Apostles are coming!

Here is a picture of the the time I fell down, writhing around after I had retrieved my bag but before I had gotten up.

Ten Kopecks to the first person who can call out the mistake in Chelyabinsk. I’ll give you a Jeopardy hint, this incorrect sound makes a certain Deutsch teacher’s belly curl up. Speaking of Deutsch, did you know that Chelyabinsk is Spanish for “The Niño Baby”?
It’s been a week. We got one of “those” calls from president Thursday while planning our lessons for that day. I picked up the phone knowing it’s him because every missionary cell phone has a special dramatic/warning ring for when he calls and he gives me this “Hello” and it’s one of those you know something’s up and ‘we will forgo any of the usual jokes’ hello’s and he then stated that he needs us, in the next three hours, to find an assembly hall available on the 31st of May, that will allow religious meetings to be held there (‘cause a lot don’t), that would be adequate for Apostles to speak at and that would seat 500 people. I gave the best “yes president” I could, and then turned to Companion who sat waiting to hear what’s up and squinted my eyes and nodded my head in a “yeah, we’ve got stuff to do today” way. So apparently there is a Shanghai something or other Asian world leaders’ conference happening in Yekaterinburg and the place that they rented for the Apostles visit is flaking out on the deal because of pressure from the government. So Chelyabinsk, as the closest city, gets the call as the back-up plan. As of now all our frantic searching was in vain because the powers that be decided that even though the conference center has not agreed officially to make good on the deal, to go ahead with the conference as scheduled with, I guess, faith (meaning bribes) that everything will work out. And if it doesn’t, me and companion may be coming home a little sooner than expected. It was a fun three hours though.
We started a new session of English last Saturday but most of the new people came this Tuesday and we got a great new investigator out of it. He’s a young college grad who teaches English and has always been a person of faith but off and on again so he feels it is about time that he started his way back again. As a person with higher education he took the first lesson with a shadow of skepticism which is understandable before you receive a testimony and when we told him two apostles from our church were coming to speak in Yekat he asked hesitantly, “are they apostles born in 20th century?” as if our church, which claims to have an ancient record and restored priesthood, might also claim to have the original 12 apostles. We laughed at his question because as Preach My Gospel teaches, “laughter is fastest way to baptism.” (pg. 147) Only joking, but we did laugh once we understood his question, but it was Ok because it was funny ‘cause he asked it seriously and politely in the same way you would ask a person with an invisible friend if they were in the room right now. What a politically correct guy.
So yes, said Apostles are coming this Sunday and it’s just a meant to be way to start the last month of my mission because it’s a mission conference so that means everyone will be there from any of my areas and it will be so fun to see them all, and we get a special missionary meeting with them that will be a huge boost for sure. So while everyone here is telling me to end strong all y’all are telling me I’m almost home. Come on people,

get with the program,

-Elder Magleby