family and friends,

IT SNOWED!!  i was shocked! it snowed for 3 days straight, so i'm thinking it's here to stay.  i was surprised, last year it didn't even begin to snow until christmas eve and then melted and came and went a lot still...so it's cold right now, but it's beautiful! i love the winter wonderland...even though my feet are usually numb within 3 minutes no matter how many layers of socks i wear!  so we have plenty of christmas activities planned. today we are going to Kherson for a christmas eve lunch and watching the christmas broadcast, tonight we are going to a part member family for a lesson/celebration, tomorrow we are having christmas breakfast with the elders and this couple in our branch, tomorrow we all get to skype, then tomorrow night we are going back to Kherson for a christmas mini-zone conference on wednesday morning. it will be busy, but so fun! we are excited. i love the christmas spirit!!

the work is going! haha unfortunately there wasn't much to report. around this time of year it seems like everyone is sick or too busy to meet until after the holidays. we are doing a lot of finding (tracting, street contacting in the snow), and we still are having success with meeting with less actives. so we are trying to find those who are ready and i hope that we will find some people soon who are truly ready and interested in the gospel!  it's hard sometimes because i know what we have to share is more important than anything in the world, but everyone has their free agency and we can't force people to believe it.  we had an interesting experience though. last week the elders met this girl named Ling who is from china but teaches english here. so we gave her a call and she said she is not religious at all, but wanted to meet. so we gave it a shot and met with her in a little cafe and it was actually really cool! we told her exactly what we do here and she never said anything about not being religious to us face to face. she thought it was crazy (but cool) we were here and really liked us, so that was neat!  

we met with a less active last night and we were talking about faith and why we need to have faith. she asked us to share how faith has helped us, and it was cool to bare testimony about faith with someone who hasn't been to church in years.  she told us she doesn't believe in just one true church, and that she thought God loves everyone the same and accepts every church.  we explained lovingly/boldly that God does love everyone and that we believe religion in general is good. it makes good people better, bad people good, and keeps people believing. but, God doesn't want His children to be confused, therefore, there needs to only be one church. God has always revealed His gospel when people were ready, and He revealed it the last time through Joseph Smith.  I'm so thankful to a loving Heavenly Father who gave us the clear, straight, path back to Him.  I'm so thankful that He sent His beloved son Jesus Christ, to earth so He could know how to "succor" us. He truly is our Savior! He lives! I love that our message focuses on His life and His resurrection-not only that He died.  I love this special time of year to reflect on His life.  I hope you are all filled with the Christmas spirit!  Do something nice for someone else, do what Christ would do! Then the true christmas spirit will abound.  it's wonderful to be His representative and share His message with these people. even though it's not easy, I still love it! and I love you all! i hope you all have a MERRY CHRISTMAS!  and remember our Lord, Savior, and Redeemer--Jesus Christ!! i love you all!

Sister DeMille  

family and friends,

it was another good week and it is still cold, and will get colder! there is a bit of snow and a lot of cold wind. it's starting to feel more like the holidays so that's good!  so, transfer news came..or rather didn't come! haha i'm staying in Nickolaiv until the end! this will be my 7th transfer here! obviously there is work for us to do here and we are determined to do it! now i don't have to pack as much :)  i'm glad to still be with sister dickison!  well, we did have a good week, always full of hardships and laughs, but good overall. our greatest "success" this week was with less actives actually.  there are plenty of them here to find, and we have yet to have found all of them.  we stopped by one woman and her daughter, and they let us right in and it was awesome! her daughter was about to have a baby in the next few days and was really nervous about it, so we prayed for her and the mom really was happy and calmed the daughter down haha. they asked me what my first name was so i told them amanda..big mistake! they called me amanda the rest of the night! haha looks like i will have to correct them on that.  but one thing i learned from that visit is how much the SIMPLE truths of the gospel bless our lives! the lady told us she went inactive because she just has "so many questions" that couldn't be answered. but the more we talked and talked about simple truths, the more all of us realized how we can understand a lot through the simpleness of the gospel.  we had another lesson with a less active girl, and she confessed how she has been missing God in her life and how she misses the spirit.  it was great to talk with them and work with them, so i was happy!! 

we met with ludmilla twice last week. she is doing really well and even though she has interesting ideas, it's great to help guide her in the truth.  she wants to get baptized, but wants to do it with her husband. he loves us, but we are not sure yet if he is going to take our message seriously or not..so we will see! her husband had a little fallback with some vodka, but she chewed him out pretty good and it was not only entertaining, but inspiring! she is wonderful but we still have a lot of work to do.  we are still doing a lot of finding, but we are having a hard time just getting people to stop and talk to us and have a conversation. so hopefully soon we will have some success with that and get some new investigators! we got to see our visa man from the office named Vova, and he is awesome! he went to lunch with us and finished up some document work with us. he kept us laughing with some hilarious stories of his kids!  so besides random people calling us by our first names, we had some more awkwardness with a few of the english guys asking us real casually if we can go on dates here. haha looks like we need to review our purpose as missionaries for a spiritual thought.  also, we are becoming more creative with our budget and food here, and we whipped up this awesome vegetable soup. i'm a chef!

