Христос воскрес! Воистину воскрес! (Christ has risen! Truly risen!)

Hello Everybody,

Sorry for the day-late email! We were out in a village visiting a less-active family all day yesterday and we got back late and had no time to email, so our mission president gave us permission to write to all of you today.

With that family out in a village 40 minutes away from Balti

To start off, the other Elders have been working really hard with a lot of their investigators and were able to bring one of them unto the waters of baptism this past Saturday. It was a lady found through a recent convert, and she'll be a great addition to the branch. We've got a lot of really awesome recent converts that are helping the branch out a lot!

Also, the clouds filled with unlimited water have finally decided to stop pouring rain this past week, and on one of the days that it rained we stopped by Vitali (a former investigator who is now an investigator again), and realized that his number was at our apartment. Even though we were unable to call him, we banged a rock on his front gate (don't worry, we didn't damage anything) and yelled his name hoping that he would hear us. Unfortunately, he did not hear us and so we went back to the apartment, called him, and he told us how he doesn't want us to come over when it rains. Odd. But it's not our house, so what can we do? We also invited him to the baptism and he came! It's the third baptism he has been too, and hopefully it helped. Now that the sun is out, we can stop by and see how he's doing.

Hittin' carpets for Baba Tamara!

On Thursday, Baba Tamara called and said that she wanted us to see her granddaughter's piano recital. So went with her and her husband to a music school close to our apartment and for most of the time we talked about how we celebrate Easter in America. When we sat down to listen to the students play, she turned to me and said, "Preach to me! I'm a person you just met on the street. What do you say to them?" I've been through this situation a million times, so I just started telling her how we tell people about the Book of Mormon and how it's another testament of Jesus Christ. As I gave her a brief overview of the Book of Mormon, I could tell people around us were listening. Of course, this was a piano recital so I had to be quiet when they started to play, but never did I think I'd proselyte in a music school. Pretty cool! The next day she had us come over and do some service for her. We hit carpets with a bat-looking thing, and combed off the hair that had probably been on there for a long time.That was the job I got stuck with and it wasn't very pleasant. After we finished she had us come in and fed us a delicious meal. Right before we were about to start eating she got a phone call, so each of us looked at each other and said, "Let's pray so we can eat." So we prayed, and before we left she mentioned how she really liked that we prayed before we ate. "Show us how you pray!" she continued, and Elder Streletski prayed. She also really liked how we pray! Great! There's already a lot of things she likes about the church, so that puts us on the right track.

Survey contacting in parks = a lot of fun. Especially when people answer the questions and get really interested in what we have to say. We actually met the groundskeeper of a park near the church and he took a Book of Mormon. We also met a lot of "other" people where it didn't turn out so well. Nevertheless, we really enjoy survey contacting, especially since the weather is nice.

For Easter our mission president gave us permission to stay up and see how the Orthodox church celebrates Easter. At 2:30 am Sunday morning, we went with Nastia to her old church and she showed us what they do. Everyone had candles and as we stood outside, we listened to the choir that was singing inside. To be honest, I love my sleep and staying up wasn't my favorite thing but it was for the memories! 

Христос воскрес! Воистину воскрес! Love you!

-Elder Farnworth

Cool experience of the week: For district meeting, Elder Westover had us ask each other random questions then open up to a random page in the Book of Mormon to answer the question. It worked every time! You should all try it out for Family Home Evening or something.

We found this little bear while we were out contacting. Just wanted to take a picture with him.

I just love Balti!