The Branch has had several activities, the latest one was called High on a Mountain Top. It was supposed to have been held outside but the weather didn’t cooperate, it rained most of the day. There were games, song writing contests, building projects and lots of food. About 40 people attended.
We have been holding Young Adult firesides every Saturday night. Elder Holmes gives a spiritual thought and we play games and have refreshments. The numbers vary , we have between 5 and 10 coming out. Two young women speak English very well and one of the other girls understands well but is shy about speaking English, though she does on occasion.
Our English program has started and we have had about 20 to 25 coming out. As usual, my class is the smallest. They are the ones that speak English the best so there are fewer of them. They mainly want to practice what they know.
The Elders got tickets for all of us to attend a dolphin show. It was held in a huge tent with a very large pool in the middle. The animals were really beautiful and responded well to their trainers. They did all kinds of tricks, to the delight of the people attending. I think we were the only ones there who didn’t have a child or two with us.
As we were leaving the show, we were headed toward a bus stop. The elders started talking to an elderly gentleman and he replied in English. They made an appointment with him and invited Bart to go along. We will call and meet with him again. He isn’t interested in hearing about the gospel but he seemed to enjoy visiting with Elder Holmes and he enjoyed his visit with him.
I was able to participate in a special family search indexing event. The goal was to index at least 5,000,000 names from the 1940 census. The previous record was 4,900,000. It was to take place July 2. Because of the time difference, our time started at 6 PM July 1. I was able to finish 4 batches of 40 names each but others did many, many more. The total count was over 10,000,000 names indexed. Those names will be available for people looking for relatives.
Next weekend a patriarch will visit our branch and give blessings to the members who want them. They have asked me to be available to sit in on blessings with women when other family members aren’t able to. He speaks Russian so I would not be able to understand what he is saying.
Three weeks ago Sister Holmes spoke in Sacrament meeting. The week following I spoke. We are still not comfortable speaking in Russian, so used a missionary to translate for us. Last week I did bear my testimony in Russian, or what might be called ragged Russian. Members came up and told me they under stood what I said or tried to say.
The missionaries asked Sister Holmes to teach a young lady who speaks very good English about the Word of Wisdom and modesty. She is very attractive and immodest. Afterwards she asked if we thought she was immodest? We said yes, but she was raised to not know the difference. She was asked to think about what she saw at Church and the varying degrees of modesty among the members. They too are still learning. As she bought clothes in the future she could look for ways to find more modest clothing. Here it is difficult as it is in the states.
She was already living the Word of Wisdom, so that was not a problem. Modesty was because her wardrobe was very revealing. Often Sister Holmes sat next to her and I started to sitting next to Sister Holmes so I was not looking directly at her. We really worried that meeting would be the last time we saw her. Nope, she was at Church again today dressed in s sweatshirt and long pants. Bear in mind that many women were pants to Church. It takes awhile to move on to dresses.
Love, Elder and Sister Holmes
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