i wanted to say that i have contacted right there on the left side of that street. :)

Ok so a couple neat things, Ingrida (in-grid-uh) wants to get babtised! She doesn't have a specific date though. She wants to get babtised in the lake so she wants to do it when it warms up. Even though there was just a babtisim last week in the frozen river! But that is such an improvment for her, we are way excited. She doesnt know if she can give up tea and pay tithing though. Tea is a HUGE part of the culture here. They can still drink fruit tea but they love thier green and black tea. She has a wonderful heart though and we can see how much happier she is every time we talk to her. It's so great to see that. Also one of my first solo contacts, Vtenys (vi-ten-eece) accepted a babtisim date for the 21st of next month. He said he could give up drinking and smoking but not tea. AGH! It's ok though, we are going to keep working with him. He might not make his date becasue its hard for him to make it to church but he is going to try.
Transfers are next week! Holy cow I cant believe that my first transfer is almost done. Thats so crazy! I will probably stay here with Elder Young for my next transfer but you never know.
So there is a huge crisis here in Lithuania right now. the "crises" is on everybody's minds and so people always ask us about money. "Do you make money being a missionary?" "Can I be a missionary and make money?" Its silly. At least they aren't yelling at us EVERY time now :) It is always fun to have somebody say, "Eik tu sau!" which means essentially, Go to yourself! It's fun then you get a nice Baltic swat (they put thier arm up and swat it at you to say go away) and you go talk to the next guy. Its awesome. Its so great to see that I would never have had the courage to say the things to people that I am saying out here. Maybe its becasue its in a different language so I dont fully comprehend it but I think it is more of the Lord standing right next to me hoping just as much as I am that they will listen. It's like the picture of Christ knocking on the door. We have the name of Christ. We represent him. Just as we all do who are members of HIS church. We have taken upon us HIS name. This means we represent him to others. This means we need to live accordingly. We need to be worthy of that title. I am trying so hard to be more like Christ. Oh and here is something neat. My first name Jesse (it sounds weird to hear my first name) In Lithuanian they would drop the "se" and put on a Lithuanian ending so they can decline it. in this case the ending is "us" so my first name in Lithuanian is "Jesus" neat eh?
Well thats all for me this week. Thank you so much everybody for your letters. It helps me so much to receive your light every week. Thank you all for averything.
As' myliu jus su visa mano sirdami. niekada as negalu dekoti jums uz visa as turiu. Aciu labai uz jusu pagalba,. Tikrai myliu.
Vyresnysis Kukas

