last Saturday, but they are stuck at the MTC until they can get a flight in - hopefully on Wednesday. It will be fun to have new friends join us in this venture.

One of the highlights of our days is meeting the investigators that the elders and sisters bring to the Institute building to teach. Those who speak English really love to visit with us because they are always looking for English-speakers to practice their English on. This week there was a good-looking Indian guy (from India). He is going to be coming each week for a piano lesson. He speaks good English so that will be fun, but I have been teaching another investigator who is quite talented on piano but speaks very little English. That's a challenge! But he told the elders last week that he didn't want them to come back so he will not be coming to piano, either. I've had a steady stream of young people (members) come and ask to take piano lessons but after 3 or 4 lessons, when they find out that it requires more than just coming to lessons, they have all dropped out. This is frustrating because the whole point of it is to train pianists who can play in our branches. I've not had much success there.

The elders continue to find West Africans who are interested in the gospel. They speak English, of course (if you listen VERY carefully), and we love to get acquainted with them. We were told that one of things our mission president was going to bring up in his interview with the area president last weekend in Moscow was the possibility of creating an English speaking church unit here, mostly because of the group of Africans who have been baptized. There are 7 or 8 of them who come regularly to one branch and the elders teach a Sunday School class in English for them. Then there are also a few Chinese members and investigators and the American kids who come for the Inernational Language Program who all speak English. It would be interesting to see such a unit created, but I don't expect it to happen while we are here. The picture below is us with Kobe on his baptism day. Looks just like our pictures from Nigeria.

It's really fun to get the emails from our missionary grandson Curtis who is in Los Angeles working with Spanish speaking people. He and his companion have so many baptismal candidates to work with right now that he said they have no time to do other prosleyting. How our elders would love to have that problem! But Curtis is having some very unique experiences working in the 'hood. It just makes me realize how different every mission is. It's nice to know we were each placed where we are for a reason known only to the Lord. It is an awesome responsibility to try to live up to what He expects of us and hope that we are making a difference in someone's life.