To All: 87.92 KM (112766) Almost as many steps as an average week in Liepāja!
Pictures: The first one is a pictures of I. Trolas and one of his works. It's a dipiction of Stalin and the average Latvian under his reign. The other one is Russia, and the three kids represent Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The panoramic is just a glimpse of all the amazing things he has in his musium! The story about him is below (hunt for it ")).
My companions are Elders Grey and Palmer. Grey is from Colorado, and worked on ambulances for a good bit of his life before now. Palmer is from Utah, and has a pretty good singing voice. He also has an iPod full of movies and music that is almost always blasting in our apartment (all churchy-type movies and music, which is way cool)! Grey is about a year out, and Palmer is on his third transfer (he came out the group after me).
In Imanta there are 12 missionaries:
3 Latvian-speaking Elders (Already talked about, adding me!)
2 Latvian-speaking Sisters (Sister Knight, the dark-haired artist from my MTC group, and Sister Morley, who is from my district in Liepāja)
2 Russian Sisters (Tanner and Reed. Both very hard working, and one is actually from Russia, so she has a very good accent).
5 Russian Elders...names...don't know them all. They are very fun, and stories will come later (I really just don't have a lot of time right now).
We do splits rarely, but we do blitzes (a Russian-speaking missionary goes with a Latvian-speaking one and they knock doors somewhere). We didn't last week, but we should be doing that this week.
Imanta is not to Riga as Ammon is to Idaho Falls. It is a portion of Riga. It's kinda like downtown LA and LA--different, but still technically the same city. My new apartment has a lift, and is on the 5th floor. It's actually really nice, but the floor always seems to have lots of dirt and junk on it. But, even thouugh there is no stove, it is a nice pad. I have never even seen my neighbors, so I'm not sure what they are like.
The church is not too crowded. We've lost most of the branch. About 30 people come (the branch list is as long as the one in Liepāja), so we're soon going to be looking through that to figure out where people are, and how we can help them out (bring the branch over to help them move, or whatever we can do). We do have an actual branch president! Who (may I add) has a Macintosh computer, and is far more than simply pleased with it. He took a few minutes of our meeting to tell us how wonderful his Mac was. But, I'm not endorsing Mac...just simply saying it's the best on earth "). Anyway, I have met very few members. But, they are all amazing, outgoing, fun, lovable...more on them next week (that darn time thing again).
Our sports here has been pretty lame. We need to figure out how to make that better. There's more people sometimes (because we have so many missionaries), but less members and (so far) not as much fun for me. We'll see, though.
We do teach English. I will have stories about my English class (and all the craziness there) next week.
Weather...something I wanted to talk about anyway. The rainy season has come late this year. Every day, we've had rain. Sometimes, very hard rains. My umbrella has had a really good work out. And is still kickin' it!
I am, however, getting the hang of all the transportation stuff here. About time.
There is still a lot of green...that should disappear this month. Maybe winter will be slow in coming too.
The food is still the same ol' European, mostly flavorless stuff. It's not bad. Nothing really worth talking about though. Some more delectable goodnesses (The Totally Ice creams...the brown is caramel, maple, butterscotch and stuff, and is absolutely amazing. The white is vanilla and white chocolate, and the rest were not that good).
I am nowhere near the ocean. I'm settling in alright, and things are going well. I've almost got my focus entirely here (still dreaming every night about Liepāja...great place).
Quickly, the story of the wood carver: We decided to go to Vakarbuļļi (a place just outside of Imanta...about 15 KM from the river dividing Imanta from Riga center).We got there, and discovered it was much smaller than we thought. We decided to knock around there anyway. The gates usually don't have bells (not unusual), so we started calling from the street. This elderly fellow came out, invited us in, and we were allowed to see his museum. He made all of those (as well as some life-sized wood sculptures and such). He was way nice! Three doors down is a stone sculptor (we have a meeting with him later, so more about him next week).
I do have investigators. We taught a great many lessons this week, and it was all amazing! No time!!! More about it all next week.
I love you all!!!
(1 min left!)
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Elder Argyle
@..@
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( >/°¥< )
^^‾\/‾^^
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