Awesome week!/random tidbits

Brangus Seimas
That is so awesome about you all running the dam marathon. 5k Of course everybody waits until now to get into running. It should be a blast though, i will just run around my apartment at the same time so its like we are doing it together. That might be kind of annoying becasue it would be about 2 in the morning here.
Also cool is Paul going into the MTC! That is so awesome! Its fun, he will love it :)
All is well here in Lithuania :)
Its white! We have got some nice snow over the last couple days. Its been a nice change of scenery over the wet sloppy gray stuff we have had the last week or two. Also the 14th was Lithuanias Independance day. I should say that this whole year is going to be a little crazy because it is the 100th year of Lithuania. Apparently the oldest document recording Lithuania's name was found in 1009 in Germany so hence...the Tukstantus Metis (100th year) It is really a nice excuse for everybody to party hearty for tomorrow we die (kind of thing).
I did see, however, some interesting things on Independance Day. We got into some interesting apartments and I saw men so drunk in the middle of the city just falling to the ground and slowly try to get up just to fall back down. It was really sad and there really wasnt anything we can do. We tried to help one man who had taken up residence in the middle of the sidewalk just laying down. We tried to ask if everything was ok and he just mumbled (more than usual) some random vowels and passed out more or less. It was snowing outside and we didn't want to just leave him there but we couldnt do ANYthing to help him. There were a lot of them and I just felt hopeless (or helpless, im not sure). But yea, it was interesting.
ok i still have a lot to say to make up for last's week's short letter.
First off...DIGGIN THE TOASTY FEET INSOLES! They help a TON. It has been getting impressivly cold here. It will only be about 15 below 0 Celcius but it is so stinking cold because of the humidity. If there is any wind at all you just want to hold a torch to you face so you can move your lips to talk (ok i might be being a little dramatic, but it is cold, trust me)
second, I am learning how to cook finally. We dont cook regular Lithuanian dishes, mostly because they take forever. Most of what we make was invented by mighty Baltic missionarys here. Only because the ingrediance are interesting. Like milk for example. You can leave the milk here out of the fridge for years and it wont go bad. In fact, I dont think it ever goes bad. So thats Idomu.
oh Mother, Do you remember Chernobyl? The Nuclear power plant that blew up? Yea well her twin sister is here in Vilnius. An exact copy, so that is fun. Also when that other one exploded the fall-out cloud went right over the Baltics so that means, A: we cant eat fish here because they are radioactive. and B:I cant be an organ donor. Im not sure what the rule is on donating blood though.
Ok here is a funny story
So in English class we baked cookies for everybody as a little treat. After each class we teach a spiritual lesson. This week I lead the lesson. For being as terrible at the language as I am I actually wasnt that nervous as I thought I would be. I taught about the Holy Ghost and that if we merely seek for truth humbly then God will answer our prayers. I then got REALLY comfortable and told them God loved them and that I love them. Why else would i be here if I didnt know this was true and I wanted you to have this same message. I was defiantly not planning on telling my english class that I lvoed them but, hey, im a loving guy :) THe funny thing is was when an old lady came up to me after class and said, "Did you back these cookies?" I said yea and she asked me if I had a girlfriend! I said no and she said "You are going to make a very good husband. I have a daughter and maybe you would want to have friendship with her" It was so funny, we both started laghing but she then I realised she was still waiting for an answer. I told her thank you but im not allowed to do anything like that right now. It was so funny. She is meeting with some other elders right now and is showing a lot of progression.
We had Zone conference this week also! It was way cool to see all my old district. I am all alone here in Vilnius as far as that goes. President and Sister Dance are so amazing!(He was born in Idaho so of course,right?) I got a whole new resolve to get out there and work like crazy. We are working really hard on our investigators right now. We have about 3 or 4. We got stood up another 5 times last week so a potential of 10 new lessons and investigators went to 0. It was really frustrating but there is no sense in letting the poor choices of others bring us down and hinder our ability to spread the love of Christ to other people. WE (you too) are responsible to give people the opportunity to feel the power of this wonderful gospel. Missionarys are teachers not finders. Members are finders. (well here we are both because even though i have asked every member for referrals I have only gotten two in a month and they were from people on the street. Member referrals have never really exsisted here) UNTIL NOW right? Big things are ready to happen here. I can feel it. I will tell you a little more about our investigators next week, I have relaxed enough for one week. But for now please pray for:Edvanas,Andrus,Ingrida,Povolus, and Vtenys.
Thank you so much everybody for everything (I think that should cover it) I love you all

word of the week: Gailestingas-mercy

Myliu Jusu- Vyresnysis Kuk(ukas)<-domininative

One week wiser

ok fam dont hate me.
If i dont write much to the rest of you because i just wrote this big fat juicy letter and it just deleted it so.....yea...awesome.

ok so. This week was crazy. Its is always crazy here. Last week went very well. To give you an idea of what very well is here, we had 12 lessons last week 5 of them were new lessons. THAT is awesome :) However, this week didnt start so great(aside from this email fiasco) we had 5 NEW LESSONS set up yesterday!...and they all stood us up. So that was discouraging. BUT LET US ALL PRESS ON IN THE WORK OF THE LORD! I am getting more used to the people here. I have learned that they are just really straight up and honest with you. That just it. They dont beat around the bush. If they dont want to talk, they tell you. If they think you are the devil, they tell you. And when i heard of people getting the door slammed in their face I didnt realize it mean REALLY slamming the door really really hard and then procceding to lock up the 50 different locks and deadbolts they have. Its fun. But I absolutly love it here. I am really learning to love the people. The members here are so amazing. THere arent that many of them so it just shows how strong they are. I see every day how this is exactly where i need to be and i would trade it for ANYthing. I love Lithuania. I wouldnt want to be in any other mission in the world. Even in The Babtisim central of Brazil. I know its hard here (its hard everywhere) but i love the refining challenges of Lithuania. No beautiful statue was made by somebody throwing marshmallows at it for 30 minutes. It took a long period of polishing and refining. I can see myself becoming so much more. I cant make people accept the gospel but i can work on myself and make myself a better servant.

well gotta go bring others to Christ
word of the week:Stiprybe-strength

Myliu-Vyresnysis Kukas

Sveiki!!!

