Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Hey Everyone! A lot of crazy and really weird stuff has happened this week!

Elder Eliason and I have been really worried about Igor because he has a desire to get baptized, but we are not sure why. He has a good friend in the branch and at first we thought he wanted to get baptized just for his friend. It is so tough to teach this guy because he is from Uzbekistan and does not speak Russian very well. He has such a lack of gospel knowledge that he does know who Christ is.... (ya I bet you thought that was impossible) and he has never heard of Adam and Eve! Wow start about having to start from the very beginning! So, while Elder Eliason and I were thinking about how to best teach him we came up with the idea (with help from the Spirit of course) to just load him up with all of our pamphlets and books and movies about Christ and the Restoration so that he could study a lot on his own outside of our lessons. Well.. when we went to our lesson before we even started teaching Igor started testifying to us about Christ and his Atonement and how thanks to Christ we can all repent and be baptized for Salvation! What an amazing Spirit! He has been reading and study everyday and has watched the Restoration movie 5 time (that is his favorite movie) and Finding Faith in Christ 3 times. He is doing great!

Now for the weird experience of the week... So last night we get home and are getting ready for bed when I get a call from a member. This member started out by telling me that the Spirit told her that she needed to call me and explain to me her problems... well before I could say much she just went right into a crazy story. Unfortunately, I can't tell you the exact problems that were going on but there was some pretty stressful stuff going on with her family and another member and how he was causing problems in their life and how they didn't want to talk to the branch president about it... (since me being a 21 year old missionary from America who barely knows Russian is going to be able to help)... but that is not even the weirdest part! Then she started going into another part of the story where she got really stressed out and wanted to give up in life and on God and on the Church and at that moment when that happened she got possessed by a demon! She said that she was screaming in a demon voice and had crazy strength and her husband came home and they got in a fight as he was trying to cast the demon out of her and some crazy stuff went down to where she was throwing him across the apartment and then at some point he was able to finally cast the demon out! She said she had been resting all day from the experience and started studying the scriptures when the Spirit told her to call and talk to me about all of this and get advise... the only advise I could give was that I don't have the proper keys and that she needs to talk to the Branch President and President Wooley and then I bore my testimony to her of the love of God and that was that.... WOW! Definitely not something that I was expecting to deal with this week!

WOW THE THINGS THAT YOU EXPERIENCE ON YOUR MISSION! GOTTA LOVE IT! :) Well I love you all! Remember who you are!

Elder Weihing :)