Hello Again! (April 18, 2007)

Well, I don't really have that much time today, so I'm going to be forced to keep this short. Thankfully, there's just the story to do that with.

So, there's a less active member here named Oleg Parfioni. Oleg used to be a normal, active member until his dad died and left him a lot of money. Oleg, unsure of what to do with so much money, decided to spend it all on alcohol. So, Oleg is now continuously drunk. However, because he was so normal before this, missionaries have been working really hard to get him active again. We decided to give it a try too, so we met with him.

Oleg didn't answer the door at first, so his friend came out of their apartment next door and said that the door was open and we could just come in. We walked in and found Oleg, drunk as ever, wearing a ratty, gray, long-haired wig and a ripped up black beanie. He sat us down and showed us a pile of paintings he had done, telling us they were "New Wave Avant-Garde" and then giving us each one, telling us that we could sell them in America for 150,000 dollars when we get home. I'll have to send out a picture of the painting I got. It kind of looks like a new wave avant-garde demon baboon. He also gave us each a picture of him from the Soviet days when he was a guitarist, so I have a picture of Oleg Parfioni with a lot of curly hair, a mustache, an acoustic guitar, and random Soviet propaganda in the background.

While we were there, we met two of Oleg's friends. One of them is a man who was incredibly skinny, spoke only Polish, and said "Tralalalala" like how we'd say "Blah blah blah," or "and so on, and so on." The other was an...interesting lady who kept asking us if we could speak to her in Russian, then told us--while her little daughter was in the room--that while she was pregnant with this particular daughter, she had wanted to get an abortion (which, by the way, cost 100 gryven, or $20, and are entirely no questions asked...what a fantastically moral society).

Well, I wish I had more time...have a good week everyone, and I'll write again next week!

--Elder Brett