Baptism, Bunkers... Burnt Yellow.

Hello Everybody!

This week has been a week to remember!  It'll be easier to remember because I GOTS PICTURES!

Most every day is crazy here.  I like it a lot.  Planning for the conference was not my favorite thing to do, but I think everything turned out alright.  Elder Salamatin put me in "charge" of everything, but was ready to catch me if anything broke through the floor.  WE had a 1 hour presentation of the culture of our mission, and what to expect as the mission's overall vision.

I have but one regret;

We should have made popcorn  

Nobody slept though, so it's fine.

Again -- so many elders crammed into one house.  You'd think that a war had broken loose, and our apartment was the only safe bunker available in the city of L'viv.  The aftermath was comparable to an open war-zone.

Then, we had both sets of Zone Leaders up in our area so that we could go on exchanges with them.  NUTS.  I got to go with Elder Ferbey (my companion from the MTC) and Elder Rubliuk (My Trainee from Ivano Frankivsk).  It was lots of fun... except that I felt like my brain was going to explode out of my eyeballs on the second exchange for most of the day... but hey, sometimes you only get to choose HOW you're going to work, and not your working conditions.

There was a baptism in the Branch on sunday!  It was actually kind of cool, because he was baptized in the morning at 9:30, and then he got the gift of the Holy Ghost in sacrament meeting right after.  He was happy as a clam, but he also fell asleep in sacrament because of the extra early train he had to take to make it on time from the village he lives in.

Before his baptism, however, we had a serious problem...

The font was filled with cold water, even though we had it turned to warm...

And it was yellow.

Like, burnt yellow.

Like urine.

So... the next morning, we were at the church at 5am trying to fix everything so that we had at least clear water.  It was freezing, but hey, that's invigorating, right?

Overall, everything turned out just fine.

My companion is going home next week!

It's definitely time for him to get back home -- He's been serving for over 2 years now because of his switch from his Russian Mission to being sent over here.  Tired, old Elder Salamatin.

That's about it for this week!

Have a great week, and keep yourselves immersed in the scriptures! Keep a prayer in your heart!

God's love will shine brighter and more clearly on us as we do.

Elder LeBaron