Best Week Yet!

Hey family!

   Thanks for your letters guys; it’s been great hearing from you all. I had such a crazy week. It was way good though.  Its weird being the oldest one out here but it’s been really cool to see where I was and where I am now. It’s slowly starting to hit me that my mission with a name tag will not be for the rest of my life but I am excited to continue on through my life. There is honestly nothing greater than serving others. It had been BLIZZARDING lately and it is NOT supposed to do that in spring haha, but today after the wind stopped blowing, it was just so beautiful.  I'm excited for the time when I can sit down and look at all the beautiful EVERYTHING that God has given me. My companion and I are KILLING it. We just blew our results from last transfer out of the water and it feels so good to know that I'm truly trying to stay focused to the end I have one of my old companions in my area now it’s been too fun to be around him again.  I have now been in this area for 7 MONTHS.  It’s crazy!! It’s going to be hard to leave my family out here, but I know that it be so easy to receive you guys back.  I had a really special experience this week that I will always remember. It was about prayer. During personal study, I learned a little about prayer and how we should pray and what our actions should be in connection with our prayers.  I read about how all things are fulfilled by faith and how b/c of the faith of Alma and his prayers, an angel appeared to his son.  Eventually his son's heart was changed. So I decided that I needed to pray with more faith that God can do anything, even soften a hardened heart. I had an investigator in mind (Sasha)  when I was praying, but as with most things, God's ways are different than my ways. So as the week progressed, I continued to pray for a changed heart of our investigators. Well, we have one investigator named Oleg that I don't like meeting with b/c he is super smart and knows the Bible way well and always asked questions that are impossible to answer and have absolutely nothing to do with our salvation...so our lessons go nowhere with him.  So we ended up getting a lesson with him at the branch and the spirit was there and he for the first time, just sat and listened.  He soaked everything up and seemed to really accept what was taught. It was truly a miracle. I know that God heard my prayer and we were just blessed enough to see blessings that came from that. Also, we met with Jehovah’s Witness....those lessons always drain me.  But this one was cool, in the sense that the spirit led us in our teaching. I witnessed weak missionaries confound the wise all b/c we were trying to listened to the spirit. I felt the Spirit work through me while asking questions to help them understand the need for a prophet and the Restored Gospel. Feeling the Spirit working through you is one of life's most sublime experiences, at least for me here on a mission where we strive to diligently to always have that with us. 

I have to go now to a lesson, but I love you all and am grateful for all of your support

Have a great week!

- Elder Rooney

Guided by the Spirit...

Hey guys, thanks so much for your letters!  They were all exactly what I needed to hear. I hope to continue to finish strong...really strong.   As for our baptisms, unfortunately we had to push them back b/c they didn't come to church on Sunday  but we'll get things moving with them again.  My comp and I are speaking 100% Russian out side of the apt. Its nice b/c I constantly  learn a ton of new words that are very useful.  The Russian language is a never ending "humble pie" haha, but it teaches me a lot about myself other than words and grammar.  I had a wonderful experience last night with a member of the church where I felt the spirit work through me.  We had a lesson planned for her and everything, then we got there and she started talking about a situation that she has with her daughter about how her daughter hates her now and left the church.  Its super sad.  But as she was explaining her situation and all about how she wants her daughter to come back to church and everything, I remembered what I had studied earlier that morning for personal study and felt prompted to share it with her. Well, at first it didn't seem to apply a ton to her situation but the lesson unfolded and scriptures kept coming to my mind and I kept sharing insights and things that I learned.  The lesson ended up being EXACTLY what she needed. How do I know this? b/c she told me.  She was lifted off the ground by the end of the lesson and had a goal of what she wanted to do and an action plan of how she was going to do it.  It was soooo great to see and understand that I may not know everything that is going on in her life but God does.  God directed my personal study that morning with this member in mind.  I'm grateful that I was worthy to be that instrument in helping this member.  It was such an AWESOME experience.  Then, she applied some of the things that we talked about in her prayer at the end, I could feel that she was actually praying and communicating. She prayed for us to find new great investigators and when she said that I knew that we would.  So as we left her place, we were on our way back to our branch bldg and as we were walking I remembered the words of her prayer and took that as God trying to communicate with me through the spirit by bringing back to my remembrance those words. I knew that her prayer would be answered and right as I remembered those words a man walked by us.  I rather suddenly stopped and said to the man walking by " HI!! we are here as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and....".  Well, the man has had experience with missionaries before and even spoke a little English   He gave us his number and told us to call...it was such perfect timing and I know that God was directing the whole thing.  We are supposed to call him tonight and set up a time to meet with him.  All things are fulfilled by faith, and prayer is an act of faith.  I know that b/c we were close to the spirit, we were able to be led in a wonderful lesson that helped a woman grow in faith, which lead her to pray and actually mean what she said, which prayer of faith led us into a miracle. We were simply doing something that sometimes isn't so simple to do, we were " in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing", as Pres. Love would say. And b/c of this chain of events, all participants "were edified"...and it was SO AWESOME!  Anyways, Thanks for all of your emails, I love you all and pray for you everyday.  Have a wonderful week.