anyway, things are picking up and we are trying to work closer with the branch to have more success! i really feel good about staying here for my last transfer and i hope that we can see a lot of blessings in the time coming up.  i have a great love for the people here and i love serving them!  missionary work is harder than anything i have ever done, but we try to keep it positive and fun.  sister dickison and i are working hard and loving it! even though sometimes it rains for 3 days straight like it did last week, and the cold wind blows and my ears feel frostbitten, it's great!  i really love this gospel and everything about it.  it brings so much peace in a turbulent world. even though there are horrible tragedies in the world that sometimes leave us thinking "how could that happen?", we can be assured that God loves His children and He is continually watching over us. He knows us, He loves us, and He will never leave us.  everyone has their agency and a lot of times others' agency affects our own, we can still use our agency to choose how to react to a situation. i know the book of mormon can change lives, i have seen it change mine!  i hope the true spirit of the love of Christ is with you all, and i'm so thankful for all of you and your love and support! i am so blessed! i love you all!

cectpa demille

sister dickison and i in all of our matching stuff--hats, scarves, and cool rings hahaha. i look sick, because i am sick.



family and friends,

I hope you all are enjoying the holiday season! It hasn't quite hit ukraine yet, their holidays are all a little bit later in december and in january, but hopefully soon! This week was another week of missionary work (what else would it be?)  and even though the work is still a little slow, we always see little miracles.  We were able to meet with Ludmilla AND her husband again! They are great.  Her husband loves to call us randomly and make sure we are healthy.  Ironically, my comp and I both kind of got sick last week and we had to call and cancel a lesson with them, and they were both super concerned, but we assured them we would be okay.  When we called to re-schedule a lesson, he told us "It's snowing in Kiev!!" I said "cool, I didn't know!" he was like "didn't know!? how!?" i told him we don't have tv, and he asked "don't you miss the tv!!?" haha it was a funny conversation. maybe it was kind of one of those "you had to be there" kind of things haha.  but we had a great lesson with them about baptism and talked about how it's our way back to God.  Her husband listened and liked it, and also excitedly told us that whenever Luda reads the book of mormon, she reads it out loud and he listens haha!  They both came to church yesterday and stayed the whole time! It was awesome!  Basically they are our main investigators right now and we are doing a lot of finding (as always haha).  

We got to go to Kherson last week overnight for a district meeting, then we went on exchanges with the sisters there.  It was so fun! I got to be with Sis. Kochel and we had a blast and we got to go to Family Home Evening at the Maxwell's house. I got to see some members I haven't seen in awhile and meet a lot of new people. It was really great!  I talked to a great member over there and she was telling me how life is hard a lot and I agreed but told her that it's all okay because we have the gospel.  She thought about that and then agreed and told me everything would be okay too.  I realize all the time how much peace the gospel gives us and how so many people are wandering in darkness.  I'm so thankful we know the Plan of Salvation and how we know if we are righteous, God promises us eternal life.  If we do our part, we know God will do His part. I love it! We are so blessed.  We met a lady the other night that looked a little rough around the edges, but we approached her and told her we have a message about Jesus Christ.  She was smoking and looked at her cigarette and looked sad and said "do you people help others quit smoking?" i told her yes, and she said "i have smoked for 14 years and can't quit. can you please help me?" i again assured her we could, and she gave us her address to come over some time.  Living in a place like Ukraine, I often see the clear effects/consequences of sin, and I am so thankful for the commandments.  God truly gives us the commandments for our benefit, and they free us, not make us more burdened.  I love it and I love seeing people light up with the hope of a message of Jesus Christ.  

On a final note, it's FREEZING. Like literally below zero usually. or at least close to zero.  And it's not that bad when the wind isn't blowing, but the wind almost always blows, and just rips right through my marshmallow jacket and 2 layers of clothes.  But January shouldn't be too bad and then I leave before the ice comes and the winds blow harder haha. so i'm thankful for that!  Our apartment is cold though! we have to double layer up even in our apartment. but it's all good!  We love missionary work and we do it whether it's cold or not haha.  I hope the gospel is warming all of your hearts and houses especially at this time of year.  It's a blessing to be serving and to be in a place that helps me reflect on how wonderful the gospel is and the plan of happiness.  I know this work is the work of the Lord and He loves us!  I love you all! Keep us in your prayers and we are always doing the same! Love you all!

