The rest of the story...

HELLO.

I knew that was bad news. I'm really sorry if you got worried! But the news is that I broke my foot. It also doesn't help that in Russian there's only one word that they use for both foot and leg. Anyways, it's not as bad as anyone is thinking. It's actually a really lame story. We live about 300 feet from our branch building, and we were on our way to church, carrying some boxes of Liahona magazines. Russian roads are a joke because they don't ever get repaired so they're all uneven. So I was crossing to street to the church, and I didn't see the huge pot-hole in the road because of the boxes, so I rolled my ankle really really hard and kind of felt a pop. And then got hit by a car. JOKE. I didn't even fall over, I just got to the other side of the street and then kind of limped another 100 feet to church and sat down. I thought it was norm, but then I blacked out while I was sitting down, which was weird. I also felt a little bump on the side of my foot. So nothing was wrong at all with my ankle. It's just a fracture in my foot or something. Nothing wrong with tendons or anything as far as I know. So it was great. Members were showing up and I was in the coat room laying on the floor with frozen veggies on my foot. They gave me a priesthood blessing, too, so everything was smooove. They called a doctor, he gave me a shot in the bum, which was weird, and checked my blood pressure, which was norm, and then they drove me to a clinic where they got an x-ray and put a cast on. Then we ordered a taxi and made it back for the last 10 minutes of sacrament meeting!!! We had a thing called Invitation Sunday that we had been planning for 2 months. It was a special sacrament meeting focused on simple doctrines about the Atonement. The point of it was to focus on non-members so that all the members would invite their friends. It turned out to be really successful--usually we get 3 or 4 investigators at church (in our branch of 65-70 members), but yesterday we had 10 nonmembers!!! Real glad we didn't miss that. We spent hours and hours making calls to get people to this thing. So there are the details for mommy. I'm really sorry you got worried about that. Everything is good, some members hooked me up with some crutches because the clinic didn't give me any. I've just got to stay off it for 3 weeks and then everything will be norm. Kind of a bummer because we're supposed to move into a new appartment this week. Also, Elder XXX only has 3 weeks left of his mission. So we're going to have Elders XXX and XXX move into our new apartment with us so they can take turns ripping it up with my companion and babysitting me. This actually works out good. So that's my story. Really anticlimactic story, right? Very unexciting. Except for the successful sacrament meeting. Yeah!!!

But enough of that boring stuff! I got your pictures!! Yeah!!! I looked through the pictures you sent with all the boys after that priesthood meeting. Goons!! I think the actual picture-taking makes more of a memory than the pictures themselves when you've got those four together. It was easy to see while looking through the pictures how impossible it is to get all four of them making norm faces in one picture. Tell Caleb for me that the face in the flower-pot was probably my favorite one. My boys are all grown-up looking. So weird that Pat is going to be a senior in a few short months! Is it weird that the first month of summer is already way gone? It's going by fast. So I didn't get much of a shot to read through any of the other news that you sent me because both the emails from mom and Sam were really long, but I did see that Justin is being ordained an Elder. That is awesome news!! I really wish I could be there. He's a solid kid, I can't wait to hear about his endowment. That really is a big event.

The mission is good. I don't have many specific stories to share. We were up in Samara for half the week and then the rest of our time we spent getting ready for Invitation Sunday, so we didn't have a ton of meetings or time on the street. OH I forgot to finish my story about XXX! So we gave him a church tour after we met him and his mom on the street. He loved everything and promised to come to church, which he did the next day. He also agreed to get baptized on the 30th!! He's such a humble man, completely willing to do anything that the Lord asks. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he started reading 2 chapters a day. He showed up at church the next day. It was testimony meeting (last week). He pulled me aside after the meeting to talk to me. On our first lesson we talked a lot about prayer and our relationship with Heavenly Father as His children. XXX prays really really often but he said he doesn't feel much because he sins. But he keeps on praying anyways. He told me after Sacrament meeting that he wanted to bear his testimony but the meeting ran out of time. He was going to go up there and talk about how he knows that God answers prayers, because he woke up in the morning and prayed really sincerely because he didn't know where to go, and then ten minutes later we approached him on the street. It was a huge testimony to me that if we're doing what we're supposed to then the Lord can use us to reach out to those who are ready for the gospel. Right now our boy XXX is getting ready for baptism, but he didn't show up to our monday meeting with him because some people from his former church found out he had a Book of Mormon and tried to beat him up. Elder XXX was the one who found that out because XXX ran into them on the street. We have no way to connect with him except through his mom, because he doesn't have a phone. So that's the story. Love the man! Love the mission! Everything's going good. I love you all a lot as well. Keep getting ready for the mission, it really changes you. It seems a ways off for those younger boys, but really, you'll be surprised how fast it all flies by. I feel like it was not long ago that I was the one saying my mission was forever away, and now it's already almost halfway done. Don't let your preparation time slip by. Everything will be better if you take is seriously. I love you!

Love

Alex.