Week 73: Бог любит вас!



Dear Family and Amigos,

As always this week was also another great week! Each one is filled with so many great blessings. I feel like I'm really beginning to feel myself at home here in Kharkiv and that I've finally got a good understanding of who the members are here, who we are teaching, the area, and all that jazz. 

Family Home Evening
This week we went to the Lobanovi's house on Monday for family home evening. They have 2 sons who were just baptized not long ago. They were getting to know me and I told them that I play the guitar. So they whip out the family guitar and hand it to me and together we sang give said the little stream in Russian. It was a good moment for sure. After that I handed the guitar over to Gleb and Yegor and they absolutely are prodigies I was amazed at how good they play. And they're both like 10 and 12. Skills..

Exchange!
We had an exchange with the Novy Doma elders and it went super good! They're absolutely awesome. Elder Burton and I had a good day together. 

English Practice 
This week English was super good. We had a bunch of new people come and found 3 that day who wanted to know more. After English practice we do a tour for those who came first time and it works really great and people are usually interested to know more.

English Group
My brother was asking for more about the English Group. So in Kharkiv there are sooooooooooooo many universities and so they're are a lot of international students here that don't know any Russian. Some of them have been baptized but they dont know Russian so church is always a struggle and then they fall away because they dont have support other than the missionaries. But now we have this group so they can have church in a language they understand! It's really great there! 

Finding
This week we stayed really busy teaching lessons, taking time to get to know the area better, going to streets way out there so we can get the whole area down. We continue to find people to teach different ways! It's to me a miracle in what ways we find these people. As we are ready to work and to teach, the Lord has been bringing these people to our path in miraculous ways.

People 
This week we began teaching some new people that we are really excited about. One of them is Benjamin. He is the 10 year old son of a member that used to live in Western Ukraine. But now travels frequently in Europe in search of work. He son hasn't ever been baptized. But, he loves church and has a great desire to follow Christ and wants to be baptized. We are really excited for him. Things are a little complicated with their whole situation but we think we should be able to teach him. We found Benjamin as Brother Slava just showed up to church out of nowhere last week! 

Dima with whom we had a lesson last week this week came to church! He's a young student and he really enjoyed church. Being branch conference it was a really special opportunity for him to see and meet some great members of the church. He talked with President Mixailovski and President Bilyenko. He also had some really good questions. I think it was really good for him. After our lesson last week he was interested enough to come to church and see what goes on here. But I'm certain he really felt the spirit and now wants to really now more. It's been cool to see how his desire changed. We found him in the area book just as one of the old contacts we had.

Another man Sofian. Just came to English practice he had been given a English card 2 weeks ago and he's only been in Ukraine for 3 weeks total. He was also interested to come and learn more about the church. He really enjoys meeting and gathering because he knows so few people here in Ukraine.

Another man from China came to church yesterday. His name is Chen. The sisters met him on the street and invited him to church. His English and Russian are just okay but he really enjoyed church! We are looking forward to having him and Martin meet to talk more!

Spiritual Thought!
Here is my favorite excerpt from the new "Missionary Standards for Disciples of Jesus Christ"

To be an effective missionary, you must be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ. We invite you to enlarge your talents and skills for the glory of God. Jesus Christ will magnify you. Heavenly Father loves you, and He will help you to love and bless His children wherever you serve. He will empower you and the people you serve, through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, to be truly “converted unto the Lord”

As Disciples of Jesus Christ we all have the opportunity to share the gospel. We can pray for the Lord to bless us with moments and opportunities to share our testimonies! The spirit will lead and guide us. We should be ready to act and help those with the best gift we can give to any one! The Gospel of Jesus Christ!!

Romans 1:16
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth

Love you 
Elder Halls 

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