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!