Labas Visiems,

I am fantastic, Ella. Tonight we'll probably eat out, since it's preparation day. We were thinking at Can Can, which is a pizza place here. They have a sweet deal where if you buy one large, then you get another one for free! So, as you can imagine, we enjoy eating there. Today, I am wearing my green and blue checkeredish tie, from DI, but it doesn't really matter since I'm also wearing a scarf, so you can't see it.

I understand some Russian, not very much. I've thought about learning it when I get back, but who knows. I'll probably eventually learn how to contact in Russian, but who knows.

For conference, they show it here the week after. Mostly because they don't have translators in Salt Lake, like they do for the other languages, there's just like 5 or so members that translate the talks, weeks before and then a few that read/translate on the spot, but it's a dubbed over DVD that we watch. Then, priesthood at least in Klaipeda, is shown in Priesthood for the next two or three weeks, so that more people see it.

Yeah, just send the package straight to Klaipeda, I will be here for sure until just before Thanksgiving, I think.

Thank You in Lithuanian is ačiu (pronounced kinda like a sneezing noise, with a shorter 'oo' sound at the end).

On BYU, I had Dining Plus, which is easily the best plan. Budge is quite a wonderful choice. If possible, I would recommend the bottom floor as well, if you can 1100, I think I was in 1115, right in the middle. Umm, I think it would be fine to room with Dallin or Charles, I mean in my hall anyway, it didn't matter a whole lot, who your roommate was, since we all just kinda chilled in each other's rooms. I mean, just going for the unknown will prepare a bit more for the mission lifestyle, if he cares about that. Bed wise, probably the one by the window, instead of the door, but it didn't matter that much to me, being by the door, since the rooms aren't that big anyway.

One quick request, could you find a picture of a cartoon character named 'Lucky Luke' and send it to me? Also, if you could find out a bit about it that would be fantastic. I was told that I strongly resemble this character and would like a picture to see if that's true.

Well, I taught English class, by myself one time this week, since Elder Whicker was in Riga for a few days. It was pretty good, much harder than when there's someone else there to cover if you don't really know what to do.

Had a few interesting contacts this week:

A Satan worshipper, I think the second one I've talked to on my mission.

A group of hoolies, who said 'Sup, sup?' to us, so I responded with a little head nod and a 'sup' as well. They just lost it, laughing after that. Not really sure why, but they did.

A man told us he couldn't talk to us because we were not Lithuanian, specifically from America.

We met with Ainis and asked him to read through the Book of Mormon cover to cover again, since he's already done it once. It went a lot better than we thought it was going to. He was very accepting of our request like usual and was going to honestly try to do it. We have asked him if his mom would want to meet with us, but she works all day, so our schedules don't really match up. We are having a halloween activity, with tacos on saturday, so we'll invite her to that.

We also contacted an incredibly Catholic man. He went off for about thirty minutes about the need for a priest to forgive your sins and to take communion. It wasn't a very productive contact, in bringing him closer to the truth, but it helped me to better understand why strong religious people don't want to change. They have what they believe to be the truth and so why are they going to search for more? I mean like, how many of you are planning on ever reading the Koran or like a book of Buddhist teachings? Probably close to none. So the contact was useful in the sense, that it furthered my understanding and therefore love for the people.

We met with a couple less actives, still don't really know what to teach them. Especially because they all seem to have a solid doctrinal knowledge. There just must be some lacking of a spiritual conviction.

Sunday was interesting. Lucy, a chinese woman, spoke in sacrament meeting. She speaks pretty good Russian and English, so she gave her talk in Russian, with many hand gestures to help clarify. And if she didn't know a word, she would just say it in English, and a member or the branch president, who speaks Lithuanian, Russian, and English fluently, would help her out. It was probably the most interactive talk I've ever heard, haha.

Sounds like your weather is pretty Lithuanian, right now. It's been raining most of the week, hailing a bit as well. A large amount of wind is generally accompanying the rain, making for lovely contacting weather. Luckily when we return home, we can drink some nice warm fruit tea. So good.

I love all of you and appreciate your prayers. I pray for you daily and hope all is well in your lives. Lithuania is the best.

