Sveiki Visiems!!!!
Alright, first- Happy Birthday Mom and Dad!!!!
Second, some random things. We heard from an investigator about an iMac touchscreen, is that for reals? It sounded like something out of a sci-fi movie, but possible. Alistair, some more music you can check out- it's actually Elder Leishman's cousin, but it sounds like it would be a We Shot the Moon ish sound. His group is called I am Echo, or Raven's Watch. There's also a music video for a song astrocars, the drummer in the video is Elder Leishman.
Now some miracles.
The first is more light-hearted, but I would say a miracle nonetheless. We had met with the Motiejunas family, who as far as we know have not been visited by missionaries for a long time. Probably because they are so solid in the church, but regardless Elder Leishman and I had both had thoughts that we should visit them, so visit we did. The lesson was fantastic and afterward they gave us a cake of sorts to take home. We were traveling home, when we were approached by a drunk youth, who looked like he wanted to bother us. He asks what we were offering and since he wasn't in a condition to feel the Spirit, I offered the other item we had- the cake. He was shocked and confused. He began to back away quickly, profusely apologizing. Thanks to the cake, we were able to avoid what could have been an otherwise frustrating experience.
Second, Du Wei, who we were unable to meet with this week due to an increase in his work schedule and other conflicts, still came to Church. The second week in a row!
Third, is Vygantas. I personally have been meeting with him almost weekly for about 5 months. Up to Sunday, he had not attended Church for 6 years. We met with him on Saturday and talked about the path to eternal life, using 2 Nephi 31:15-21 as our scriptural basis. We drew it out talking about how he is on the path, but needs to continue to keep all of God's commandments to gain eternal life. He often works on Sundays, but this Sunday he wasn't working. He did say he might go to a party, where he would stay the night, making it impossible to come to Church. We strongly and boldly testified that Church was more important than anything else he could do that night or the next day and that it was a necessary step if he wanted to move forward towards Eternal life. He listened and came to Church, being warmly greeted by almost the entire branch.
Fourth, is a media referral we received this week. Ieva is her name. We met with her on Thursday and had a great lesson. She brought a friend, Motiejus, because she was a little scared of meeting with us and we had Valdas there. Her friend and Valdas had a little bit of a heated discussion at the beginning and throughout the lesson, but we managed to take control, get a prayer said and then the lesson flowed together incredibly well. At the end, Motiejus said he understood, but wouldn't take the Book of Mormon because it wouldn't have been with true intent, but Ieva said she would need to read it and see what it teaches. She also said she would come to Church, which she did. Afterward, with no prompting from us, she asked when we could meet so that she could learn more. We set up another lesson and will meet again this Tuesday. Fantastic.
We also met with Stefanija and Loreta, two older women in the branch who don't have any family in the Church and are rather lonely. They were both thrilled that we were coming over and really enjoyed our company and the spiritual thought we shared.
We met with a young guy, about our age, named Juozas, or Joseph. He's Catholic and his family is pretty high in the Catholic Church, priests, archbishops, etc. He speaks English incredibly well and was super friendly. He learned from watching Cartoon Network as a kid. I have observed that the best English speakers here learned from cartoons and that they are some of the friendliest most polite, and personable people I've met. Random little aside. Anyway, we explained what we believe and taught the Restoration. He's met with missionaries before and said that wherever he's at they keep finding him, which to me was a sign that he is prepared and needs to accept the Gospel. He's very spiritual and has a lot of faith, it just needs to be focused in the best way it can. He lives in the other elders' area, so hopefully they have luck with him.
We also met with a woman in the other elders' area, we were in a threesome covering both areas for the first part of the week, Aldona. She is old and rather hard to keep focused, but after many remainders we finally got her focused. We taught about the Apostasy and Restoration. Elder Leishman and Elder Nelson explained it, she didn't quite get it to click so I reviewed it. I made a visual aid of a napkin. The napkin was the Church and as Christ and the Apostles died the Church fell and broke, I ripped the napkin into pieces. Then I talked about the Apostasy and no one having the whole truth or the whole napkin. Which brought us to the Restoration, bringing the napkin back together again, into one whole. It was pretty cool.