sister demille

so this is a man named vincent. he isn't a member but loves the church and comes to family night and enlish every week in Kherson.  he loved sis johnson and i haha so i saw him and i said "vincent do you remember me?" and he said "of course you are my favorite" haha he is an english teacher so he speaks fluently and is so funny. so i asked "how are you" and he said "i am not down!" haha he gets sick of saying "fine or good" so he thinks of new phrases to respond to that. then i asked him if we could take a pic together and it took some persuasion, but he did it and so the first one he is looking at me because he said "i am not handsome in pictures and i would rather look at you" so then the second one we made him look at the camera, then i showed him the picture and he said "you are pretty and my eyes are blue!" hahahah i love vincent

Sister Kochel and I with their investigator, Bella at FHE

family and friends,

i'm glad it's december! not only because i love Christmas, but because it  has been soo warm here! like unusually warm-feels like spring. but soon it will get cold and we will be in the negatives haha. such as life!  this last week was good and time is rolling right on by.  we were able to meet with Ludmilla (the golden one) twice! it was awesome! we taught about faith and about the sabbath day. her husband listened to both lessons, and they invited a friend as well. it was cool! hopefully we can get back on track with her soon.  we had a few good lessons with members as well. one is this cute grandma named Claudia and we brought her flowers and she was so happy! it felt good to brighten her day. she also showed us some awesome pictures of back in the day in ukraine. so old school and so cool!  one of the highlights of the week was we were able to do service!! we don't get very many opportunities, so it was awesome.  we just cleared out all of the weeds/dead plants out of the garden for a member lady.  it was so good! felt awesome to do manual labor and help someone out.  we also had our religious discussion in english that we do, and this time we talked about repentance. it was way cool to lay out the process of how it goes for them, and see how they felt about it and see how they learned. it was a good experience!  we still get "dogged" a lot-like a lot-haha, but we try to keep busy and find and teach.  

we had a few funny experiences as always.  so we went and saw this lady named Valentina who the elders tracted into a little while ago. (i think i mentioned her last week?) anyway, so we had a little lesson with her this weekend, and she insisted on feeding us.  she fed us what is called "vareneki" which is like dumplings with mashed potatoes. they were way good, but she made us eat like 15 haha, i was very full after. then she had a bowl of candy on the table and i was like "can i have a piece of candy please?" and she says "why are you even asking me demilechka, what do you think, i just put them there to look at!? just eat them!" hahahah i laughed pretty hard and it was great.  she even wants to skype with me when i go home haha. love it!  that same night we got lost and had to take a detour home, and a drunk guy named Igor talked to us the whole time haha. he said, "pass a hi to america and to Obama!" haha like i'm on regular speaking terms with him or something. it was pretty funny.  

another success we had this week was, we made Borsh!! it's like russian/ukranian beet root soup. we just invented a recipe and threw it all together, and it was DELICIOUS!! i loved it. we will make it often now :)   but other than that we are working hard, trying to find more people and teach more. it's hard becuase we feel like we can't even get past an intro like "hey we are missionaries...." before they walk away, but we will of course keep trying.  i hope soon we will find more investigators!  i love serving the people here and i know i was definitely called to the right place. it's still hard and we are very different people here, but i have realized one simple truth-we are all children of our Heavenly Father! we need to be good examples of our Savior and treat people as He would.  i love the gospel and the peace and happiness it brings to our lives. i'm so very thankful for the gospel and the opportunity i have to share it.  i love you all and i am always thankful for your support!!! with love,

cectpa demille

                                          just gettin a trim from my comp haha in our tiny bathroom

                                             Amanda with Ludmilla, her husband and a friend

                                                                             the borsh!



family and friends,

i gotta apologize a bit for acting like a childish missionary and complaining last week...i repented, and the Lord blessed us this week.  we had a few more lessons and a few more miracles, but i think what changed the most was my attitude. the Lord blessed me just to wake up and have a better attitude and have the faith to endure to the end.  as Thanksgiving was this week, i thought about the things i was most grateful for: the Gospel, family, friends, the Savior/the Atonement, the Book of Mormon, and all of the blessings.  i can't be grateful enough to have the gospel, and i am more grateful everyday and i love trying to share it with people.  i hope you all had a great thanksgiving too!!  

we had a few awesome lessons. one was with Janna (we were thinking about dropping her and decided to give it a bit more time) and this time we took a different approach, and focused the lesson on Jesus Christ.  we talked about Him, His life, His role in our life, and why no one else could have done what He did. i felt the spirit, and i was so thankful for the blessing of Him in our lives.  she told us she learned more about Him and was thankful to us. it was awesome!  we also met with a new lady named Jenya (i mentioned that we met her last week) and she is awesome! she had so many good questions about the gospel and what we believe, etc.  she really liked us and she enjoyed what we had to say.  it was a tender mercy from the Lord to share a little bit with someone new who would listen.  i love it!

