most faithful people I've met

Thanks for the email Mom. Man, these pictures are making my pretty jealous. Good old 9th street! I'm glad no one messed up on the rock climbing knots haha. I found a piece of rope the other day and tied a few knots in it and I was glad I could still remember them. That's sad to hear that Mark left. He sounds like he was way awesome. I wish I would have been able to meet him. That's so cool how close y'all got. Jared and Nate are at high-altitude camp? You'll have to let me know how that goes. That's a way fun camp. I can't believe they have 55 of them going! I went on a run the other day and I've been scared that I lost my speed but I felt like I was cruising! (Probably just because I was running past all the Texan runners (no one knows how to run here)) Next transfer (which starts not this week but the next) me and my comp are planning on doing a cut-transfer and try to get in better shape. My goal is to be able to do a one-armed pull-up with my right and left arms, and to run more. Anyway...

We had an amazing week this past week. We've been blessed so much. Thanks for all of the prayers. We met so many new people to teach and it's pretty exciting. We met this awesome family the other day. We were going to visit this investigator we have that's from Congo but he wasn't there but his brother answered (who was like 13 years old) and we asked him if he had any friends that we could teach. He led us to his neighbor's house and they let us in. This family was from Zambia (south africa) they speak Swahili, Kinyarowanda, Nyanga, and a bit of English haha. The kids are awesome. We are going to start teaching their family and teaching their dad English. The kids came to church with us. The other day we brought them some cookies from a member that we had eatin dinner with and they weren't home so we gave them to some kids playing soccer and we played with them a little bit and they were way good. I told them they had to teach me some moves and they did haha. We talked to them about the Young Mens program at church and they said they'd come. We should have 4 come on Wednesday. We've also been teaching this awesome couple that also came to church. The wife is going through stim-cell transplant and it's pretty rough but they are some of the most faithful people I've met. They want to get baptized but we're trying to work it out because the treatment makes it pretty complicated. 

Anyway, the areas going really good. My district is doing way good too! At our meeting last week we were able to talk a lot about specific things that we could do to better our areas. I am pretty excited with the progress we've seen. THanks for all the prayers and packages/letters. Mom, I did get the cookies and they didn't taste like soap very much but kinda did. I still loved them of course. I don't know what it is... Maybe just the way they transport the boxes. Maybe try double or triple bagging them? Either way, thanks so much. I love you guys and hope you have a great week. 

Elder Russell

PS I love how you are emphasizing the goal setting Mom, that is such a good idea. Goals produce better results than we would think we could get. Thanks for the email.