- Старейшина Руни

Leaving the 90 and 9 to serve the 1.....

Hey Fam!
  Thanks for your letters!  This was really great. So as you know, my mission president had to leave our mission for the time being, and is in Utah right now having a surgery for something.  I'm not sure If he will be back for my "exit interview" which is really sad actually to think about. BUT he has delegated the mission to his first counselor Pres. Podvodov.  Pres. Podvodov was a previous mission president in St. Petersburg and is AWESOME. He is from our mission and so it is really great to see a leader do so much great work in his own native country.  The people actually understand him completely.  Anyways, I learned a lesson from him that I hope to never forget in my life.  I feel as though the end of my mission has gotten harder and harder to be honest b/c the end that you never wanted to think about, that never "actually" exists, its finally coming and that adds more trial, at least for me anyways, to not think about the future. There are so many more thoughts that race through my mind other than " I hope brother so and so can help us on our lesson tonight".  The trick is when those thoughts come, thinking to my self..."there is a season for everything" and continuing on with the task at hand. Again, serving God "with all your heart, might, MIND, and strength" has never meant so much to me in my life than it has to me recently. But I would like to share an experience that I had with my "new" mission president just on Saturday and how it has made an effect on me.  I called him and said that I was having kinda a hard time with a few things and was wondering if he could just give me a few pieces of advice on how to help.  I was expecting a "sure, I'll call you back later and we can talk" or something like that, but no, the answer I received was "can you be at the church at 6 pm?" and I said, "OK for sure, I'll be there".  This man, by the way, speaks about 3 words in English and I have always thought him to be very intimidating...so it took a lot of courage to just call the man, especially when I don't know him personally all that well.  So, I'm not sure if any of you have been mission presidents before, but they are ALWAYS busy, and especially now that this man has all the responsibility of the mission on his shoulders as of a week or so ago.  Well, I saw the hand of God work through this man that night and it taught me such a powerful lesson.  I sat down with him and started to tell him my feelings about everything, my concerns, trials, thoughts etc....he pretty much was my therapist :)  it was awesome!  haha  Anyway, he related a story to me about how when he was a mission president, he had a missionary call him and say that they needed to meet together and that the missionary needed some sort of help.  He told me that THAT missionary right then had just become his priority. He made everything work out so that he could meet with that missionary and satisfy whatever need that needed to be met in the eyes of that particular missionary...and on that day I called him, I was that missionary. I felt so loved and watched over.  The interview itself was my favorite on my mission thus far. He helped my situation perfectly not to mention the lesson I learned about "leaving the 90 and 9" to care so lovingly for the "one".   He did what the Savior taught us to do and I felt the pure love of Christ flow from that man, even if it was in an intimidating Russian way haha.  But it had a huge impact on me that is hard to put into words, other than we are never alone.  When you do everything you can, the grace of God truly does come into our lives in ways that we might not expect, but its still comes. I'm not sure if what I just wrote even makes any sense to you, but to me, this experience gave, and continues to give, me motivation to continue on and try to share that love with others I meet.  I'm so grateful for all of my trials b/c even though they always come in the most inconvenient times, they help open my eyes to the works of God in my life. I know that when we humble ourselves in our trials and turn TO God and not away, He will show us the way for us to become "partakers of the divine nature" which I have come to realize is not the easiest thing to do, but I have also figured out that its only possible if we humble ourselves to the will God and trust in him that HIS way is better than my way.
  Anyways, as regards to missionary work we have 3 people with a baptismal date ( I think only 2 are going to follow through with though,we are going to have to push back the 3rd's date) and things here are moving. My comp and I are doing great and its SNOWING a TON right now which is NOT cool.  I'm doing great and loving the last little bit of this eternity changing experience.

