Mafia Man

Zdrastvuitye!

This week has been the busiest thus far and I have a feeling that the following week will be just as busy! Sister Johnson and I are going by train to a city called Penza. I've heard that it is really pretty and looks like it's from a fairytale! Super excited! I've never been on a train before and I am pumped! It'll take about 7 or 8 hours to get there, but I've been told that the view is beautiful!

On to this weeks activities! We had our fair share of crazy and spiritual experiences. Let's start with the spiritual ones! We finally got one of our investigators to come to church! The process of getting her to church was a huge miracle! We planned with her and reminded her several times throughout the week that we would help her get to church. When we visited her on Saturday, she did not seem very excited by the thought of going to church. We called her on Sunday morning with no answer, so Sister Johnson and I traveled on over to her apartment to help her and her kids get ready. As we were walking along the sidewalk, we ended up running into her on the way there! She later told us that it was a miracle that we bumped into her because she said she mostly likely would have decided to go visit her babooshka's house instead of coming to church had we not brought her ourselves. She had such a wonderful experience at church! She met with and bonded with so many members! She has a baptismal date set for the 27th, so we're constantly trying to make sure that we have the faith sufficient to make that happen. It will happen!

Sooo... we accidentally met a man from the Mafia. Like... he was legit from the Mafia, not an exaggeration. We have an investigator named Natalia who's from Brazil and she speaks English. We had one lesson with her and she didn't seem super interested, but she ended up inviting us to a gathering with her friends. All of the friends were Russian and they all spoke at least a little bit of English except for like 2 of them. One man who didn't speak any English was named Andrei and he was definitely a character. He told us about how he used to be a body guard for a very powerful, evil, man and about how he'd seen a lot of his friends die in his previous profession. Andrei spent about 5 minutes talking about all of the "special skills" that he gained from being in the Mafia... one of which was karate or something... kinda weird. He said that he got a lot of money from his past career, had severe drug addictions, alcoholism, all sorts of stuff. He never straight up said that he was in the Mafia, but we knew. Anyways, we ended up teaching this group of a dozen people the plan of salvation. Andrei was the only one who got super into it. He told us his really cool conversion story. Granted, it was some sort of Evangelistic Church that he converted to, but it was really interesting to hear about he had his " mighty change of heart." He's a really great guy now and he works as a lawyer. We didn't make much progress with him when we taught the plan of salvation, but it was still a spiritual experience for them I think.

I have so much more that I wanted to share, but Sister Johnson and I have to be at the train station soon, so I have to go. I hope you all have a fantastic week! Keep being wonderful examples and doing good things!

Do Svidanya!

Love,

Cectpa Wagstaff