Miracle contacts and a Russian funeral

HEY ALL

I'm hoping to write as much as Sam does for once. I'm so stinking jealous of your crazy typing skills. If I could type at 1000 words a minute maybe I could talk about all the stuff that goes on out here in the Motherland! Thanks so much for you emails, samsam. Haha I love how you end your letters like that it always makes me laugh. It always reminds me of that time we played volleyball with your college friends and that one guy said Stay in your circle! and you said Yupyup. Hahaha. Man, I'm glad to hear from everyone! Ready Proverbs 25:25 and you'll know what I'm saying. Sam's rockin it up in Chile and the family's getting back into things after the holidays, it sound like.

Oh, before I forget. Mom wanted me to do the top-ten most important list thing. One and two are tied because they're kind of the same concept, so I've got a top 3 out of ten. Here it goes. Are you ready for it??

1-Temple as in the fact that I grew up five minutes away from one, that I was able to go through the temple with my parents, that there's peace there, and the covenants I made there help me every day...
2-Worthiness in family meaning that it's important for me that all of my siblings grow up so that one day all 8 of us can be in the celestial room of the temple together. (Also, that all three of my brothers served full time missions).
3-Earthly and Heavenly Parents' approval meaning that it's important that I live in such a way so that I don't cause hurt for my parents like I have in the past. Along with that, someone once said to me that the Spirit is the Lord's approval stamp. Who doesn't want the Spirit?
4-Lasting conversion in myself and investigators
5-Church activity and testimonies among my friends at home
6-Music
7-Sleep
8-Health as in what happens when you RIP IT with the pushups every morning of your mission. Heh heh.
9-Speaking Russian without an American accent someday. I would love it if a Russian thought I was native once, based on my language skills. Probably never going to happen.
10-Not losing my mission language for the rest of my life. I want bilingual children who speak Russian from birth.

Well that's it. I hope that was interesting/what you were looking for. I don't think my list would have been anything like this before my mission. Kind of fun when I think about it.

So, mom, I haven't read your email for today yet. Last week I was just signing off and then I got an email from you! My time was up but I sent another sentence to know that I was on at the same time as you. Haha I thought that was so cool for some reason. It seems impossible because generally whenever I'm awake it's 4 in the morning or something back home. Thanks for sending me your insight about the 2nd coming (last week or 2 weeks ago?). That was super amazing and I had never even thought about it! Me and Elder Barton had a chat about this one time. He said, "If Christ created the Earth, then why did He make mosquitoes? He must have known that the only thing they were meant to do is cause pain and irritation, which He later would have to experience during the Atonement? What's the point of just creating something that would make the Atonement harder? Then, the realizeation came that I as a human being cause so much more pain than a stupid little mosquito. How many times have I hurt someone whether physically or emotionally or spiritually? When have I made the Atonement something harder for Christ to have done? God must have known that when he created me" It's an interesting thought.

So now that the huge "intro" of my email is done, I'll write about my mission life so that Mom can put up something in the ward papers.

THIS WEEK: The biggest news, first of all, is that one of our investigators, Aleksander, died. It was completely crazy. He was a 50 year old agnostic/atheist with perfect health who we used to speak English with. Let me tell you the story: Twice a week we've been trying super hard to make progress with three guys named Alex, Michael, and Dima who are all for the most part atheist--Alex's words: "I don't have feelings about God one way or another." They meet because we don't do English club any more and they still wanted to practice with us. We were thinking about dropping them, but we had an amazing lesson on the Restoration so we kept meeting. Michael went on vacation so we didn't have meetings for 2 weeks. Alex's wife, Inga, has a shop that sells USSR t-shirts and stuff, so we stop by there on p-days sometimes. She's always been super nice and knows us because Alex talked to her about us sometimes. We went into her shop last Monday and Alex came in and we chatted for a few minutes, and he seemed perfectly healthy. Since Michael wasn't back from vacation we didn't meet. Wednesday, 2 days later, a lady called the elders in another area in Togliatti and said "Alexander died!" and gave them a number and an address. They called us and gave us the number and when we called it, the number for Alex came up. It was nuts. We went over to the address to see if it was true, and Inga was there with a bunch of family. They were all crying and it was a really really sad scene. She said He woke up in the morning, made coffee, and then started feeling funny and then died fifteen minutes later. We bore short testimony and said there's life after death, and she said, "maybe you guys know, but I don't know about that. Just pray for him because I don't know how." That hit me hard. It gave me a glimpse of what life is like for people who don't have that knowledge.
We went to the "viewing" the next day, which was a small group of people in there apartment, and Aleksander in a casket with Russian Orthodox sheets and crosses all over him. They had a priest there, and he read prayers and did some chants and swung some incense around. It felt really empty. He kept saying how much Aleksander needed our prayers to get into eternity and all this crazy stuff. It felt really desperate. I compared it in my head to the knowledge that the Savior was resurrected and so we will all be resurrected, and see our loved ones. To make a long story shorter, we left without talking to too many people, we've run into a couple people on the street who saw us at the funeral who seem interested in our message, and it's been crazy.
I am out of time but I want to write about Sergei and Katya our GOLDEN investigators who are getting baptized on the 29th!! Remind me to write about them next week because their story is AMAZING.

I LOVE YOU ALL and I love my mission! It's the frontlines! I know the church is true, I know that God has a plan for us, and that Jesus Christ made it all possible. Keep up the good work Sam, you're amazing! Work for this, Caleb, Seth, and Patrick! It has changed my life! LOVE YOU BYE

Alex

P.S. I adopted Sam's typing skills (or I just didn't waste time trying to send pictures...)