family and friends!
Another week has gone by, and time is flying. The work here continues on, and I love it. I'm sad it's taken me this long, but I feel like truly, really, I love this work now and am adjusted to Ukraine. Sometimes I still have little culture shocks here and there, but it keeps it interesting and exciting. Life is never dull as a missionary here in Zap. Let's just say, Saturday was an epic day. We had no lessons, so we decided to go finding out of the area book. We started out on the Marshutka and lo and behold, there was a tv on the marshutka. So all the sudden, this Backstreet Boys music video "Shape of my Heart" (all you backstreet boys fans know what i'm talking about) and it was just fantastic. Sister Swenson and I rocked out and it started the day off right haha. The rest of the day wasn't a disappointment either. We went to this dome (apartment building) and we went up a couple of flights of stairs to find a lady, and all of the sudden there is this sketchy gate with a lock on the floor that she lives on. We didn't feel good about going to visit someone that lives behind a sketchy gate, so we bounced haha. Then we go to this other dome and this guy is in the stairwell and he was fun to talk to and he goes to say goodbye to us and grabs Sister Cardon's arm and is like "whoa! you are strong!" and then goes around and squeezes all of our arms. haha. gotta love it! so in that same dome, we are heading back down after an unsuccessful finding experience, and there is this Babushka in the stairwell and so we say hi and smile, and she starts crossing herself and starts asking God for forgivness by being in our presence! Yep, apparently we are evil.
Haha everything else is going well. Nothing too new to report on investigators. They are all technically progressing, but very slowly like a turtle. One epic thing that happened last week--I FINSHED THE BOOK OF MORMON IN RUSSIAN! Supposedly I'm fluent now haha. But really, I have faith that it will help my language. And once we all get the new translations of the russian scriptures in a triple combo, I will start it all over. Also, our cute little investigator Dionna will be baptized this weekend, so that will be fun. Other than that, it's work and life as usual as a missionary. I love it. I am so grateful for the opportunity and PRIVILEDGE to serve the Lord! It is hard, exhausting work, but I have learned so much. I love you all and I'm grateful for your support!!! Keep living life and keep us missionaries in your prayers!
Cectpa DeMille
Monday, March 26, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
spring almost we hope??
Fam/Friends!
It is FINALLY warming up in ukraine. Like i know i said that last week, but today i was walking around with only a cardigan, it was fabulous. We had a good official first week all together, and we are all learning a lot. We had some breakthroughs with people and downfalls as always. It's interesting as a missionary that we can go through so many emotions in one day, but somehow, i live through each day no matter how tired or anything i am.
So the big downfall this last week was our investigator Alyona. We dropped by because we haven't been able to get ahold of her, and she just yelled and yelled at us. We left quickly to say the least haha. I can't judge her because i know her life is really hard right now, it was just sad to hear her treat us like that when all we tried to do was help. But, i hope that she remembers how she felt when the spirit was with her and she can choose to come back.
A few upsides! We had a great meeting with Lydia and Igor and we talked about their relationships with God. It was really great and the spirit was there strong. They both came to church on sunday too. It is tricky business trying to figure out what everyone needs and to teach them according to the spirit and to translate everything in your brain, but somehow i think we figure it out and we can help people along the way.
I just have been learning so much from everyone around me. Sometimes i just wish i could read the scriptures all day and to just learn more haha. I have been reading a lot and it's helped me so much. I truly have a testimony that we can find hope, peace, and happiness through scripture study. We are all doing great and trying to figure out how to work together well and it's been good. The Lord always knows what's best for us. I am grateful to be a missionary and to have the opportunity and priviledge to serve the Lord. I love all of you and pray for you each day!!
Cectpa DeMille
It is FINALLY warming up in ukraine. Like i know i said that last week, but today i was walking around with only a cardigan, it was fabulous. We had a good official first week all together, and we are all learning a lot. We had some breakthroughs with people and downfalls as always. It's interesting as a missionary that we can go through so many emotions in one day, but somehow, i live through each day no matter how tired or anything i am.
So the big downfall this last week was our investigator Alyona. We dropped by because we haven't been able to get ahold of her, and she just yelled and yelled at us. We left quickly to say the least haha. I can't judge her because i know her life is really hard right now, it was just sad to hear her treat us like that when all we tried to do was help. But, i hope that she remembers how she felt when the spirit was with her and she can choose to come back.
