Iron Investigators

Hey family,

Hi from Chelyabinsk, I forgot to mention this last week but I found out that the word “Chelyabinsk” literally means “My scarf is on fire” I spent all email time writing president so here’s what I got:


Dear President,

This has been a great week here in Chely, one to remember. I have to confess something… Elder Pulishper nor I went to bed on time last night. As you know we have two investigators with baptismal dates. Artyom and Nakita both about 20, I have now decided to call them Iron Investigators. They aren’t abnormally excited to accept hard commitments and they don’t have a seemingly miraculous story as to how they were found and then agreed to baptism all the sudden like you would call a Golden investigator. It’s been a real gradual process of living commitments and showing their faith to God. It’s been honest hard missionary work. We’re loving it. They are really progressing, and by really I mean truly they make real strides every so often that may not seem too spectacular but it’s been truly miraculous to me and elder Pulispher as they’ve come though right as we might have lowered our expectations. For example we had a great meeting with them last Saturday and they’ve said they’d “try” to come to church whenever we ask (not a favorite phrase of missionaries here in Russia.) and that lesson was about scripture study so we were focused on that and committed them to it and when we got home I realized we forgot to ask them to come to church. So we texted them to see if they’d be there and Nakita said he couldn’t because of work/school and Artyom texted back. “Absolutely, I’m coming. I’ll see you there tomorrow” It would take me a bit to explain why this was such special phrase but suffice it to say that the wording of it was in such way that it was as if he would definitely come on Sunday. Because sometimes a Russian will just use the first part of “absolutely I’ll be there” which the first time we heard that in my first week as a greenie my trainer told be that means the polite way of saying they wont be there, and that’s pretty much the case, anywho they way he said “see you tomorrow” Is what made it more than his normal assurance that he’d be there ‘cause he’d said he’d come before and didn’t. When Elder Puilspher read his response there was a moment or two of silence because we couldn’t quite grasp the concept. He said that he’d come in no uncertain terms. I even broke the silence with, “I don’t understand… that means he’s coming…I’ve never had a real investigator who came to sacrament meeting before…” Then elder Pulispher started laughing and said. “Me neither!” and then we both just laughed for a while in disbelief. “He’s coming!, He’s coming to church!” more laughing. It was great and it was even greater yesterday after we had waited for him to come down by the elevator and no dice, as I kept checking out the door at the beginning of the meeting to see if he was walking in he showed up during the opening hymn and just as a tender mercy accidently showed up at the same time as a great recent convert of the sisters (Igol) and they both came over and sat next to me and she was able to explain what to do or what was going on and it wasn’t akward for him at all. (Even during a baby blessing, I racked my brain on how to explain what was going on in a few short whispered words) The whole meeting was a step about usual as well, all the testimonies were great and many if not all had something that we knew he needed to hear. So last night after a tiring Sunday me and elder Plusipher after prayers started talking about how great the day was and about the other great successes we’ve seen in this mission specifically baptisms that were strong before during and especially after their baptisms. I know this is a blessing from the Lord for me because I have a strong fear of baptizing a future less-active and am very weary of “golden” investigators who go inactive so the Lord gave us a good kid who’s taking more work, a little bit of refining, a bit more time and eventually will come out as strong as the Lord needs him. With all this in mind my prayers have even changed while I was about to pray to ask that we could both still be here to see him baptized, as neither of us has “had” a baptism, it changed to “please bless this situation the best that it could be for Artyoms salvation” completely content if that meant I got to be here when it happened or he needed some more time and other missionaries to help the process. We’re very happy and loving life.

Thanks,

Elder Magleby