Voice email

 Voice message sent Mon Dec 13th, 2021

“Why hello, everyone. We’re trying a new format today, so I hope you enjoy it. And I think I’ll still do the short version and the long version, but I just don’t have time to write it all out today, and I figured since it’s been a pretty long time since I wrote one, then I should do something.

 So here I am, out in Lithuania, just freezing – right now it’s -6 – and it’s really cold and I forgot my hat and I’m waiting for a bus. So that’s about how life goes these days. 

So short version: I am still in Vilnius. Elder Seiverts has left me, I was with him for six months, and he left to a different city, I stayed here. I was in a trio for a little bit with Elder Cropper, who was a brand-new missionary straight from the MTC, and Elder Key. I was in a trio for about a week and some weird stuff happened and so now it’s just me and Elder Key. Still in Vilnius, still just on that grind, and yeah, that’s basically the short version. We’re doing lots of good work, so that’s good. Lots of things to do. 

So long version: Let’s see… Well first of all, it’s freezing. -6 right now in Celsius; that is something – it’s below freezing, so it’s cold. We’ll see how long I can actually last holding my phone because I don’t have a glove, so my hand’s just very cold. It is snowy, and it’s not like a ton of snow, it kind of melts and they do a really good job about plowing it and pushing it off the sidewalk. So there’s not a ton of snow to walk through, that’s not a big deal, but it does snow almost every single day. 

There are a few people that we’ve been teaching, and two of them are not on date to be baptized, but they want to be baptized sometime eventually, we just haven’t figured out when they will be able to get baptized because we haven’t met with them for long enough. But they both wanted to be baptized before they started meeting with us because they’ve been meeting with other missionaries in the past, so that’s super cool. That’s the first time I’ve had that happen in Lithuania, so that’s super fun. We’re working with them and we’re teaching them. 

I kind of feel like I’m getting to the point with Lithuanian where I can tell what people say to me, and I can’t always reply back with what I want to say, but I at least know what kind of question they’re asking me. Sometimes people in the past would ask me a question, and it was like an open-ended question, and I would say “yes” or “no”, and that’s not an option. If they ask me something like, “What are you doing here in Lithuania?” and then you say, “yes”, that just gets really awkward because that’s not the correct answer in any way. So I feel like I can understand what people are saying, especially if they speak slow. When the members talk to us, they know that they should speak slow to us, or we could just ask people, “Could you speak slower? It’s not my first language”, and then sometimes they’re just like, “Eh!” and then they won’t talk to you. But most people are really nice and will be like, “Oh yeah, that’s super chill, I’ll talk to you slower because it’s super cool that’ someone’s trying to learn my language, even though there’s only, like, two million people that speak this language in the world.” So yeah, language overall is going really great. We had a day last week where we did no English. We did not speak to each other in English all day. We tried that in the past, but before it was just a fail because I basically just didn’t say anything to my companion because I didn’t know any words to say. And there was a sister, and that was kind of what her day was like, because we did it in our entire district, so all of Lithuanian speakers in Vilnius, they did no speak English on Friday. And it was kind of funny because we were on a bus with her, and we’d ask her questions, and she would just laugh and then not know what to say. But honestly, me and my companion had a good time with it, and my brain hurt at the end of the day and I had a headache, but it was the headache that you’re proud of. So it was good, and we’re going to be doing it some more. And hopefully by the very end, we can just not speak English majority of the day. We definitely need to work up to it, because we’re not good enough to just go full in yet. But we’re definitely making our way there. 

Other than that, it’s really freezy, and – oh! There’s lots of Christmas things here! So they have a giant Christmas tree in the town center, and the lights are up everywhere, and most stores that you go into have all the decorations up, which I guess is pretty typical, but it’s everywhere. They really love Christmas. They started putting stuff up before Thanksgiving – which, in America, that is a sin – well, not a sin – yeah, basically a sin. We’ll go with a sin. It’s a sin to do it before Thanksgiving. They do it here, but they also don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. 

Two last things: we’ve had some really cool member dinners. That’s not a thing in Lithuania, members don’t feed you because culturally, you just don’t, so we just never do. But there was a Finnish couple, and they started feeding us, and then other people started asking us to come over, so that’s super cool. I hope that keeps happening because everybody else makes dinner way better than I do. I’m happy to eat good food if I don’t have to cook it. If I just have to prepare a short message to share with you, then I will eat all the food you have. 

It’s very Chrismas-y. Everyone, in general, on the busses or just walking around, is way more open to talk to us, because it’s like, “*Gasp*! You like Christmas?” And they’re like, “Oh, of course, everyone loves Christmas, yes.” And then we’re like, “We love Christmas too, and you know why? Because Jesus Christ.” And so it just opens the door wide open because everybody’s already on board with Christmas, we’re on board with Christmas, just way more focused on Christ, so it makes it really, really easy to talk to people and share the gospel with them. And even if they don’t want to hear the gospel, they at least talk to us about Christmas. 

So that’s it, my bus is coming, so ciao, viso gero, and see you in a bit. Maybe. Who knows? See you in a while.