A few upsides! We had a great meeting with Lydia and Igor and we talked about their relationships with God. It was really great and the spirit was there strong. They both came to church on sunday too. It is tricky business trying to figure out what everyone needs and to teach them according to the spirit and to translate everything in your brain, but somehow i think we figure it out and we can help people along the way.
I just have been learning so much from everyone around me. Sometimes i just wish i could read the scriptures all day and to just learn more haha. I have been reading a lot and it's helped me so much. I truly have a testimony that we can find hope, peace, and happiness through scripture study. We are all doing great and trying to figure out how to work together well and it's been good. The Lord always knows what's best for us. I am grateful to be a missionary and to have the opportunity and priviledge to serve the Lord. I love all of you and pray for you each day!!
Cectpa DeMille
Monday, March 12, 2012
The new start
dear friends/family,
Last week was a good, long, busy, crazy week! We spent a few days getting our apartment clean and getting Sister Clark packed. We left for Nepper thursday morning along with the elders, then we headed straight to the mission office. It was like a party there! There were tons of missionaries there and it was great to meet new people and see familiar faces. Then we went and got lunch at McDonalds (of course haha), and then we went to the training meeting.The training meeting was really good with some good advice and good conversation. President Nielsen is so wise! I swear him and Sister Nielsen are the wisest, smartest couple ever. Love them. Then we met our new missionaries and hung out for a little bit. So we were about to head back to Zap on the bus, but in my mind i couldn't figure out how we were going to get from the bus station to our apartment. All the taxis here are super small and they charge like crazy for luggage. I knew we couldn't fit 3 sisters and 6 suitcases into one taxi, so the only thing we could do was split up. I wanted to get permission from president for us to split up, but he was not okay with that (understandable). Long story short, President Nielsen drove us to Zap in the mission van haha. It was great, we talked a lot. Something cool we found out, Him and Sister Nielsen just went to Istanbul, Turkey a few weeks ago for some mission conference. Epic news, they are sending in missionaries to Turkey! It's going to be part of the Bulgaria, Sofia mission and it includes Turkey now. They just got permission to proselyte there, so it's awesome. The work is moving forward!!!
So I love my two new companions! We are already having tons of fun and working hard. Sister Swenson (my new missionary) is totally rockin' the language, and Sister Cardon and I already have way to much fun together. Zap needs some fresh blood in here to get the work moving forward. I feel so much better about my Russian already. I can totally understand about 75-80% of what people are saying, and I'm speaking a lot better. The Lord is blessing me!! We are going to have a solid district and it will be awesome. It's interesting leading them around the city, because I'm not too good at directions, but so far so good. I'm starting to enjoy change on the mission, it really is a blessing and you learn so much with new views and goals. I don't know much else to say because last week was pretty much an "adjustment" week, but the work is going well and I am loving it. It's such a blessing to be a missionary! Pray for missionaries everywhere to find the "elect". I'm grateful for all of you and your support! I love you all!
Sister DeMille
Last week was a good, long, busy, crazy week! We spent a few days getting our apartment clean and getting Sister Clark packed. We left for Nepper thursday morning along with the elders, then we headed straight to the mission office. It was like a party there! There were tons of missionaries there and it was great to meet new people and see familiar faces. Then we went and got lunch at McDonalds (of course haha), and then we went to the training meeting.The training meeting was really good with some good advice and good conversation. President Nielsen is so wise! I swear him and Sister Nielsen are the wisest, smartest couple ever. Love them. Then we met our new missionaries and hung out for a little bit. So we were about to head back to Zap on the bus, but in my mind i couldn't figure out how we were going to get from the bus station to our apartment. All the taxis here are super small and they charge like crazy for luggage. I knew we couldn't fit 3 sisters and 6 suitcases into one taxi, so the only thing we could do was split up. I wanted to get permission from president for us to split up, but he was not okay with that (understandable). Long story short, President Nielsen drove us to Zap in the mission van haha. It was great, we talked a lot. Something cool we found out, Him and Sister Nielsen just went to Istanbul, Turkey a few weeks ago for some mission conference. Epic news, they are sending in missionaries to Turkey! It's going to be part of the Bulgaria, Sofia mission and it includes Turkey now. They just got permission to proselyte there, so it's awesome. The work is moving forward!!!