This week was just full of things to do, which was fantastic. We also didn't have any hot water, which was not quite so fantastic, but helped to wake us up in the morning. Today should have been our last day, so hopefully, we get our hot water back. It helped me realize how blessed we are to have hot water, something I just kind of took for granted.
Well, as always, I love serving and love Lithuania. I pray for you and appreciate your prayers. Have a fantastic week!
Love,
Vyresnysis Kanoris Hiltonas
Monday, July 25, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
Sveiki Visiems!
Alistair and others- sounds like the concert was sweet. I'm pretty sure that was where I saw Jack's Mannequin, it was a pretty cool place if I remember. Glad to hear good things about Harry Potter, nice that it ended well, as it should be. Batman sounds fantastic, I just felt the energy and excitement when I read your little blip. Woohoo! Your costumes looked awesome! Alistair, I could picture the bass player in my head as you wrote, it was pretty funny. Oh- Elder Leishman and I were talking this morning and we had a random question, is the Asian pilot guy in Star Trek the same actor as the director "Kastang! You busted!" guy from Big Fat Liar? THey seem to look similar in my memory, but it's been hazed a bit with time and lack of exposure, so we weren't sure, just curious.
A funny occurrence. We were contacting and these two 17-18 yr old guys on bikes start following us, right behind us. They are talking to each other switching between English and Lithuanian, but don't say a word to us. We walked down Laisves Aleja, a walking street, through old town, and then around a park and back through part of old town, in total about 30-45 minutes or 2miles. They never said a word to us. Finally, I stop a guy and start talking to him for a bit and they stop waiting for us and Elder Leishman started talking to them. I finish my contact and go over and we talked a bit with the kids. They were atheist and didn't believe that we had actually got confirmation from God about the Church's truthfulness. They were rather respectful though, and calmly kindly expressed their disagree-ance. It was amusing.
A few miracles. First- Du Wei and his non-member wife came to Church on Sunday. It's been a month or longer since Du Wei came and months since his wife attended with him. It was great to see both of them there.
Second- the Kacerauskas family came as well. THey haven't been for three months or so. We had given them a call this past week and invited them to Church and asked if we could meet, they said we couldn't meet but that they might come to Church. They did!
Third- We had a meeting with Vygantas, another less-active, and he had a question of the soul about God allowing suffering and other seemingly unjust things and how He could judge people fairly accordingly. When Pres. Schwitzer came to our zone conferences last fall he promised us that if we would study the Questions of the Soul and how to answer them with the Book of Mormon and people would be put in our path that had those questions. I had been looking over them and then Vygantas was in our path and had a question we were able to help him answer, using the Book of Mormon and other scriptures. It was fantastic.
With Du Wei this week we discussed putting off the natural man. He had said that he was always tired in the morning and that that was why it was hard to come to Church, so we talked about the natural man in all of us. We acknowledged that it was hard and Elder Leishman testified from his personal experience that it is difficult, but possible, and that the blessings of obedience are incredible. The message must have connected because he was at Church.
We had another service opportunity this week with an investigator, who just moved to England, Orestas. We were helping organize some things at his house, where his mother will still live and finish up some jobs that she couldn't do on her own. It went very well and we offered our continued assistance to his mom, if she needed anything else.
Rumsiskes was also this weekend. THe celebration of friendship between all the members here in Lithuania. Where we all gather and dance and have skits. It's a blast.
Thanks for your thoughts on my law, Champion of Religious and Other Freedoms (I enjoyed your acronym Alistair, maybe I'll form an organization using it), impressions. Mom, that would be great if you sent those talks. I have one he gave in the winter at Chapman University about religious freedom and it was actually while reading and thinking about that that the idea first came to me.
Enjoy your week. Good luck Al, with your wisdom teeth, good thing you got all your fun in this past week. Thanks for your prayers, and know I pray for you. I love serving, Lithuania is the best.
