Week 31: Fancy Sites to Dumpster Fights



      Hello everyone!! 
I hope you are all doing super well!

This week was a pretty good one! We don't really have any crazy or exciting news with those we are teaching right now all is kinda going about the same be we still had some really great moments!

Monday we drove down to Odessa which is like a 2 1/2 hour drive but no one else was in the bus so we had all this space and we just kinda took some naps so it wasn't too bad at all! When we got there I was amazed! Odessa is such a fancy place. Everyone there was all fancy and stuff and everything was more expensive! There was even a dominos pizza place which was ridiculous. Basically, it's like just way fancier than anywhere else I have been so far in Ukraine and I thought that was cool. Sadly I didn't take any pictures so we'll have to wait til when we are there next month again for zone conference. 

Tuesday was the zone conference and it was really good and uplifting! We talked about Teaching and The importance of the spirit in the work it was really powerful! Me and Elder Pedersen had part of the conference and we modeled the Restoration and we were a little stressed out about it but it ended up going very well and we were really happy with it! Then we started an exchange with the zone leaders, so me and Elder Hamzawi went out and contacted all around Odessa until we later had our interviews with President! And that all was really good!

Wednesday was the second half of the exchange and it was a really good day! It was freezing cold though haha. We worked hard and met some cool people though. I finally found the Russian Bible that I've been looking for and so know I'm prepared to Bible Bash with my Ukrainian brothers and sisters haha. Just kidding we don't really do much of that! That night we took our 2 1/2 hour trip back to Nikolaev and got here right about 9:00 p.m. 

Thursday we were back on the work happy to be back in our area! We had a service project in the morning which was a really great opportunity but it was actually super gross haha. A member just bought this apartment that she's gonna turn into her office basically but whoever lived in this place before was super filthy and gross and made a big ole mess everywhere so we were cleaning and throwing all this stuff out in the trash and there were gooey things and cockroaches and all that jazz and weird smells and you kinda get it at this point. The funny thing was that here in Ukraine there is a lot of dumpster divers. Like a good amount and it's like not even frowned upon like one out of three people probably goes looking around in the garbage for some garbage gold. They're looking for things like: (Glass containers, Plastic bottles, Food, old bags, tubs) basically just anything that is still usable and we are throwing all of this garbage out of this apartment like everything inside is going outside into the trash. Eventually people see what we are doing and start gathering by this garbage pile where we are taking everything and trip after trip more people are there going through all this stuff we are throwing out and then soon enough they start like coming to us before we even put it in the pile and they're kinda like fighting over our garbage. It was very interesting! I thought it was a pretty funny situation so I was laughing about it haha.

Friday we had a lesson with Galina and it went alright! It was quite as we hoped. She started praying and asking but she has yet to receive an answer. So we encouraged her to keep pushing forward reading and praying! We also asked her a lot of questions and figured out a little better what her concerns are about being baptized and that was really good to get some of those things figured out and we feel know we know a little better what to try to do next!
That night we had an FHE activity and Brother Suhoy was in charge and he had the spiritual thought and it was really cool because he's never really been in charge of something like that before and he really enjoyed it and did a good job and we had a pretty decent turnout!

Saturday we spent a lot of time contacting out on the street and we had some really good conversations with people and found a few people with some real potential. At one point we were walking and saw this man just laying on the side of the road up ahead and that was super scary but some people helped him up as we were on our way to go see if he was okay we got him some water and I hope he's doing better now. 
We had a youth game night that night with the Andersons they came up from Odessa and that went really well! We had a good turn out and I think everyone had a good time!

Sunday Church was really great we watched District Conference and it was really powerful! There were some really good talks and I learned so much! 

I don't really have any crazy stories this week so I'll just jump to a spiritual thought to finish out!

This week I've been getting really excited for the conference which is  coming so fast! I love that we have this wonderful opportunity to be able to hear our prophets and leaders speak to us! It's such a powerful time and a great blessing for us. Just like they prepare to give their talks for months before the conference we also should prepare ourselves to listen! We should study our scriptures and pray that we might be able to know the Lord's will for us! Come with any questions we might have seeking for answers prayerfully! I hope we all are able to take something great from conference this week!

Love you Have a great week!

Elder Halls
Heading to Odessa

Dominos

Orthodox Church

Bible

Your Nikolaev Elders 

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