Alex's first transfer!

Hey so it looks like the email is working now. I don't know what went on but it was drivin me crazy. Maybe just this last time Sam you could forward this one to mom. If she gets this from me too, then we'll stop this nonsense of forwarding through you.

Sam, you're crazy. If you were an Elder you'd probably be an Assistant. It seems like every single email you write you've got a ton of crazy miracles. Not to mention that 10 lessons and 8 new investigators is somewhere around double of what we get on a good week. That's absolutely crazy, we got 4 new investigators this week and this was a good week for us as far as key indicators go. MAN good work. And that's crazy cool about the baptism. I love seeing people change like that. We had Sergei back in Old City who we just baptised who changed like that. He sat in jail for 9 years of his life, and now that he's married and baptised he's like a teddy bear. No joke, we met him outside the apartments last week and he helped an old lady walk across some ice before she fell. I LOVE IT. Good work. (PS I've never made an investigator cry. When I first got here, one of our members cried, but she was crying because the missionary I was replacing was gone. Man that was fun ha ha).

Man, where do I start. This week feels like it's lasted at least a month. First of all, I remember saying in my last email that there was a 99.9% chance that I'd be staying, but it turns out both me and Elder Barton got transfers. Totally crazy. So Elder Barton left to go be a zone leader for the Saratov Zone and I got shipped way up to Kazan. It's a HUGE city way up in the north, known as the promised land. I'm super lucky to be serving here, honestly. I'm the third non-native to serve in this area. It's a massive city and there are only 2 companionships serving here. Before I came it was Elders Kazakov and Lee (the first american to serve in Kazan), and Elders Meroninko and Bahr (the 2nd American, AND my MTC companion). Elders Meroninko and Lee both finished their missions at the end of the last transfer, and so they pulled me and Elder Kuzmin out of Togliatti to serve here. Elder Kuzmin was the Zone leader there, and he's an amazing missionary. He's with Bahr. And I'm here with Lee's old companion, Elder Kazakov. 2 years ago proselyting was illegal here. There are tons of muslims here and it's a really beautiful clean city with lots of amazing architecture and a river and all that good stuff. My companion is really great, he's from Novisibirsk Russia, and he knew my MTC teacher who served there on his mission. He speaks English a little bit better than I speak Russian, so communication isn't a problem. He's not lazy at all, so we're always busy, and he tells me to lead lessons sometimes which really helps my language skills. So I got a really really awesome transfer.

I've been here since Wednesday and it feels like I've been here forever because I'm still not in the know of Kazan. It's been kind of hard, to be honest. I know it will get better once I'm more in the routine here, though. It really doesn't help how huge this place is. It's ridiculous that we only have 4 missionaries here. We've had some good success this week, though. We met a knew lady who is friends with a member here. She's a 7th day adventist but she stopped going to them because she didn't like something there. She was talking with us on the lesson and she talked about how Christ knows all our pain because He already suffered everything for us, and then we shared Alma 7:11-12 with her and she thought it was cool that the Book of Mormon had that in there. She is really really interested and all the stuff she was talking about is perfectly in line with our doctrine, so far. We're excited to keep meeting with her. Then we've got Nikita, he's a 9 year old who's getting baptized this friday. Me and Elder Kuzmin taught him yesterday at church after all the meetings (there's only one branch in Kazan with about 50 people). And the branch is amazing here. I don't know if I mentioned that already. They're all super duper involved. I've already gotten to know lots of really amazing people.

Well how are things at home? I sent off a letter to Caleb, along with a program from a Russian sacrament meeting, and a picture of a cowboy fighting a Trex that I drew. I couldn't help myself. Russians don't have cowboys. Well my time is about up, and I hope everything's good! I love you guys a ton, hope to hear from you again soon! LOVE

Alex