week 32 Magnifiques Secretions

 Short Version: Lithuania had it's first Zone Conference since Covid began. Ignas asked for a Book of Mormon and we started teaching him, WOOT! I gave my first talk in Lithuanian and it actually wasn't too bad. People seemed to understand what I was saying.

Long Version: So most of last week was me and Elder Sieverts either prepping, attending, or cleaning up Zone Conference. Since I didn't know before my mission here is a brief lesson on mission terminology. Each companionship is assigned an area. Each district is comprised of multiple companionships (4-5ish). And then every zone contains multiple different districts. In Lithuania, my district and area boundaries happen to be the same. We have 3 companionships in the Vilnius Lithuania district. Each city is an area. We have 1 other district in Lithuania which is made of all the other cities in Lithuania. Our zone is the entire country of Lithuania. For Zone conference, everyone in the country came to Vilnius. We only have 2 Elder apartments here so we had to pack all 15 of us into our 1 bedroom apartments. Since Elder Sieverts and I have a slightly larger apartment, we were housing 7 other Elders so it was a party. Chaotic but a party nonetheless. Everyone came on different days at different times because of the bus schedules so we spent a lot of time receiving people from the bus station. Lots of time on the bus, lots of interesting conversations with random bus people. Zone Conference itself was great. 

     I gave a talk at church. Usually I freestyle my talks but I wrote it out completely this time.

     After Church there was a small scuffle outside the building. 2 members have some beef with each other. They didn't get to the point of anything too physical, but there was a few small pushes and some words were said. Elder Sieverts broke it up, but it was sad to see. We're gonna try and fix those relations. 

     Ramūnas, a member in the branch, showed us his cologne collection. We had our lesson with him and then he had us pick our favorite smell and wear it. I picked one called Magnifiques Secretions. It's a super weird name, but I'd blame that on the French. Elder Sieverts got Creed on one arm and Junky on the other. We asked the sister missionaries who smelled better and it was my choice of cologne. 

      One of the best parts of my week was playing basketball in the rain with our friend Ignas. We showed up to the courts and it was sunny and great weather. It started to rain lightly but it wasn't on the forecast so we played on. All of the sudden, it began to POUR. It was a blast. I'll attach some pictures of us balling in the downpour.

     Last Pday I also rode some castles in an authentic castle. 

      This quote brought some comfort this week: "Great sculptors and artists spend countless hours perfecting their talents. They don’t pick up a chisel or a brush and palette, expecting immediate perfection. They understand that they will make many errors as they learn, but they start with the basics, the key fundamentals first." (Joseph B Wirthlin) Don't quit trying just because you're not what you hope to be, yet. Little by little we become awesome.

Čiao,

Vyresnysis Smitas