Vodka vs. Radiation

Hey from Chelyabinsk,

You may already know this but Chelyabinsk literally means, “The place where snowflakes kill”. We got back from Kazakhstan late Saturday night and instead of getting to sleep in at the A.P.s apartment to make up for the lack of sleep due to flights and stuff,(personally my favorite part of visa trips. Nothing like mission authorized sleeping in) we had to get up and run over to the office so they could do copies of our new passports and visa’s, then taxi over to the stinky bus station to take a lovely four and a half hour freezing bus ride down to Chely to make it to church on time. President and the Assistants were in town for Zone Conference and it was great. President did a good job at getting after us for not getting enough new investigators and we're all now more dedicated to finding them now, focusing on families this week. Elder KSP and I are determined to work with more faith and president has also asked us to read Ether 2-3 and study how to make a miracle happen. We’re on it.
Kazakhstan was fun, I met my personal goal and only barely went into the double digits as far as total ties purchased. The word is that we were the last group to go there and we should be back to Prague or Estonia next time, which crazily enough will be our last trip, yikes.
Because I didn’t get to finish my letter last time I didn’t get to tell you about the Sunday school lesson last week. In the course of the lesson a myth I’ve heard about that I really couldn’t believe people actually believed was confirmed as a Russian belief. When talking about the word of wisdom someone actually asked if it was still OK to drink alcohol if it was just as a cure for radiation, the idea being alcohol is inherently good at getting radiation out of your body (Vodka of course being maximum strength). That being funny enough in itself the kicker was that the question was taken very seriously in the way that asking if caffeine was still allowed and the usual debate broke out as people voiced their different views on the subject. It was hard for me to translate the debate for the senior couple without laughing as I exchanged “are you kidding me” looks with Elder P. It was even harder to translate what this senior missionary said as a response to end the debate, as he is a microbiologist and started to explain radical particles, half lives and how no substance can negate these reactions... I tried to keep up at translating his words for the class but eventually just waited for him to finish and said, “Shortly speaking, that myth is just not true” So for the record alcohol is for the washing of the belly, not for the cleansing of said belly from loose electrons.
With those words of wisdom I’m outta here…
With love,
Elder Goodbelly