Love you all,
Vyresnysis Kanoris Hiltonas
Alistair and others- sounds like the concert was sweet. I'm pretty sure that was where I saw Jack's Mannequin, it was a pretty cool place if I remember. Glad to hear good things about Harry Potter, nice that it ended well, as it should be. Batman sounds fantastic, I just felt the energy and excitement when I read your little blip. Woohoo! Your costumes looked awesome! Alistair, I could picture the bass player in my head as you wrote, it was pretty funny. Oh- Elder Leishman and I were talking this morning and we had a random question, is the Asian pilot guy in Star Trek the same actor as the director "Kastang! You busted!" guy from Big Fat Liar? THey seem to look similar in my memory, but it's been hazed a bit with time and lack of exposure, so we weren't sure, just curious.
A funny occurrence. We were contacting and these two 17-18 yr old guys on bikes start following us, right behind us. They are talking to each other switching between English and Lithuanian, but don't say a word to us. We walked down Laisves Aleja, a walking street, through old town, and then around a park and back through part of old town, in total about 30-45 minutes or 2miles. They never said a word to us. Finally, I stop a guy and start talking to him for a bit and they stop waiting for us and Elder Leishman started talking to them. I finish my contact and go over and we talked a bit with the kids. They were atheist and didn't believe that we had actually got confirmation from God about the Church's truthfulness. They were rather respectful though, and calmly kindly expressed their disagree-ance. It was amusing.
A few miracles. First- Du Wei and his non-member wife came to Church on Sunday. It's been a month or longer since Du Wei came and months since his wife attended with him. It was great to see both of them there.
Second- the Kacerauskas family came as well. THey haven't been for three months or so. We had given them a call this past week and invited them to Church and asked if we could meet, they said we couldn't meet but that they might come to Church. They did!
Third- We had a meeting with Vygantas, another less-active, and he had a question of the soul about God allowing suffering and other seemingly unjust things and how He could judge people fairly accordingly. When Pres. Schwitzer came to our zone conferences last fall he promised us that if we would study the Questions of the Soul and how to answer them with the Book of Mormon and people would be put in our path that had those questions. I had been looking over them and then Vygantas was in our path and had a question we were able to help him answer, using the Book of Mormon and other scriptures. It was fantastic.
With Du Wei this week we discussed putting off the natural man. He had said that he was always tired in the morning and that that was why it was hard to come to Church, so we talked about the natural man in all of us. We acknowledged that it was hard and Elder Leishman testified from his personal experience that it is difficult, but possible, and that the blessings of obedience are incredible. The message must have connected because he was at Church.
We had another service opportunity this week with an investigator, who just moved to England, Orestas. We were helping organize some things at his house, where his mother will still live and finish up some jobs that she couldn't do on her own. It went very well and we offered our continued assistance to his mom, if she needed anything else.
Rumsiskes was also this weekend. THe celebration of friendship between all the members here in Lithuania. Where we all gather and dance and have skits. It's a blast.
Thanks for your thoughts on my law, Champion of Religious and Other Freedoms (I enjoyed your acronym Alistair, maybe I'll form an organization using it), impressions. Mom, that would be great if you sent those talks. I have one he gave in the winter at Chapman University about religious freedom and it was actually while reading and thinking about that that the idea first came to me.
Enjoy your week. Good luck Al, with your wisdom teeth, good thing you got all your fun in this past week. Thanks for your prayers, and know I pray for you. I love serving, Lithuania is the best.
Love you all,
Vyresnysis Kanoris Hiltonas
Monday, July 11, 2011
This past week was quite good. Tuesday, we spent most of the day serving a member- Valdemaras. We mixed and laid cement on the roof of his garage. It was a unique experience and quite enjoyable to be able to work with him in that sense.
We then had zone conference, which was fantastic. It was great to meet President Boswell and his wife and learn from them. He's a bit of a jokester, which is a much different feel than President Dance, but still an incredible teacher. We talked about priesthood keys. We went through all the theory or doctrine and then applied it to us. Learning about the delegation of authority, with written permission was very intriguing. Especially because we as missionaries have written delegated permission from the President of the Church. That's pretty intense.
