Week 95: Land of the Free, Home of the Brave

This week has been really great. I've learned so many great things! As normally is the case those great and important lessons have come through having some different and unique challenges.

Daily Bread 

During this week I watched a few videos from Elder D Todd Christofferson in which he talks about the children of Israel and Manna as well as receiving our daily bread! He shares many personal experiences from his life and these videos really impressed me! As he said sometimes in our trials we want an immediate miracle or we want to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But often times the Lord gives us what we need for that day, our daily bread. And as that has kind of been the case from hour to hour, I've felt how Heavenly Father is near and is blessing me! 

The People

This week we were able to find a few new people to teach, one of which I'm really excited about! His name is Samuel. He was a referral that we received from the English/spiritual thought ad about a month and a half ago. He never answered our messages and didn't have a number that we could call. But last week I thought about him and felt that I should send him another message and he responded! He wanted to know about the basic beliefs of our church and so we had a short conversation and he was interested to know more! We had a great lesson on Saturday and the spirit was there really strong and we pointed it out to Samuel and he noticed it! He is really excited about reading and studying the Book of Mormon and he came to the online english service this week! 

A couple of times this week we had this reoccurring miracle while using Facebook. The people that I would feel inspired to friend and message turned out to already have experiences with the church! One of them, Denis, about 2 years ago went on a branch tour and would like to know more about the church! Another Dmitry over a year ago met with Elders Rasmussen and Rodgerson. It's been a huge miracle to see how the Lord can direct and guide us in such an apparent and miraculous way. 

This Sunday we had a lesson with Peter! It was really cool to see the power of the Book of Mormon as we taught! So last week we gave Peter the Book of Mormon in person because we hadn't and we felt that it would help him read more often and that was the case! He read about 10 chapters this week and had a whole new light and understanding! He talked about how he has this feeling in his heart that he just needs to read more and more. He talked about how he is learning new things and it's really helping him. So we spent the lesson talking about these feelings and his questions as well as about the significance of the Book of Mormon and what it means if it's true. He goes to a different church and we are trying to help him understand the difference and the important role of the Book of Mormon! But we are very excited to see how he is progressing right now.

We finished the Melchizedek Priesthood lessons with Dima this week! He will have soon his interview with the branch President! I think he's ready! He has a very cool story! He has only come to church in the branch 4 times before his baptism. 2 times after and every week since he's partaken of the sacrament in Home Sacrament meetings. So most of his time in the church has been during this time of quarantine. It's amazing to see how much he has progressed even considering that he has had a different than usual circumstance. It's cool to have been here the whole time and see all of his growth!

Exchanges

We had a couple of exchanges this week with the other missionaries! I'm still a zone leader here in Kharkiv so we continue to do these online exchanges!

Теплота

Its is VERY warm oh my goodness. I think it was probably like 90 degrees in our apartment the other day. There is only so much a fan can do! Haha I was sweating up a storm Haha. 

Our district!

This week we also had a day where we met with our sisters in this park in Kharkiv to record our part of a video that'll be on our mission Facebook page and that was a fun little adventure. Their area isn't super close to ours so we went on a small hike to get all the way over to where we needed to go 

4th of July 

We celebrated American Independence by eating McDonald's on Saturday. It was pretty good! Later as we were cooking dinner we listened to the tabernacle choir at temple square singing some traditional American songs. We even sang along a little bit! Haha

Spiritual Thought 

Okay soooooo some of the Elders in my zone told me about this miracle that took place for them this week! I'll tell you the story. So this one man about a year and a half ago was in his home country and he met the church and would GPS each week and was interested! But then he traveled all the way over to Ukraine and lost the church for a while. This week he felt the desire to get back in touch with the church. He stopped some random man on the street who happened to speak good enough English and who also happened to have the missionaries phone number. Later this man went to the church building and called the missionaries! He came to church online this Sunday! What a miracle!!!

I was thinking about this miracle and all about the different pieces that the Lord had working together to help this man find the church this week in Ukraine!! How many missionaries and other people helped along the way who likely don't even know they helped someone make it to church this Sunday! As we ponder the miracles and God's goodness we can learn some very special things! We can realize all that Heavenly Father is doing in our lives!!!

Я всех вас люблю!!!

Ст. Халлс