The 4th, new mission president, and craziness!

family and friends,   last week was just as busy as ever! on Tuesday we went to Kherson and had our district had a meeting with our new mission president and his wife.  They are 2 of the coolest, best, funniest people I have ever met! President Van Bruggen is going to light this mission on fire with his enthusiasm and energy!! They are both from Canada, I think the Alberta/Edmonton area.  They met in high school and started dating, but she wasn't a member and he was preparing to go on a mission, so they broke up.  One thing after another happened, and she took the missionary lessons and got baptized when she was 19 (Pres. Van Bruggen baptized her!), and they continued to date until his mission.  Apparently he went and traveled the world and spent all his mission money, so he came home and started all over and went on a mission when he was 21 haha.  She decided to go on a mission too.  So he went to The Netherlands, and she went to England, Birmingham.  They came home within a week of each other, and were engaged 5 weeks later.  They bought some homestead land in the middle of nowhere, and developed the land and they got assigned to build up the church there. So they started a branch by themselves and invited people to come to church! They were having so much success there that they had to call the mission pres. of that mission and ask for missionaries to come and help them out! haha.  They are such good examples of missionary work and have been involved with it their whole lives.  The meeting we had was full of the spirit, tears, laughter, good stories, and great conversation.  We talked a lot about being a good companion.  He talked about how Hyrum/Joseph Smith were two of the best companions that ever lived.  Hyrum stood with Joseph through everything.  He supported him, helped him, and even died for him.  Hyrum got shot first because he was protecting his brother, Joseph.  I thought about how I could be a better companion and how that could help me for the rest of my life. Your most important companion is obviously your spouse, but it could be your friend or sibling.  I loved getting that perspective and thinking of how I can be better!  We also talked about how success in our church is measured differently.  We got a little discouraged the other day because there was another church in Kherson that had 3,000 members at church on sunday, and had 30 baptisms.  We thought "why can't our church be like that?" Pres. Van Bruggen told us how our church does things differently.  We could get baptisms easily, doing things how other churches do them.  But we don't just want baptisms, we want people who are the elect and people who will be faithful to this decision.  Success can be measured in a worldly way, or it can be measured in the hearts of the people who are involved.  I thought of the prophecies in the scriptures how numbers might be few in Christ's true church, but that we will be all over the world, and be armed with righteousness.  I am so grateful to know that we are the true church, and nothing can stop that!!  Needless to say, we already love Pres/Sis. Van Bruggen and we love their examples and courage for being here!! We had 2 baptisms on Saturday from the Kherson branch! One was this wonderful man who has been searching for truth for a long time.  You could say he is the perfect example of a "golden" investigator, now a member.  The other was this older woman, and she is so adorable!  She is the mom of one of the member's in Kherson, and she is so sweet.  It was a really great service and it's so wonderful to see people join our church.  We had the baptisms in Nickoliav because we have a font here, so everyone just came over from Kherson.  Sister Johnson and I were in charge of filling up the font, and it took about 8 hours, so we had some good times at the branch while the font filled haha.  Sunday we went to church in Kherson and the missionaries did a musical number.  We have been doing musical numbers every other week, and they are usually primary songs because the branch has never heard them before.  We sang "Love is Spoken Here", and it was good.  After the song, this member named Vera turned around and was crying and blew kisses at me haha.  We don't have great voices, but people love us to sing here, it's funny!! So good news, we got transfer texts and sister johnson and i are still together and staying in our area! yay!! we are getting a new zone leader, and elders are coming back to nickolaiv, so that will be interesting to have another set of missionaries in nickolaiv again, but we are excited!  I have a favor to ask of all of you...will you pray for the government in ukraine to let us preach the gospel?! haha it sounds silly, but we are having SO many problems with registration.  Ukraine keeps changing the laws all the time, and creating a big mess for us missionaries.  sister johnson and i still aren't registered and it's crazy haha.  we could probably get arrested or deported at any time, but i don't think that will happen.  So please just keep that in your prayers, thank you!!  We had to spend a whole day last week with our office visa clerk (vova) and try to start our registration.  He is the best, this mission could not survive without him! It happened to be on the 4th of July when we did all of this, so he went to lunch with us to celebrate our independence day.  it was hilarious!   Well, that's about it for this week.  we are trying to do a lot of finding and strengthening the members in both areas.  the church has a long way to go here, but it has already come a long way, so it's just all part of the process.  I am so grateful to serve here and it's challenging everyday, but I love it!! Thank you for all of your prayers and support!! God Bless America, and Ukraine and everywhere else.  I love you all!!   Cectpa DeMille