Afterward the assistants, stayed with us, so we had a mini exchange, and I served with Elder Okoren. It was good. We talked before we started working on what I wanted to improve, I have been trying to increase my boldness and effectiveness in finding and all aspects, but particularly boldness. As we worked I watched what Elder Okoren did, and was impressed with the way he showed interest in the individual, seeming to try and relate with them individually. Then, using his individualized relationship, tying in the gospel. I am going to show more interest in the individual because of that brief exchange.
We had interviews with both President and Sister Boswell. They were quite good. Sister Boswell is very professional. President Boswell and I talked about taking the large amount of knowledge I have and crystalizing it down to a few incredibly simple points that anyone could understand. I've been thinking about that since the interview and striving to do taht in all aspects of life. Another thing he invited us to do at zone conference was to pray and ask why we were sent here, to the Baltic Mission. Which has been interesting to ponder.
Elder Leishman and I met with Du Wei and Vygantas. Both less actives. With Du Wei we talked about enduring and gratitude to God for all of our blessings.
With Vygantas we talked about fasting. The last time we met we invited him to pray about a way to come to church. He was concerned with having enough faith to get an answer. With his immediate concern about faith, and greater concern with church attendance, we figured fasting would be an appropriate and timely lesson. It went well, we helped explain some of the reasons behind fasting and testified of it's power and usefulness in gaining answers. We also offered our support in joining with him to fast if he so desired. He said he would fast and probably ask us to fast with him.
Elder Leishman and Elder Graham re-found an investigator Elder Graham taught when he was here, Antanas, and we had since lost contact with. They had a lesson with him, which sounded as if it went well.
Hope Harry Potter and Owl City both go well for you all. I love serving and being among the people of Lithuania. I appreciate your prays and pray for you.
Love,
Vyresnysis Kanoris Hiltonas
We then had zone conference, which was fantastic. It was great to meet President Boswell and his wife and learn from them. He's a bit of a jokester, which is a much different feel than President Dance, but still an incredible teacher. We talked about priesthood keys. We went through all the theory or doctrine and then applied it to us. Learning about the delegation of authority, with written permission was very intriguing. Especially because we as missionaries have written delegated permission from the President of the Church. That's pretty intense.
Afterward the assistants, stayed with us, so we had a mini exchange, and I served with Elder Okoren. It was good. We talked before we started working on what I wanted to improve, I have been trying to increase my boldness and effectiveness in finding and all aspects, but particularly boldness. As we worked I watched what Elder Okoren did, and was impressed with the way he showed interest in the individual, seeming to try and relate with them individually. Then, using his individualized relationship, tying in the gospel. I am going to show more interest in the individual because of that brief exchange.
We had interviews with both President and Sister Boswell. They were quite good. Sister Boswell is very professional. President Boswell and I talked about taking the large amount of knowledge I have and crystalizing it down to a few incredibly simple points that anyone could understand. I've been thinking about that since the interview and striving to do taht in all aspects of life. Another thing he invited us to do at zone conference was to pray and ask why we were sent here, to the Baltic Mission. Which has been interesting to ponder.
Elder Leishman and I met with Du Wei and Vygantas. Both less actives. With Du Wei we talked about enduring and gratitude to God for all of our blessings.
With Vygantas we talked about fasting. The last time we met we invited him to pray about a way to come to church. He was concerned with having enough faith to get an answer. With his immediate concern about faith, and greater concern with church attendance, we figured fasting would be an appropriate and timely lesson. It went well, we helped explain some of the reasons behind fasting and testified of it's power and usefulness in gaining answers. We also offered our support in joining with him to fast if he so desired. He said he would fast and probably ask us to fast with him.
Elder Leishman and Elder Graham re-found an investigator Elder Graham taught when he was here, Antanas, and we had since lost contact with. They had a lesson with him, which sounded as if it went well.
Hope Harry Potter and Owl City both go well for you all. I love serving and being among the people of Lithuania. I appreciate your prays and pray for you.
Love,
Vyresnysis Kanoris Hiltonas
Monday, July 4, 2011
SVeiki Visiems!!
Happy Fourth to You!