Labas rytas s'eima!
How are you all living? I was so glad to read your e-mail today. Thats so cool about the new missionarys getting their calls. They are all awesome. We had some Elders in the MTC in our zone go to Seattle. They were all awesome.
ok so just so you know i am serving in Vilnius ,,Lithuania" (Lietuva) not Latvia. k? good :)
ok. so. Beginning of week 3... um..Missionary work is awesome!
So this last week was kinda really crazy. So like i said last time we had gotten into 1 house. well, this week also we only got into one new house. I tell you I did not expect this. Our entire district is having the toughest time right now. We are working so hard and not getting the succes we know is out there. I had a few people get really mad at me this week. We get called a ,,sect" alot. One man said ,,We pray for you, (at this point i was like, cool!) but then he said, because we feel bad that you are out here preaching a lie to people."
I didnt know if I just understood wrong or what- but that happens alot. We get called a lot of things here. But this is why missionary work is so amazing. Because as Elder Holland told us. ,"When you are rejected, when you are cast out you are rubbing shoulders with the best life this word has ever known. How can you expect to testify of Christ If you haven't took a couple of his steps to Calvary. I Pray to be like Christ so rejection is an answer to those prayers. I love it. Adn this is the best part, when you are faithful and dilligent and strive to be like Christ, you can be the Lords tool in miricals.
Miricle #1-We were in center of Vilnius contacting (I love contacting) when we started talking to this man. I was still kind of just leaving everything up to my companion, when I felt that i should talk to this man walking past. He was in a hurry and my companion was in the middle of a contact but i turned hurried beside the man and started to tell him who I was and that I have a message of Christ. He said ,,When can we talk" I got his number and said i was excited to meet with him. His name is Edvenas. He was my first full contact, in complete Lithuanian! :) He met with us and we talked about Joseph Smith. I told him the first vision and bore testimony of its truth. He said he wants to learn more. I know a lot of people reading this might not think 1 progressing investigator is a big deal. but here, it is :)
We are meeting again with him today so pray for him.

OK this one is way cool
Miricle #2
When we harvest we write down all the doors that dont answer so we can talk to EVERYbody. We went to this one dome and starded knocking doors. When this one lady answered my and Elder Young realized we had already talked to her. We were embarrassed at first but went with it and said we still wanted to talk to her. The crazy thing is that she let us in! It was the only house we got into all week. She also had a Russian book of Mormon and she couldnt read it and she wanted a Lithuanian one, we hooked her up :) We taught her about the restoration. She said that was a miricle and she believed the first vision happened. BUt she said why did he receive a miracle and I dont. I told her without really thinking about it that the fact that we were there right then was a miricle. I said the fact that we are talking is a miricle. And its a sign that God loves you. The spirit was so strong and I could see she felt it. With wet eyes she started to talk and I couldnt understand her. I prayed to Heavenly Father to understand. And, without understanding one word she was saying I ,,felt" this story: Rita needed help and so she prayed and we came. After the appointment My companion told me that that is exactly what she had said. She had had a rough time the night before and so she prayed to God for help. To know he loved her.

God loves us, He loves Rita. He led us back to that appartment at that time to give one of his children another chance at the help she needed. He had me say what she needed to hear, That this is a miricle and we are the help she wanted, even though i had no idea about her prayer. And he gave me the power to speak in her language to do it. It made me see that while I do not speak as much Lithuanian as I want to speak. He will open my mouth to say the things that he needs me to say.
Rita may never join the church. But our purpose as missionaries is to First: bring others to Christ. So I feel I accomplished my mission this week. I feel i could do much more but I will just keep striving to be as good as I can be. I can see the challanges that lie ahead of me. But I am learning to take them head on and not murmmur. Its easier to get discouraged than to just buck up and work. I am in 2Nephi in my Lithuanian Book of Mormon reading. And I cant understand much but I can see the blessings from just doing what God tells you. I love this mission. I love my trials. oh I almost forgot. I SAW THE SUN THIS WEEK! oh it was so nice. Until I got outside and realised when the clouds are gone you cant be outside for very long before your face stops moving. It only gets about -20C here but with 100% humidity its killer cold. THe Dances gave me a free coat though so thats awesome. I want to send pictures but I dont have a cord to hook up dads camera to the computer. so if you can find that. Its just the standard USBhook up cord that we have a ton of at home. Oh and if anybody reading this feeling like shipping something to the other side of the world...peanut butter would be awesome :)

well i need to write president Dance. We also have 4 meetings set up for tonight starting at 16:00 with Edvanas so its going to cut into our P day but thats ok. THe Lord will bless us for it.
I love you all so much! Miss you all just not enough to leave the work :) I am praying for you always

word of the week: Stebuklai-Miracles

Sekmes, Myliu Vyresnysis Kukas.

P.s. Has Jake Bischoff got his call yet? let me know