Love,

Vyresnysis Conor Hiltonas

PS Dad if you ever return to Russia, you should try some Kvass, It's a drink based with rye, but is like a soda. In Lithuanian it's gira, it's so delicious. Like drinking bread.

Labas Visiems,

Transfer wise, here's what happened: Nothing. I am still in Klaipeda, with Elder Whicker, which is wonderful. Elder Manning, who was in Vilnius my first transfer and was Elder Whicker's MTC companion, is now the district leader here.

Answers to your inquiries: Yes, we have normal showers. More or less. They all have the heads with the hose deal, so you can lift them up and move them around, but they work like a normal shower.

The branch here in Klaipeda is quite small. It's also combined Russian and Lithuanian, so we sing in both languages, switching so that we have two hymns in one language and then one in the other. The talks are sometimes translated into Russian by a member for the people that don't really speak Lithuanian. Priesthood is very small, about six priesthood holders and then another man who comes every week, but is not a member. There's a lot of old women, in various levels of activity. Youth wise, there's one priest, and then three or so young women. Then for primary there are probably three to five kids. As far as I know they don't have a Primary program here.

This week we finished watching conference in English and started the Priesthood session in Lithuanian. Priesthood was wonderful. All the talks were just fantastic. I especially enjoyed Elder Kearon's. It was just beatuifully written. I would highly recommend it, for those of you who couldn't or didn't go.

We met with Ainis. Talked about studying the scriptures, like always it went really well. I hope his mother will soon allow him to be baptized.

We found a lesson while harvesting with a young guy, about our age. It went really well. He seemed more engaged than most people and hopefully will continue his interest.

Interesting little event we saw this week: An old woman was bent over by a path holding some chunks of grass, left over from just being mowed. She then spit on the ground, covered it with some of the grass, spit again, dropped the rest of the grass and then crossed herself, before walking on down the path.

Had a couple opportunities for service this week. We helped an old member buy groceries, which usually the other companionship does, but they were unable to due to travel for transfers. We also helped a family move. Taking essentially everything out of their house, counter, fridge, washing machine, dishwasher, TV, huge cabinets, bed/couches, etc. Loading a van, unloading it, and then moving it into their new house. It was quite the experience. Which reminds me of a little oddity about Lithuania. No one has dryers here, they all use a clothes rack to dry their clothes.

This week we called a bunch of less actives, trying to concrete the branch list, and set up a few meetings, found out some things, but most importantly a huge amount of people were at church, that were usually not, so that was sweet.

Elder Whicker and Elder Manning are gone for a few days to Riga for training. So Elder Rich and I are companions.

Elder Rich and I met with Ieva, a nine year old girl, who has come to Church for a while and wants to get baptized, but her grandma, won't really allow it. It went realy well, she knows quite a bit, especially for a nine year old.

Couple other random things, I dreamed in Lithuanian, which is said to show fluency, so that's way sweet. I also started to wear my winter coat, paltas in Lithuanian. I feel kinda like I'm in the Mafia, especially wearing a scarf and the dress gloves I bought. It's a quite powerful feeling actually. Kinda weird, but cool. I mean I've always wanted to be in the Mafia, except for like all the illegal and immoral stuff they do.

Lithuania is still awesome, of course. I love everything and always strive to enjoy what I'm doing and where I'm at. I appreciate your prayers and news and pray for you. Hope everything keeps going well in all you do.

Love,

Vyresnysis Conor Hilton

Labas Visiems!

The transfer is coming to a close on Wednesday. They just seem to fly by. I can't believe that I've already been here for that long, crazy.

We taught a woman a part of the first lesson in her doorway, at the beginning of this week and then were able to return and teach her the rest of it later that week. The message touched her, she wasn't ready at the time to meet again, but we left a book of Mormon and hopefully as she reads and continues to feel the Spirit, she will desire to learn more.

We had our last English class for this session on Thursday and it was hilariously awful. We attempted to play a game like taboo, but without certain words they couldn't say, since they were all doing it in a second language. The class didn't really want to participate, we had started by sharing a joke (the German coast guard, "what are you sinking about?' one, which is a quite hilarious commercial by the way) but no one really laughed. There were a number of other funnily frustrating things as well. needless to say it was a rather long hour, but I was mostly amused, especially when Elder Whicker talked about how he had just wanted to die the whole time.

