May 11, 1997 - Sunday

Малу и Пьер и Юри [Malout and Pierre and Yuri] got baptized.



Left to Right - Elder Gammon, Arman, Pierre, Malout, Marina (Pierre's wife), Me, Yuri, (?)



March 13, 1997 - Thursday

Tonight sucks for some reason.  Today I almost had my problem, but I held off at the last minute.  We went over and had a D with Малу [Malout], that was good.  Eric cancelled on us and so we came home and ate, then left to mail some stuff at the почта [pochta - post office]. 

[mid journal chat - Eric is another of the Africans that we are teaching the discussions to.  He spoke English, french and an african dialect...swahili maybe?  Virginia, Eric or another friend would help us with Malout, because he didn't speak English, or Russian very well - only the african dialect and french.]

Then we headed an hour early to English Class so we could practice a song that we are going to sing in church Sunday.  I hate singing.  I F(^^&%ing suck.  That's probably why I'm in a bad mood.  That and it was in Russian - I'm self concious about Russian and singing and Ст. Woolverton was teasing me a little.

Then I went into English Class and talked to Sharieef for an hour.  It's hard to talk to him because he is learning a lot and his life is pretty bleak right now.  No job etc.  Then Dennis said some comment that Elder Burghardt made about me being pathalogical.  And my converter [between 110 volt/America - and 220 volt/Russia] is not working.  I lent it to Ст. Larsen and now it doesn't work.  Freak am I in need of some serious prayer.  Okay, I just read an article in the Ensign - a balm to my troubled soul.  night

March 7, 1997 - Friday

Yesterday we went over to the обж. [dorm/apt building] and had a D with Малу [Malout - french so the t is silent].  He understood a lot but he was there alone, so we talked using easy words and looked up a lot in an English-French dictionary that they had there.  Right as it was time to leave is when Armahn & then Virginia showed up. 

We left at 5:45 about and made it over to Konkova by 6:50pm [probably English class].  We stayed until about 8 and then went home.  There was a new girl there, well a couple.  Людмила [Ludmilla] has come a couple of times.  She brought a friend named Ира [Ira - short for Irina].  Ира is who I talked to.  She is pretty cute.  18 and dangerous.  If you know what I mean.  She wanted to hear about America and my town.  She's from Georgia [the country to the south of Russia] and now lives in Rezyan because there is a war in Georgia.  She doesn't like the air here in town. 

Людмила always walks us to the bustop because she lives right next to it.  Ира went with us on the bus and on the metro.  We got off at ours, but she went up to Уневерситет [University Metro stop] to meet her mom.