So I love my two new companions! We are already having tons of fun and working hard. Sister Swenson (my new missionary) is totally rockin' the language, and Sister Cardon and I already have way to much fun together. Zap needs some fresh blood in here to get the work moving forward. I feel so much better about my Russian already. I can totally understand about 75-80% of what people are saying, and I'm speaking a lot better. The Lord is blessing me!! We are going to have a solid district and it will be awesome. It's interesting leading them around the city, because I'm not too good at directions, but so far so good. I'm starting to enjoy change on the mission, it really is a blessing and you learn so much with new views and goals. I don't know much else to say because last week was pretty much an "adjustment" week, but the work is going well and I am loving it. It's such a blessing to be a missionary! Pray for missionaries everywhere to find the "elect". I'm grateful for all of you and your support! I love you all!
Sister DeMille
Monday, March 5, 2012
pictures!!
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| armenian restaurant |
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| armenian restaurant |
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| elder nishedemov trying to feed me weird food |
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| the armenian restaurant |
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| oh just brat alexae dancing for us, haha is a joy |
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| elder nishedemov. i always tell him he reminds me of harry potter, so this is him posing. he loves it. |
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| us |
transfers!
family/friends!
Well, we are lucky because the transfer text came early this morning instead of the afternoon. There are definitely a lot of changes going on. I will be training, but I am in a three-some. I will be with Sister Cardon, she will be senior companion, I will be training a new sister named Sister Swenson. It will definitely be interesting! Sister Cardon is a transfer older than me and she was companions with a native sister for 3 transfers, so she is probably really good at Russian and I am so grateful! Our apartment is not exactly accomodating for a threesome, but it's do-able. I can't believe I am already training, but I kind of figured it would happen. I am excited, but it's going to be rough to lead two other sisters around the city and give them the run-down on all of our investigators/members here. I love sister Cardon and I'm sure sister Swenson will be great too. Who knows! The mission is always pushing and stretching you. We will head to Nepper on Thursday to get our new companions. I have to go to a training meeting and then after that we will head back to Zap. It will be an interesting experience, but I'm excited.
As for last week, we had a good week. We were finally able to meet with one of our investigators, Alyona. She is having a hard time because she just got fired from her job. We challenged her to read the Book of Mormon and come to our church, instead of read the New Testament and go to the Orthadox church haha. It's so hard to see situations like that as a missionary. Before we went over there, she called us and asked us if we could bring her some bread. We figured that if she is desperate enough to ask us to bring her bread, she is probably out of food. So we bought a little bag of groceries and took it to her and she just started crying. It is so sad to see things like that and not be able to help the situation more. What she thinks she needs is food, like substance (which is of course, essentail to life), but people here don't realize that we have so much more to offer than that. They take our message for granted. We try to tell them that our message will "feed" them for a lifetime and eternity, and they just want bread, real bread. Ukraine makes me sad a lot, there are a lot of helpless people in dire circumstances. But, we can't do anything if they won't accecpt our message, so we just move on and pray.
We also had a good lesson with Lydia last week. We were pretty bold and asked her straight up why she won't get baptized. She told us she is scared, but didn't really have a good reason why she is scared. We told her we have two more things to teach her and then we can't meet with her anymore if she won't progress and get baptized. We told her she doesn't know when she is going to die (she is always telling us she might die soon and how scared she is) and she needs to get baptized haha. She knows our church is good, but she doesn't know it's true yet. We will see what happens there!
We also finally met with a girl that told us like a month ago that she wants to get baptized. We met with her after church and had a great lesson with her and she has a baptismal date for March 31st now. We are still teaching our little girl who is deaf, and it's fun and interesting. We had an interesting lesson with our babushka investigator. We asked her about word of wisdom (she likes vodka a lot) and talked about free agency. She was telling us that she knows how important the word of wisdom is and she knows alcohol is bad for us. So we were like, "babushka, will you follow the word of wisdom and not drink vodka anymore?" and she was like, "of course not!" haha. wow. The conversation got out of hand after that, so we just ended it and we figured we would talk about it another time. You never know what kind of responses you will get here haha.
Other than that, it's life and business as usual here. We really need to find more investigators, so we will work on that this next transfer. I love Zap, and I'm so happy to be staying. Life as a missionary is a constant roller coaster, never ever a dull moment. It's full of joy and full of sadness. haha. I love it, but it's rough at times. I'm gonna need a lot of luck and a lot of spirit to make this next transfer awesome. I love you all! I'm so grateful for your love, prayers, and support! I am so grateful for America and the freedoms we have there. The work truly is going forth to every nation, kindred, and tongue. They send the weak and simple to proclaim the gospel, I am living proof of that haha. The Lord strengthens me and I somehow make it through everyday here. I feel like I have already learned a lifetime of lessons. The mission feels like a hyped up version of life, directed more spiritually. You experience all these kind of emotions everyday, experience trials and joy, create lasting bonds, and learn every single day. I have learned so much from our district and my companions. I am so grateful for the Elders here and that we have the priesthood around us constantly. Don't take anything for granted! Life is hard and crazy, but it is bearable and enjoyable with the gospel. I love you all!!
