Sooo yet another crazy and great week here in Balti. I honestly don't have any big things this week but just a lot of old people. a lot. But I love the people here like crazy and this is pretty much the greatest city ever. We feel kind of isolated from the world which is actually kind of nice. We even feel kind of isolated from the mission but it just means that we get to work hard and be accountable to ourselves which I like and we've been putting in work.

We started a block-knock initiative thanks to Elder Dumbrell and we bought a couple of maps of Balti to really start finding some people to teach. Soo naturally we've had some crazy and funny stories from it:

-The first day we went out to the edge of Balti to block knock and it was super creepy and there was this weird clicking noise that stopped when they shined the light on it but then it continued after they turned it off. 

-One of the days we finished one of the blocks and there was a guy outside of the block and he said "hey guys come here" so we did and he started questioning why we were here and Elder Trokhymenko argued with him about the trinity for a little bit (this guy was super hammered) and eventually he's like "hey guys come with me I want to show you something" and we're like "nah fam" and he's like "okay I'll just show you right here". So that this point I had a lot of assumptions and my mind automatically goes to the worst situation so I thought this guy was going to pull out a gun or knife or something but he starts to take off his coat. and then I thought that he was going to clock one of us so I was ready to bolt but then he took off his shirt and showed us a giant tattoo of Jesus on his back. Like his whole back is the face of Jesus. So I'm still not really sure how to feel about that whole situation. 

-The last day we went block knocking we accidentally ran into one of the less active members here and he gave us tea (herbal...we're pretty sure) and we're not entirely sure but we think that he might've tried to hypnotize us? (he's been studying hypnotism for the past 5 years). 

So long story short the block knocking has been really awesome and even though there's some crazy stuff we've had a lot of spiritual stuff too. My favorite story from block-knocking was that we had just finished a block and it was starting to get late but I was really hyped and I wanted to do another block and the other elders were like "ehhh we should go home" and I was like "no we have time let's hit this block" and I used all my passive enthusiasm to get us to hit this block and literally the FIRST door we hit there was a super cool guy that took a book of mormon and siad that he was willing to learn more about what we believe. 

Sunday was kind of a mess because I asked 2 people to speak in Sacrament meeting and neither of them showed up and I was pretty nervous but basically I prayed really hard that everything would be okay and I got up to conduct and then I gave a talk for about 20 minutes until I saw one of the members I asked to speak. I spoke about fear and how we have no reason to fear because of Jesus Christ. My Russian is pretty rough and I'm not sure if the members understood any of it but I felt a whole lot better after it. 

I read a really cool verse in the Book of Mormon this week and it's Helaman 7:20. It says,  

"  O, how could you have forgotten your God in the very day that he has delivered you?  "

Also if you didn't actually read it and you skimmed it then go back because it's really good. I started thinking a lot about the work Remember. It says it so often in the Book of Mormon and I feel like one of the reasons life gets so hard is because we forget who we our and our relationship with God. If we actually remember God and what He does for us then we have no need to fear and everything will be okay because it's meant to be. Don't forget all of the blessing that you have. 

Love you all!

-Старейшина Уайтинг