Ainis is doing well. He's incredibly busy with a local organization he's involved with, traveling all over and meeting with all sorts of people, but still doing fabulous.

We also had alesson with an ancient man, who probably just wanted company. Hopefully something touched him and will make it easier in some way to accept the Gospel later.

Saw a sweet doorbell that was a lion's head with the bell placed inside the lion's open mouth. A local public bus ahad advertising on it, that decorated it similar to the Magical Mystery Tour album cover, which was awesome to ride on. Since then it became the Magical Mystery Tour bus.

Fun fact about Elder Whicker: he hates buttons. like the kind that you have on a shirt or suit. They make him want to gag, sometimes he can't even say the word. Weird, huh?

Conference was sweet. Haven't watched Priesthood yet, but have seen the rest in English and Lithuanian, understood a fair bit in lithuanian, which was cool. It was very hard to concentrate for that long a time though, and made me feel extremely tired. For maybe the first time, I realized that if you watch conference with questions, you will get answers. Some small and even random questions that I had had previously, were answered while watching conference.

Thanks for all of your love and support. I pray for you and appreciate your prayers. Lithuania is beautiful and I absolutely adore it.

Iki pasimatymo

Love,

Vyresnysis Kanoris Hiltonas or Elder Conor Hilton

Labas!

For District Meeting last week, we talked about commitments and their role in bringing people to Christ. I had thought of an analogy earlier that I quite enjoy. The Gospel is like two poles of a ladder. We are at the bottom and getting to Heaven, is the top. Commitments form the rungs of the ladder. Without them, it is still possible to make it to Heaven, but incredibly difficult. Commitments ease the process and provide a smooth transition up the slope to Heaven. We also talked about giving commitments in all of our conversations, not just with lessons, but even people who aren't really interested, but stopped long enough to talk with us, which we implemented this week.

We had a lesson with a less active, Mykolas. He knows the truth of everything and enjoys meeting with us and learning more about the Gospel, but due to work can't come to Church. He used to be active, but since changing jobs, has greatly decreased his Church attendance. I don't really know how to help someone like that. It's not really an understanding issue, but just a reality/priority issue.

For English we taught about stores and food, including slang for money. We also asked if Maxima (basically the Lithuanian equivalent of Wal-Mart) was owned by the Mafia, since I have had people tell me that before, and figured it would be kinda fun. THe majority of our class, voted Yes it is.

We found a few lessons this week. One with a guy who was very interested and appreciated a lot of the things we had to say, but wasn't really looking to join a specific religion, more desiring to just practice by himself.

Also taught a woman, who had previously met with missionaries and had some great questions we could answer. She enjoyed looking for the commonalities in all Churches, because those must be true and we explianed, why it is that all kinds of churches have things in common, through the Apostasy. It's just awesome to be able to make connections and give people answers to questions they didn't think were answerable.

We then taught a young kid who was very open to our ideas, but didn't really feel a need to meet more and find out if it was true now, since he's young, he has his whole life to figure out the truth. But we gave a Book of Mormon and asked him to read it and if he felt it was true to call us, so hopefully that will work on him for the future.

A crazy circumstance, that testifies to me of God's hand in the work happened this weekend. The other Elders taught a kid, that just happened to be someone that Elder Cooke and I taught and then tried to have a return appointment with, but due to some confusion, we missed each other and then we lost track of him.

I guess that Elder Whicker and I look German or something, since people have asked us if we are German and greeted us in German. Also a man gave us the Nazi salute and then said 'Hail Hitler' to which we replied, no and then explained who we were.

Oh, some people in our English class told me that I look exactly like a cartoon character named Lucky Luke. They showed us a picture and the other Elders all agree. Could you perhaps delve a bit into what/who he is?

As always I love serving and living in Lithuania. I appreciate your prayers and thoughts and pray for you always. Good luck in school, try not to drown in your seemingly endless supply of homework.

Love,

Vyresnysis Conor Hilton