Cectpa DeMille
Well, we are lucky because the transfer text came early this morning instead of the afternoon. There are definitely a lot of changes going on. I will be training, but I am in a three-some. I will be with Sister Cardon, she will be senior companion, I will be training a new sister named Sister Swenson. It will definitely be interesting! Sister Cardon is a transfer older than me and she was companions with a native sister for 3 transfers, so she is probably really good at Russian and I am so grateful! Our apartment is not exactly accomodating for a threesome, but it's do-able. I can't believe I am already training, but I kind of figured it would happen. I am excited, but it's going to be rough to lead two other sisters around the city and give them the run-down on all of our investigators/members here. I love sister Cardon and I'm sure sister Swenson will be great too. Who knows! The mission is always pushing and stretching you. We will head to Nepper on Thursday to get our new companions. I have to go to a training meeting and then after that we will head back to Zap. It will be an interesting experience, but I'm excited.
As for last week, we had a good week. We were finally able to meet with one of our investigators, Alyona. She is having a hard time because she just got fired from her job. We challenged her to read the Book of Mormon and come to our church, instead of read the New Testament and go to the Orthadox church haha. It's so hard to see situations like that as a missionary. Before we went over there, she called us and asked us if we could bring her some bread. We figured that if she is desperate enough to ask us to bring her bread, she is probably out of food. So we bought a little bag of groceries and took it to her and she just started crying. It is so sad to see things like that and not be able to help the situation more. What she thinks she needs is food, like substance (which is of course, essentail to life), but people here don't realize that we have so much more to offer than that. They take our message for granted. We try to tell them that our message will "feed" them for a lifetime and eternity, and they just want bread, real bread. Ukraine makes me sad a lot, there are a lot of helpless people in dire circumstances. But, we can't do anything if they won't accecpt our message, so we just move on and pray.
We also had a good lesson with Lydia last week. We were pretty bold and asked her straight up why she won't get baptized. She told us she is scared, but didn't really have a good reason why she is scared. We told her we have two more things to teach her and then we can't meet with her anymore if she won't progress and get baptized. We told her she doesn't know when she is going to die (she is always telling us she might die soon and how scared she is) and she needs to get baptized haha. She knows our church is good, but she doesn't know it's true yet. We will see what happens there!
We also finally met with a girl that told us like a month ago that she wants to get baptized. We met with her after church and had a great lesson with her and she has a baptismal date for March 31st now. We are still teaching our little girl who is deaf, and it's fun and interesting. We had an interesting lesson with our babushka investigator. We asked her about word of wisdom (she likes vodka a lot) and talked about free agency. She was telling us that she knows how important the word of wisdom is and she knows alcohol is bad for us. So we were like, "babushka, will you follow the word of wisdom and not drink vodka anymore?" and she was like, "of course not!" haha. wow. The conversation got out of hand after that, so we just ended it and we figured we would talk about it another time. You never know what kind of responses you will get here haha.
Other than that, it's life and business as usual here. We really need to find more investigators, so we will work on that this next transfer. I love Zap, and I'm so happy to be staying. Life as a missionary is a constant roller coaster, never ever a dull moment. It's full of joy and full of sadness. haha. I love it, but it's rough at times. I'm gonna need a lot of luck and a lot of spirit to make this next transfer awesome. I love you all! I'm so grateful for your love, prayers, and support! I am so grateful for America and the freedoms we have there. The work truly is going forth to every nation, kindred, and tongue. They send the weak and simple to proclaim the gospel, I am living proof of that haha. The Lord strengthens me and I somehow make it through everyday here. I feel like I have already learned a lifetime of lessons. The mission feels like a hyped up version of life, directed more spiritually. You experience all these kind of emotions everyday, experience trials and joy, create lasting bonds, and learn every single day. I have learned so much from our district and my companions. I am so grateful for the Elders here and that we have the priesthood around us constantly. Don't take anything for granted! Life is hard and crazy, but it is bearable and enjoyable with the gospel. I love you all!!
Cectpa DeMille
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