Week 72: Kharkiv (Hhark-iv)

Hello everyone! This is Elder Halls now writing you all from Kharkiv!! A little further North than ever before haha. Today there is snow on the ground just not in the center of the area because in the city center itself it's too warm with all the cars and people. So we had to go a little further out and then we could enjoy the freshly fallen snow. We're hoping that more comes our way because Snow is really the coolest. For all you that think you'd like a snowless winter I don't know if you 100% understand what you're saying. All the cold but non of the white snow? Not worth it in my opinion. 

This week we spent a lot of time getting to know better the branch, the area, the members, the investigators, and everything in between. So in despite of the fact that there has been a lot of new things to get used to, things are going really good so far!

I'm serving with Elder Payne which has been a blessing for sure! I've already learned a lot and we're working really hard together. This week we had a bunch of different lessons! And we saw a bunch of miracles. We were doing some contacting in front of the branch and we were able to do a branch tour with this man named Pavel just right off the street and after the tour we sat down and did the Restoration with him! He was interested to know more and to come on sunday so we are continuing to work with him there!

On Monday and Tuesday we were in a trio with Elder Burton until his new companion would be getting here so we had a good time together. We stayed busy doing a bunch of different things. We had a lot of time to contact which is super effective as a trio. Literally no one gets past us on the street without talking to us haha. We had a lot of good conversations that day and even found a few who were interested to learn more. 

On Monday here we have a Family Home Evening activity that we do for those who don't have a family that they can do that with so for some of those that are the only members in their family and for those that we are teaching and that went really well! We had a great discussion about the Atonement which went really well. And then at the end we showed all the Ukrainians twizzlers because Elder Payne has some and they thought they were really weird haha. Then we played this game with a coin where you try to hide it from the other team. Dmitri and Leonid both came and we are teaching them right now so that was really great! 

We tracted, contacted, searched, and found haha we did it all this week and this next week we're going to go and do it all again just a little bit better. 

We had a lesson with a referral Taha Khan which was super interesting! This week we found people from a bunch of different places- it was super great! He speaks English! One really cool thing about the Kharkiv Center branch is that on the 2nd floor of our branch building there is an English group that meets so it's really cool to be able to invite internationals there that wouldn't understand too well what was going on in normal sacrament meeting. On friday the English group will go on a temple trip to Kiev and do some baptism so we are really excited for them! It will be Martin's first time! Martin was baptized not long ago! He's a student here in Kharkiv and he's a hoot. It's fun to talk with him. 

Spiritual Thought 
Mosiah 2:41
41 And moreover, I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual; and if they hold out faithful to the end they are received into heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness. O remember, remember that these things are true; for the Lord God hath spoken it.

Gospel living and covenant keeping is what brings happiness and joy in life! It's what we should strive for and focus on. In our world today there are many distractions but if we will always retain in our minds thoughts of what is most important and strive for those things, we will be blessed with great joy in despite of what our circumstances may be.

I'm grateful for the blessing of the Gospel in my life! I'm grateful for a loving family and loving friends who support me in this great work! I know our Savior lives and loves us. He wants us to become more like him. This is his work! Truth has been restored on Earth! 

Love,
Elder Halls
Я извиняюсь, но, это всё что есть сегодня

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 20 Winter Wonderland

Image
Hello family and friends! I hope you all had a great week this past week wherever in the world you are right now! This week was really great for me! I'm learning so much and growing more and more into the work!  IT IS GETTING COLD!! Saturday I remember walking outside and I think I shed a little tear of sadness because I had thought we were on our way back to warmer weather but that is just not the case. I think it won't be warming up even just a little bit any time soon haha. This week it snowed sooo much. Pretty much everyday! It's hard to tell how much because when you are living in a city of 1 million people and everyone walks everywhere it just gets all compressed down on the sidewalk, then after that turns into ice. People fall all the time its funny but also sometimes really sad! Lets just say we've had a lot of opportunities recently to serve Dnepr's older folks :)  Another cool things with all the snow is that usually all the moms in the city take ...
Read more

Week 23: I promise we aren't thieves

Image
Привет всем!!! Это я Старейшина Халлс все хорошо у меня! Another week is here in the books in Dnepr, Ukraine, we are all doing good the ice is melting off of the ground and it's getting warmer which I am very excited about! However I still think that it is just the weather deceiving us and it's about to get even colder than I thought was possible... But there is always hope maybe winter is on the outs early this year in Ukriane! посмотрим!  This week has been pretty good for me!! I felt like I've had so many great experiences and learned a lot as well!! I think I'll just go right in! Tuesday we have this weekly things where we go over to this members house and help here grandson out with some English help and then we also do a lesson! Her grandson and her son are not members but they come to church sometimes! this week was our third week there but it was the first time that Zhenya stayed and listened to our lesson which was really exciting! We are super grat...
Read more

Week 97: Igor's ready!

Image
Hello everyone!! This has been a really eventful and productive week! The biggest part of it I would say has been our teaching of Igor. I've grown to love this brother deeply! We quickly went through all the lessons. Most things he already remembered but there were a lot of other things that we were able to remind him and help him with and that was really good. Things like the Priesthood and the Sacrament. I felt that the spirit was a big help when we prayed to know what we should focus on as we worked with him. There were small and simple promptings that came that we then followed and felt good about. It's amazing to me to see the peace that he feels as he prepares for his baptism. He's very grateful for the work and things we have been doing to help him prepare for his baptism and also get his baptismal service ready and planned. He will be baptized this Saturday. We have been able to talk about everything with the branch leaders and we should have a great baptismal ...
Read more