Week 30- Relationships Lessons From Artūras

 Hello Everybody!

Short Version: We did NOT get deported which is excellent. We have a 3 month visa, and then we are expecting to receive 2 year living permits once they can be processed. We've been having more in-person lessons which is so fun. It's so much better to teach someone who's sitting next to you instead of over the phone or Zoom. There's a legitimate connection now that we can give them fist bumps 

Long Version: As everyone knows, missionaries sometimes get involved in some shenanigans. Last week me and Elder Sieverts thought it'd be funny to send an email to another elder in our district that he was getting deported. We made it sound very professional and real to get the full effect. At the very end of the email, we wrote something like "hahaha just kidding. It's just Elder Smith and Elder Sieverts, we love you." We sent it and it went to bed thinking nothing of it. However, apparently when he saw the email he bought it and believed it completely. He was so panicked that he never read the rest of the email where it says it's just a prank. He ended up contacting the mission office and our mission president which was not in the plans when we were writing this email to him. The next day, we got a call from the mission president and it wasn't even on our radar why he would be calling us on a Thursday afternoon. We received a bit of chastisement, probably deserved. Eventually, the mission office realized it was a prank but they didn't find it as funny as we did. I'll send a screenshot of what the email looked like on a phone.

     We teach a lot of English classes. It's been really fun to have 4-5 old grandmas who want to learn English try and make the TH sound but can never get it quite right. I'm sure they are thinking the same thing when I speak in Lithuanian though.

     Artūras is one of our favorite people to teach. He's a member but is a convert so he's got some interesting ideas about certain doctrines that we try and straighten out with him. This week at the end of one of our lessons he started giving us really weird marriage and relationship advice. It made us really uncomfortable and it was so hard not to start laughing while he was telling us the "advice." 

     We met with another guy named Narutis! He's a recent convert that hasn't come to church since covid because he doesn't own a smartphone, a computer, or have any wifi-capable devices. We had a lesson with him after church and he speaks only Lithuanian (most members speak Lithuanian and a tiny bit of English. Enough that we can throw in a word or two in English when we don't know it.) However, it was only in Lithuanian. We got talking about blueberries and we didn't understand exactly what was going on because my fruit vocabulary is a little rusty you could say. We accidentally agreed to buy a gallon of blueberries from him. We thought he was just giving them to us as a gift, but nope, we got hustled by a 70 year old. 

     For the last couple of weeks, I've been studying a lot about faith. I was confused about how Faith could move mountains. We hear that a lot at church and in general conference. It sounds cool and super inspirational but I never really believed it all that much. After lots of digging, I found my own answer. One quote my dad told me when we were discussing it over a family Pday call was from my Grandpa Don. He wasn't the most active in the church and didn't always live the life you'd expect a member of the church to live.  "If you have the faith to move mountains, you better get a shovel and start digging" (Grandpa Don Smith). I'm grateful for the scriptures, the words of living prophets and also for parents and grandparents that give us great advice. 

Iki pasimatymo,

Vyresnysis Smitas