Contrasting Lessons...some hard... some easy

Guys,
  I got a letter from everyone of you!  Thanks so much, seriously.  All of you who have ever served a mission know how wonderful it is to hear from your family.  I don't have words to describe my love for you all.  Just know that you are the most famous family in this mission b/c I talk about you all so much :).  Things here are so wonderful. The weather is money right now....well it was, it just started snowing again unfortunately but that's better than last year when it was too cold to snow.  I have had such a crazy week.  Our district is only 4 and we cover a pretty big area so we're always running around.  I guess the highlight of my week other than the sacrament, was on Saturday. I was on an exchange with my zone leader that I have know for a very long time and we had a good amount of lessons set up.  It started off with our lesson with our Jehovah's Witness friend Pavel.  He brought a friend this time who I had never met before so I was interested to see how everything would pan out.  Unfortunately our lesson did not start with a prayer b/c they wouldn't let us pray (as usual) b/c they believe that we don't pray to the same God. So we started and weren't able to continue with our lesson plan at all.  With out that crucial prayer in the beginning, it is SOOOOO difficult to have the spirit in the lesson. I again received a stronger testimony that only those who truly humble themselves will enter into the kingdom of God.  It was really interesting in a few lessons this week, we had a pretty good amount of really "hard" lessons.  They were with people who have studied the bible for years and know a lot more than I do so they would ask questions that were kinda controversial and really hard to answer.  But with all of these learned men none of them really wanted to find the truth, or so I felt. It reminded me of a student of Socrates, or someone to that extent....I forgot who, who had a student who was "ever learning" and wanted to know what Socrates does to get so smart, so Socrates took him to a lake of some sort and took the student and pushed and held his head underwater till the point where the student almost drowned and then finally brought his head out of the water. (I only heard this story from someone else so don't quote me....but it illustrates a great point) When the student caught his breath he said " What the heck was that for?!!" and the response was in the form of a question, "when your head was under water, how bad did you want to breathe? what were you willing to do for just one breath of air?" the answer was " I would do anything, the only thing I thought about underwater was how much I wanted to breathe".  The response of Socrates ( or whoever it was) was," if you truly want to understand and know the truth, you would do anything and everything to get it".  I love this principle b/c it helps me find those who are truly looking for the Gospel. With some of these lessons I had this past week, these men were "ever learning and never coming to know the truth"  b/c they truly weren't searching for it, or so it seemed by the spirit of our lessons.  So in contrast to hard lessons, we had some way awesome "easy" ones this week. We had one in particular that was full Africans.  We went to their hostel, or dorms, and had a lesson.  In the lesson we asked them to be baptized, and the concern of being previously baptized came up, so with the help of the spirit, we were able to use the authority given to and and teach loving but boldly the doctrine of the truth, resulting of 3 of them agreeing to be baptized on the 30 of March!!  Unfortunately, I don't think that I will be in this area at that time but as long as they are baptized and confirmed, that is all that matters to start their journey.  Doctrine, is truth which is the word of God, and when we hear the word of God, our faith grows.  So I have learned to that there is no better way to teach than to teach boldly the word of God with the Spirit and love. I know that this great work is true, and I know that God knows I know it is true.  We are truly never alone b/c God always has his hands in our lives.
Have a great week!!
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- Старейшина Руни