Week 26: Put the Lord first

 

Hello Family and Friends and everyone in between! This is Elder Halls coming in from the center of the city, Dnepr in the wonderful country of Ukraine! Coming live from a dirty, dark basement where there are also computers and the smell of burning incense. It's a beautiful monday not too cold but no where near warm.

This week has been a blessing!! It's been chalked full of miracles and blessings from the Lord! I'll give you all the quick run down of the week and then head straight to some of the miracles.

Monday,

Was really just an inspiring and uplifting day! Thanks to everyone who sent emails and just said such great things!! Those emails are really huge!

Tuesday,

I was in the office just laboring over some excel documentsand all this stuff I put in some good work there! Haha it's kind of a funny opportunity in all honesty and everytime I'm there just working in the office It just kind of funny to me! Such is the life of trio of missionaries that also do the office work for the mission! haha We did have 2 meetings after the office in the evening and that was really good!! One was with Zhenya he is dong really well! He comes to church every other week we're working on having him realize why baptism is important! But things are gong pretty good in general there.

Wednesday,

Was a super good day! I was with Elder Pierce out on Pobeda and we put in some good work! We gave out so many Books of Mormon it was wondeful! People were just really happy wednesday! Then we met with Alex a less active that night and he came with us to English practice and all of that was really good!! There was this one guy that we gave a Book of Mormon that was so eager and excited it almost felt like he was teasing me or something so I gave it to him and told him about it and turns out he is super genuinely interested!! he's been calling us like everyday every since and we've been working with him to set up a meeting!! That just shows me how powerful the book of Mormon is! Such a miracle that he reached out to us after that! Doesn't happen super often here in Ukraine.

Thursday,

Back in the office! I decided that 2 days in the office that close together is definitely too much so I'm glad that this next week I'll only be in one of the days haha. But at the end of the day we met with Uri he's another less active in our branch and he's been doing good! We talked to him and had a good talk about the gospel we're working on getting him back to church still! Hopefully he will come soon! He hasn't been in like a couple of years!

Friday,

I was back out on the work and this day we saw so many miracles!! I'll write about those at the end though!

Saturday,

We started the day doing some contacting with member on this big park place! We got a table and some Books of Mormon and we gave them the gospel. haha The members stood by the table and then the trio spread out a little bit and we just started talking to people! It was really great! I realized why it is so important to work with the members!! It's sooo crucial it helps both us and them so much! Later that day we met with Nick we started by our apartment on Pobeda and in the end we were in the branch doing a lesson super awesome!! It was a really powerful lesson the spirit was there so strong and He really has a huge desire to learn more and keep going and progressing coming closer to Christ!

Sunday,

Church! It was super great! Our members are really awesome here they have really begun to embrace missionary work! We now have weekly "contacting with missionaries" as a regular event we just got a new branch mission leader and he is really excited and has some great ideas at how we can begin to start facilitating working better with the members!! It really is super wonderful! The work is progressing so much!!

This weeks miracle!! Alright on Thursday when I was in the office my companions met these 2 guys, Ivan and Nick. They got their numbers but something happened and they ended up being the wrong contacts! We were so distraught but we prayed and asked that we could find them again and get the right numbers and that is exactly what happened! 5 minutes in to contacting on Friday we saw Ivan. And then on the way back home for Lunch we ran into Nick and he told us that he had read in the Book of Mormon and wanted to grow closer and learn more about Christ!! Super amazing!! The Lord is with us in this work I know that to be true!

Quick Spiritual thought!

I've been reading a lot recently about captain Moroni and that has been so inspiring to me! I've also learned so much! I want to share a couple scriptures to help me out here!

 Alma 48: 7 "...Moroni, on the other hand, had been preparing the minds of the people to be faithful unto the Lord their God."  

Verse 11 "And Moroni was a strong and a mighty man; he was a man of a perfect understanding..."  

At this part of the Book of Mormon the Lamanites are really angry and have been constantly fighting with the Nephites and Moroni has been showing and teaching them that in admist of their trials the most important thing that they could be doing is following the Lord keeping him first! Focusing on doing what he would have them do! I think we can all learn for this! In our trials and our hard times we should never turn from God! He loves us and is always our greatest source of help in any challenge or difficulty!

Love you all have an amazing week!!

Elder Halls

There are lots of murals everywhere!!

Elder Pierce loves Peanut Butter

Our onion