Week 12 Contacting in the Dark

Another awesome week of missionary work as always! It's never a bad thing to be on the Lord's errand! I wanted to start by just telling you some things I've noticed about Ukraine that I think you all might enjoy!

-Leaves: So there are a lot of trees and since it's almost winter all the leaves are on the ground and there are Babushkas (Grandmas) out on the street everywhere all the time just brushing leaves into piles, I don't know if they get payed or what inspires them to do this but it cracks me up!

-Pigeons: In the states pigeons are kinda tame like not really scared of people or anything but here they're even less scared of people oh my goodness. The other day this guy was feeding them and they started landing on his arms his daughters head it was a mess.

-The Sun: By 4:15 the sun starts going down and so by like 4:30 it is pitch black! super strange.

-Crossing the Street: I still don't know any traffic rules or if they exist at all so this is always an adventure. Whenever it is time to cross this like weird trivia music plays and someone says something through the music in Russian and we just all walk across.

-Food in Bags: Like so much food comes in bags legit, to name a few: Ice Cream, Milk, Yogurt, Sketchy milk (its like fermented or something), Sour Cream, any sauce

-Cats: Here they don't call cats like, "here kitty kitty, they make the noise, "ksss kss" Literally it works better than here kitty kitty it's ridiculous

-Heating: In Ukraine you don't control your own heater the government does that for you... And right now they are COOKING us. My bed is right next to the heater and I'm literally dying but it could be worse when I was on exchanges in Kominskoe it was ice cold!

-Sunday School: I understand a lot more Russian than I did at the start but still I don't get everything and it seems to me people are having all these arguments in Sunday school cause when the get excited and talk loud and fast I just think it sounds like anger but Elder Rodgerson assures me it's all good!! 

This was a good week for me! We didn't see tons and tons of success in ways of teaching a lot of lessons or finding a lot of new people to teach but we worked hard and I know that we will find some people and as we are diligent we will be able to find some more people who will be willing to listen to our message!

It is getting super cold in Ukraine now but I've got my big coat and a scarf and hat now so I'm doing good haha! It's only November so I know there is more cold to come. We did get some of our first snow this week so that was exciting! I wanted to tell a few stories from this week as well!

The Pobeda branch has the most awesome members literally love them so much! They are great! Whenever we meet with members we always bake something to bring over or get something from the store or whatever it is but usually we bake oreo cookies. Me and Elder Rodgerson have already backed these cookies like 5 or 6 different times and the first time was a bust we are up and coming bakers we didn't expect to be perfect but our hopes were just way to high over the few weeks I've been here we've been honing our recipe in and now we're making a good cookie oh wow. We eat like kings over here we've got our go to meals we're really good at making breakfast and so we're trying to expand our scope to being better at lunch currently haha. We made french fries yesterday and those were bomb! 

But anyways, we were meeting with the Polyakov family this week and they're awesome one of my favorites! We brought them some cookies and they also made a dessert and were sitting down in the living room and the kids are serving everyone and we all sit down but we're missing the two little boys and Brother Polyakov yells, "boys what are you doing?" and they yell back, "praying" They know that once they say the prayer then they can eat so they went in the other room and said there own prayer cause we weren't eating our dessert fast enough for them!! Same day one of the little boys Sion keeps disappearing into the kitchen and the Dad keeps yelling "what are you doing?" And the younger brother goes and checks on him and yells back, "He's eating all the food!" Sion yells, "No I'm not he's lying!!" Sion is a big kid and he likes his food oh man haha.

Since it gets dark so early and we still have missionary work to do we are on the street when it's dark a lot when we don't have appointments. So in the dark (There are no good street lights) we approach people and ask them if we can give and tell them about this book. So needless to say it's kind of hard when people are terrified of you to talk about the gospel! So we're working on getting more appointments for the evenings haha. 

I wanted to just share a spiritual thought with you all in closing! I was recently reading Elder Bednar's talk from this last conference where he talks about a rope and how it's all these little week fibers woven together into one to make it a strong and useful tool! And I was just thinking about how true that principle is! We need to bring all the parts of our testimony and life together and center them on Christ as we build upon him and make him our rock it will bring great blessings to our life! I know that to be true!

Love you all and hope you are doing so so well!! 

Elder Halls

Me and Elder Rodgerson getting ready to go out in the below freezing temperatures