We are actually having a sort of celebration, since it is our preparation day. We're going to cook burgers, eat chips and watermelon. Elder Sherman also got an American flag from home, so he's going to bring that as well. Should be fun.
Not a ton happened this past week. We haven't met the Boswells yet, but we have zone conference with them on Wednesday, so I'll tell you about that next week.
Yes, there are really that many drunk people. Occasionally we see the same ones, but usually they're new.
We were contacted by a group of teenagers, who actually were just curious about what we believe and why we were here. We were able to answer their questions and by the end of our conversation they very positively viewed us and the Church. Hopefully one day that positive view they have will bear fruit.
We met with Du Wei, a less active. He wants to follow Christ, but struggles putting that first in front of his business and his physical exhaustion. We talked about putting God first and that then he will bless you in all aspects of your life- he understood and wants to do that.
We helped a member move as well this week, a good service opportunity.
In our English class, last week we had committed them to pray, everyone in the class had done so. It was great. This time we talked more in depth about prayer and how to offer the best prayer, after a question from one of our students. It went quite well.
I've been thinking about the future a bit, quite a bit actually. I've had some thoughts and impressions that Elder Leishman and I have talked about and I've pondered a lot and just wanted to run it by you guys and see what you think, obviously it'll be awhile before it is imperative, but while I'm thinking about it just wanted to let you know what I was thinking. I still want to go into law, don't know about a major, but afterwards go into politics, as a Champion for Religious and all other Freedom. I know that probably sounds a bit crazy, but I've really thought a lot about it and just want your thoughts. If you have any.
Oh, a kinda random question. Dad, why do you always wear a suit to Church? Did your mission president ask you to, or was it after being in the bishopric or something else? Just curious, because President Dance, as part of his advice to departing missionaries, would instruct the elders to always wear a suit, white shirt, and tie to Church and all meetings that require Sunday best attire.
I love serving and hope you enjoy your Fourth and week. I love you and pray for you. Thanks for your love and prayers.
Love,
Vyresnysis Kanoris Hiltonas
Happy Fourth to You!
We are actually having a sort of celebration, since it is our preparation day. We're going to cook burgers, eat chips and watermelon. Elder Sherman also got an American flag from home, so he's going to bring that as well. Should be fun.
Not a ton happened this past week. We haven't met the Boswells yet, but we have zone conference with them on Wednesday, so I'll tell you about that next week.
Yes, there are really that many drunk people. Occasionally we see the same ones, but usually they're new.
We were contacted by a group of teenagers, who actually were just curious about what we believe and why we were here. We were able to answer their questions and by the end of our conversation they very positively viewed us and the Church. Hopefully one day that positive view they have will bear fruit.
We met with Du Wei, a less active. He wants to follow Christ, but struggles putting that first in front of his business and his physical exhaustion. We talked about putting God first and that then he will bless you in all aspects of your life- he understood and wants to do that.
We helped a member move as well this week, a good service opportunity.
In our English class, last week we had committed them to pray, everyone in the class had done so. It was great. This time we talked more in depth about prayer and how to offer the best prayer, after a question from one of our students. It went quite well.
I've been thinking about the future a bit, quite a bit actually. I've had some thoughts and impressions that Elder Leishman and I have talked about and I've pondered a lot and just wanted to run it by you guys and see what you think, obviously it'll be awhile before it is imperative, but while I'm thinking about it just wanted to let you know what I was thinking. I still want to go into law, don't know about a major, but afterwards go into politics, as a Champion for Religious and all other Freedom. I know that probably sounds a bit crazy, but I've really thought a lot about it and just want your thoughts. If you have any.
Oh, a kinda random question. Dad, why do you always wear a suit to Church? Did your mission president ask you to, or was it after being in the bishopric or something else? Just curious, because President Dance, as part of his advice to departing missionaries, would instruct the elders to always wear a suit, white shirt, and tie to Church and all meetings that require Sunday best attire.
I love serving and hope you enjoy your Fourth and week. I love you and pray for you. Thanks for your love and prayers.
Love,
Vyresnysis Kanoris Hiltonas
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