family and friends,
Last week was as always, busy, but we saw a few small miracles and we are being blessed. We see "interesting/crazy" things and a lot of small wonders all the time. It's interesting to have this perspective on the world as a missionary and have one focus. I look around at people and i just think "alright, who of you are ready??" haha. I truly love this work and everything that we get to see. We get a front row seat to seeing people change and sharing the most beautiful message the world ever knew. i love it!!!!
as far as the highlights: so we have this investigator in Kherson, Elena. I have talked about her before, but she is the poor woman, she has faith, but sometimes lazy to act. so we had a lesson with her this week, and honestly, we didn't know what to talk about. we knew we wanted to talk about the importance of sacrament meeting and taking the sacrament, but we didn't know what else to say. i have never done this before, but we went into that lesson undecided and unprepared. as we walked up to her house, we just decided to stop and have a prayer. it was quiet and no one was around, so it was perfect. then we went right in to the lesson. it was one of the best lessons i have ever had! we did what we were supposed to as missionaries (invite, testify, teach, etc), but we did all that with boldness that i have never experienced before, and did that with love. she tried to come up with all these excuses for why she hadn't been to sacrament meeting, and we kindly rebuttled all of them in a Christlike way haha. we just basically owned her in her excuses. she asked again about being baptized and we just said until she comes to sacrament meeting, we can't pick a baptismal date for her. so she came to church yesterday, but during sunday school haha. well that's a bit of an improvement of walking in during 3rd hour. little by little, people progress. but that lesson will always stand out in my mind. i truly learned for myself the meaning of the scripture "it will be given to you in the very moment". i love seeing tender mercies from the Lord everyday!!
we have been trying to do a lot of following up, but nothing major is happening yet. we don't have hardly any investigators, but we are trying to find those who are ready. a few interesting/crazy things we saw and did last week: so one day we were getting on the bus to go to Kherson, and there was this woman in all black with a vail, and i could tell she was some kind of priestess or something. well i just thought "cool, someone else trying to tell people about God!" then she looked back at me, glared with this piercing, evil glare, and crossed herself!! man i don't know what it is, but people think we are evil. i felt a wierd presence and i sure didn't like that. but she did it a few more times and i just got over it haha. i thought about it the whole bus ride though. i can now easily spot those who are true Christians and followers of Christ. "by their works ye shall know them". i thought of how i think it's great that there is other people out there trying to do what we do, bring people closer to God. and even though I know that ours is the only true church and I have been called of God to represent Christ, I would never put any one else down who called themself a servant of God. it's just interesting how people react around us sometimes, and I am glad that I have legit authority haha.
we have been continuing doing service and building this lady's house out of mud and straw. i love it!! another funny thing. we set up an appointment with this lady Olga who is a dentist. I told her my uncle is a dentist at home, and she was like " can i meet him?" hahah i was like "well he lives in america" and she was like "okay, give him my card." hahah she is a little crazy. so we usually meet her at her office, but this time she wanted us to go to her house. long story short: we asked a billion people where this address was, went to like the wilderness of ukraine, and thought we were in the right place. then we asked another lady and she told us to go back the way that we came. so we are waiting at the bus stop, and this young guy that's tan, in a muscle shirt, and on a motorcycle just drives on up. he starts speaking in broken english and is like "i need to help you, you are lost!" haha so he writes the address down on a sticky note, and helps us get on the bus and talks to the bus driver for us. then i look at the sticky note and it says "these girls are from america and can't understand anything" hahahahaha we almost died laughing. then we ended up at a bus stop right across the street from olga's office!! haha so we call her and we are like, okay come meet us so we can go to your house. then she is like "but i'm at my office and i'm busy!" and we were like "olga, you told us to meet you at your house!" and she was like "oh!" haha she is crazy. so we went to her office (let's just say i would never get my teeth cleaned there) and we waited, then we just left because she was busy. people are so funny sometimes and i love scatterbrained women!! haha keeps our lives interesting.
yesterday i had to give a talk in church, and it went pretty well. i only had to be corrected on like 2 words instead of 100! improvement is good. and then us missionaries sang "armies of heleman" because they have never heard primary songs. and everyone was like crying and loved it. the elders have this hilarious investigator named Gussein, and he told me he loved my talk. He is a really awesome guy, and so so so hilarious. He is getting baptized in a few weeks, and it has been so awesome to see him change. even though he isn't our investigator, we truly have seen him change and it's so great. i love it!!! We also got to go to a "dacha" this weekend. it's like a garden house in the country. we got to weed the garden, then have lunch with all the women. it was good to see a relief society activity go on, and it was great. well, the work is moving forward little by little. pray that we can find more people to teach, because we really are trying!! i love you all and i'm so grateful for your support. i love this work, and i know that our Savior lives and loves us!!!
Cectpa DeMille
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