Cherish or Perish

 Hello  Everyone!

Short Version: We got a new transfer this week. After a long (and lovely) 6 months with Elder Sieverts we're going to be split up. He will be heading to Kaunas and I'll be staying in Vilnius. We spent a lot of this week at District Conference (same as stake conference) and we also had Zone Conference (all the missionaries from Lithuania with the Mission President). We also were trying to meet up with lots of people so Elder Sieverts could say goodbye to them. My new companions will be Elder Cropper, straight from the MTC, and Elder Key. Lithuania was like a giant snow globe this transfer. So much will change and it'll be exciting and interesting to see what happens. Most missionaries have 6 week transfers but for some reason we don't. Ours are very irregular and inconsistent so it will be weird to see such a big change. 

Long Version: Elder Sieverts and I sure will miss each other. He's the only companion I've had in Lithuania and with the exception of the home MTC I've served with him for the large majority of my mission. All my future companions have a high standard to live up to. 

                Super Exciting News! We got a random text from some missionaries in Portland, Oregon saying they had someone who wanted to get baptized. His name is Eligijus. We haven't been able to meet him in-person and we've only had the opportunity to text back and forth a couple of times but he accepted the invitation from the Sisters in Portland to be baptized in December. 

                We spent a lot of time preparing for District conference this week. Elder Sieverts and I were asked to be the translators from Lithuanian to English. Most of the time we have a script of what the speaker are saying. Ideally we translate it to English beforehand but sometimes we only have the Lithuanian transcript. Sometimes we get to go on the adventure of translating with no script which is always crazy. I'm not very good at multitasking anyways, but trying to listen to what's being said, convert it in your head, and then speak it into a translating microphone is next level difficulty. Most the time we only catch part of what they're saying so we end up improvising a lot. Other times we just completely don't understand their Lithuanian either because they use words we don't know or speak really quickly so we make-up parts of the talk.

               This week, one of the youth, Danielius, received the Melchizedek Priesthood which took us by surprise, but it was a good surprise. When we first came to Vilnius we met Danielius and he didn't want to talk to us. I thought he was edgy and it seemed like he came to church because his parents forced him too, I know, very presumptuous of me. He's pretty introverted but we're friends now (credit to Elder Sieverts) and he finds us at sacrament meeting to sit with us. He's thinking about going on a mission and told us he would have gone a year ago but didn't want to go during Covid. 

               Some other fun things that've been happening:

- I don't recall if I said this in a previous letter but on the Saturday before Halloween we had the best service project I've ever done. We went to the one-legged man's summer home again but instead of cleaning his garage we made a giant bonfire. He had a bunch of wooden things (cupboards, tables, chairs, wood scraps, etc) that he needed to get rid of so it was our job to light them on fire. He gave us a blowtorch and a can of gasoline and then left us alone. We definitely had a lot of fun. I'll include pictures

- we needed a coat rack so I jimmy-rigged 2 coat hangers into a coat rack that attaches to the top of the door

- Vilnius 1st and 2nd branches had a joint Halloween party. I wore my Charmander onesie. Who knew spontaneous thrift store purchases would come in so handy?

- We visited a graveyard on Nov 2nd which is Lithuania's equivalent to day of the dead. They light candles and decorate all the headstones and it was actually super peaceful to walk around in the graveyard. Usually graveyards at night have a creepy vibe about them, but it was refreshing to walk around and look at all the candles. 

- We had daylight savings. The darkness here is sad. It doesn't get bright until about 9am and then gets dark at 4pm. Motivation in the morning took a big hit.

- I played pingpong with Valė. She's a 60ish year old lady in our branch we meet with frequently. She's really bad at pingpong but she'd never played before and found it hilarious to try and play. 

- Here's are 2 jokes I heard during Zone Conference that aren't that funny but the made me cry laughing when I heard them. Disclaimer: they're genuinely not that funny so keep your expectations low. 

Joke1: What is made of leather and sounds like a sneeze? A shoe

Joke2: Did you know you can type on your toothbrush like a computer? Ctrl+C to tooth copy and Ctrl+V to tooth paste

         

Your Weekly Enlightenment: I was trying to think this week how the widow must have felt as she was casting in her two mites. Maybe a little embarrassed? Wishing she was able to give more so she could appear like everyone else? Jesus makes it obvious that it has nothing to do with the amount she gave, but it was about her personal offering and sacrifice. Her money was relatively inconsequential compared to how much everyone else was giving.  "For all they did cast in or their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all  her living." (Mark 12) One chapter later the woman anoints Jesus with the expensive ointment and I thought this phrase from it relates really well. "She hath done what she could." To paraphrase something Tyler Gourley told me a few weeks ago, God loves the offerings (time, money, service, saying a prayer, etc) we make for him no matter how big or small. 

C-U-L8R,

Elder Smith