a few funny things, of course:  we were in a marshootka accident (public transportation!)...it was crazy, limbs were flying everywhere! just kidding, but not really. it was a fender bender, but the whole marshootka got rocked. we survived!  so last tuesday night we are just washing dishes in the kitchen, and all of the sudden, all the lights turn off. we test the lights in the back of our apartment, and all of them work, so we had half the house that worked, and half that didn't.  so we gave our land lady a call the next day, and long story short-we had to wait until saturday to get the lights back on! that adventure included cold showers, buying an extension cord to plug our fridge in, buying a lamp that doubles as a strobe light for dance parties (just kidding!), and good use of our flashlights.  but it's all working now and we are happy.  also, all of the sudden we have had a small infestation of cockroaches. whenever we turn on the lights in our kitchen, they just run back into their holes and hiding places. we set some sticky traps and have a poison stick thingy, so we should be good to go but my poor companion is a tad afraid of the critters. i love all of God's creations, but cockroaches are hindering us a bit.  last thing: so we met this man the other night, and he was so nice! he offered to find us husbands and everything. he was like, what kind do you like? tall, short, dark hair, etc. and we just laughed and i told him we were still young, and that it wasn't time to get married. he asked how old we were so we told him i was 22 and she was 21, and he was like "girls!! it's time!!" haha it made us laugh and i guess we know where to go if we get desperate.  

i know the gospel is true and i know faith is our anchor! we can't return to God without the gospel, and i love it! missionary work is hard and i'm tired all the time, but everyone needs the gospel and our brothers and sisters are wandering in darkness over here. i love you all and i'm thankful for your support! keep the faith!

sister demille

                                               our advanced english class-all boys haha

                                                              Valentina and Sis. DeMille

                        just some sweet campaign pictures for the elections that just happened here

Amanda and Eve,the Branch Pres. daughter

family and friends,

i gotta apologize a bit for acting like a childish missionary and complaining last week...i repented, and the Lord blessed us this week.  we had a few more lessons and a few more miracles, but i think what changed the most was my attitude. the Lord blessed me just to wake up and have a better attitude and have the faith to endure to the end.  as Thanksgiving was this week, i thought about the things i was most grateful for: the Gospel, family, friends, the Savior/the Atonement, the Book of Mormon, and all of the blessings.  i can't be grateful enough to have the gospel, and i am more grateful everyday and i love trying to share it with people.  i hope you all had a great thanksgiving too!!  

we had a few awesome lessons. one was with Janna (we were thinking about dropping her and decided to give it a bit more time) and this time we took a different approach, and focused the lesson on Jesus Christ.  we talked about Him, His life, His role in our life, and why no one else could have done what He did. i felt the spirit, and i was so thankful for the blessing of Him in our lives.  she told us she learned more about Him and was thankful to us. it was awesome!  we also met with a new lady named Jenya (i mentioned that we met her last week) and she is awesome! she had so many good questions about the gospel and what we believe, etc.  she really liked us and she enjoyed what we had to say.  it was a tender mercy from the Lord to share a little bit with someone new who would listen.  i love it!

a few funny things, of course:  we were in a marshootka accident (public transportation!)...it was crazy, limbs were flying everywhere! just kidding, but not really. it was a fender bender, but the whole marshootka got rocked. we survived!  so last tuesday night we are just washing dishes in the kitchen, and all of the sudden, all the lights turn off. we test the lights in the back of our apartment, and all of them work, so we had half the house that worked, and half that didn't.  so we gave our land lady a call the next day, and long story short-we had to wait until saturday to get the lights back on! that adventure included cold showers, buying an extension cord to plug our fridge in, buying a lamp that doubles as a strobe light for dance parties (just kidding!), and good use of our flashlights.  but it's all working now and we are happy.  also, all of the sudden we have had a small infestation of cockroaches. whenever we turn on the lights in our kitchen, they just run back into their holes and hiding places. we set some sticky traps and have a poison stick thingy, so we should be good to go but my poor companion is a tad afraid of the critters. i love all of God's creations, but cockroaches are hindering us a bit.  last thing: so we met this man the other night, and he was so nice! he offered to find us husbands and everything. he was like, what kind do you like? tall, short, dark hair, etc. and we just laughed and i told him we were still young, and that it wasn't time to get married. he asked how old we were so we told him i was 22 and she was 21, and he was like "girls!! it's time!!" haha it made us laugh and i guess we know where to go if we get desperate.  

i know the gospel is true and i know faith is our anchor! we can't return to God without the gospel, and i love it! missionary work is hard and i'm tired all the time, but everyone needs the gospel and our brothers and sisters are wandering in darkness over here. i love you all and i'm thankful for your support! keep the faith!

sister demille