Merry December 12! (12/12/2007)

Hello again everyone! I hope everyone's staying warm, where applicable (Californians and Arizonans need not read that sentence). The weather's been pretty chilly here, although we've been without snow for quite some time, which is nice. Supposedly, this winter will be the warmest since last year, which was the warmest in the past 300 years or so. It's better than two winters ago, which I've been told was the coldest in 200 years.

We had an interesting little experience on Sunday evening. We were out tracting at about 8 in the evening. People weren't too interested, but we still had about 3/4 of the building left to do, so we were still hopeful. As we rang the doorbell to a large black door, we noticed two sets of heavy footsteps on the stairs. Turning, we saw two militsia--two policemen--coming up towards us. The first one told us to scoot off to the side so they could get past; the second asked us what we were doing there. We told him we were missionaries, and we showed him our tags. They told us to go off upstairs, so we started heading up the staircase when one said, "Show us your passports." We took them out, and the militsioner tried to take Elder Taylor's. Having been thoroughly forewarned about this type of thing, he refused, and the militsioner tried to take it again. Finally, the other guy said, "Okay, come with us to the station." We started heading down the stairs, frustrated that we'd have to spend the next hour or so in a Ukrainian police station just because we weren't going to let them steal our passports, when the person who called the police in the first place started yelling, "Where are you guys?" The militsia, realizing that maybe two American missionaries weren't their top priority, turned to us and said, in English, "Good bye." We turned and headed off quickly. I believe there were about 15 silent prayers answered right there.

In other news, I'm not sure if I've written this already or not, but Elder Stagg, our mysterious relative, is in my district now. It's been a lot of fun. On New Year's here, missionaries are allowed to spend the night together at one of our apartments, so we're excited to get to hang out together.

We have an investigator right now named Lilya. We've been teaching her for quite some time (I found her when I was here with Elder Lewis, if you remember back that far--it was August) and she's finally making some good steps forward. She came to church for the first time last week and really enjoyed it, although she was disappointed in our hymns; apparently they're a lot jazzier in her other church, and they're ALL written in the first person. But, she told us that after she came home she only wanted to read in the Book of Mormon, which she did all that evening. The only problem is that we've discovered she just barely lives in another ward's boundaries, and she's technically Elder Stagg's investigator. Normally that wouldn't be as big of a problem, but we've been teaching her for the past 4 1/2 months, and she knows our ward very well. Our bishop has advised us that we need to pass her to the other elders, which we'll be doing this Saturday. Wish her luck!

Well, that's my week. Thanks for everything! Have a good week!
--Brett