Week 19-First week in Lithuania!

 Hello Everybody,

Short Version: I have made it to my final destination. After lots of quarantining and traveling to lots of different places, I've made it. So far, I haven't done much other than some more self isolation. Now that I've crossed the border between Latvia and Lithuania, I earned another self-isolation (free of charge!). The biggest difference between this self-isolation and the one I did in Latvia is that I have lots of members to call. Now that I'm assigned to an area, I'm over a branch and there are so many people to practice my Lithuanian with. 

Long Version: Nice and late Wednesday night, the 3 other Lithuanian Elders and I got on an international bus and shipped off. As we were getting on, a lady walked up to us and asked us to take a bag full of medications with us because she had a friend with leukemia and needed them as soon as possible. We didn't really want to take the bag because it's kinda sketchy to transport drugs for someone, buuuuuuut, the AP told us to so we did. 

After our nice long bus ride, we hopped off at a bus station in Vilnius. The guy came for his medication when we called him, so we were glad to get that off our hands. Are we drugs mules? Perhaps. But possibly we helped someone out who's got cancer.

     We eventually made it to the apartment and I was exhausted. The next day I spent mostly sleeping and trying to recover from the all-nighter I pulled traveling. 

     I am companions with Elder Yeyna and Elder Sieverts. Both have been in Lithuania for a couple weeks each. That's the case for most of the areas in the mission. We are training ourselves for the most part and trying to stay afloat. So far nothing has gone too wrong. We are talking with our landlord today and we need to be able to communicate with him to be able to terminate a contract with him so hopefully all goes well.

     We meet with lots of members so they can help us out with the language. Whenever we ask questions, they answer but most of the time we don't understand their answer. So we say taip, taip (yes, yes) and move on to the next part of the lesson. Sooner or later that will backfire but for now there's not a lot else we can do. 

Here are some other fun things that happened this week:

-our neighbors across the street in Riga walk around their apartment naked and blinds all the way open. We kept our curtains closed most of the day

-A homeless looking guy on the street talked to us about Biden but we didn't understand anything other than "Biden"

Lastly, I wanted to share an experience I had this week with the gift of tongues. We were giving practice lessons to a previous missionary that served in Lithuania and speaks very well. It was time for me to bear my testimony and of course, my mind goes blank and I have no idea what to say. I started talking because you can't just not talk, so I started saying things and certain words started coming to mind. I was able to give a solid testimony and was actually able to say what I wanted to say. The interesting thing is that most of the words that came to mind, I did not know how to conjugate or use correctly. Even though my grammar was poor and objectively my language horrendous, I felt the spirit so strongly and the person we taught was able to understand what I was trying to say. 

"And the Lord said unto Enoch: Go forth and do as I have commanded thee, and no man shall pierce thee. Open thy mouth, and it shall be filled, and I will give thee utterance, for all flesh is in my hands, and I will do as seemeth me good."

The gift of tongues is real. It doesn't come all at once but it comes. 

Viso gero,

Elder Smith