dear family and friends,
this last week was so great! we are seeing so many small miracles and blessings from the Lord. everything is going a lot more smoothly, and it is officially a new transfer today. A couple of highlights: So there is this girl named Julia in Kherson that comes to English. She told us a few weeks ago that she plays the piano and she would like to play in our sacrament meeting. We were like, yes of course! So she has been practicing and getting better and getting more comfortable with us. We hadn't really talked a lot about the gospel with her up until last week. She got done practicing and we just asked her how she felt about our church meetings and such. She just basically said that there are so many religions, and everyone thinks their own religion is true. She said that she wished that there was just one true church on the Earth, but that it would take time to establish and let everyone know about it, etc. We just dove right in to the restoration! We talked about the apostasy and talked about the reformers in europe, the simple truths taken out of the bible, and basically the history of America (God bless America!) and that America was founded for freedom of religion and such. We cleared up a couple of false truths that she had heard. She thought our church was just an American church and that our missions were like a forced thing. She loved that our church is throughout the world and that we made the choice to serve missions. So anyway, we just gave her the whole run-down of the restoration, and she loved it. It made sense to her and she agreed with it. I remember in our last Zone Conf. we talked a lot about focusing on the simple truths, especially with the restoration, so that's what we did with Julia. The spirit manifested to me again how simple truths are the best way to teach, and it was a great lesson. I don't think I have ever had a better first lesson on my mission! Her boyfriend came to church too, and he loved testimony meeting. The elders also had an investigator there, and Julia, her boyfriend, and the elders investigator all knew each other! So it was fun to see them sitting on the front row together and feeling the spirit. I love it!! We also have an investigator in Kherson named Elena. She is very poor and kind of has been in and out of meeting with us and not. We hadn't seen her for a few weeks, and we got a phone call from her apologizing for not coming to church, and then we met with her. Her small apartment is kind of like a prison haha. She has no electricity so it's just really dark and damp, and kind of hard to feel the spirit. But, we taught her and she wants to be baptized but we still have a ways to go with her. She came to church and we told her we would pick a baptismal date for her this week. So the work is moving forward and God is blessing us!! As for things in Nickolaiv, it's great!! There are a lot of youth in the branch and it's great. We are going to start a little mission prep. class and have the youth come who are preparing to go on missions. We are stoked, I love helping out the youth!
A funny experience last week: we went tracting in what we call the "private home sector". Everyone usually lives in huge apartment buildings, and then on the outskirts of the city there is the private homes. So we went out there and were tracting, and we knock on this house. This guy answers the door in just boxers, and is holding his finger which is like wrapped in tons of gauze and iodine and it just looks scary haha. He starts telling us he doesn't believe in God and all this stuff, then is like "well girls, come talk to my babushka." So we go next door and talk to his adorable babushka. There were a few moments of contention, but we ended it off just laughing and he basically wanted us to go and talk to all of his neighbors haha. I told them that I live next door to my grandma too, and they loved it and laughed up a storm about these funny girls that are from America. We went our separate ways, and it was just a funny cool thing that happened. Other than that, it has just been busy. We went back and forth between Nickolaiv and Kherson three times last week, and it will be the same this week. It's hard balancing between two branches and doing everything that we need to do, but we love it. We even had a birthday party for me at District Meeting, complete with chinese food. It was delicious, and a great district meeting. We lost one of our elders, but gained another one and our district is still awesome. I learned yesterday that I don't know Russian! I was thinking I was doing alright, then our District Leader was telling us how we are going to have a language study as a district every week, and it's going to be a mission wide thing. So we go over a few grammar principles, and turns out I have been speaking Russian wrong for 9 months!! Ugggghhhh. haha the Lord humbled me, and I'm determined to speak this impossible language correctly one way or another. You live and you learn! With a new transfer comes new goals and new responsibilities. I'm grateful to be involved in this work and to have the opportunity to labor among these people. It is hard and sometimes it feels impossible, but I'm trying to be more like the sons of Mosiah when they say "they could not bear that any human soul should perish; yea, even the very thoughts that any soul should endure endless torment did cause them to quake and tremble". I love this work, and I love you all!!
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