Week 79: Buckle Up!

Alright Buckle Up!

This week was really cool! There were so many great moments and I learned so many cool things. I'll jump right into it!

Family Night

We have a family night activity that we do every monday and it's really good for our recent converts and investigators to all meet and strengthen their faith and friendships with each other and it seems to be super effective!! As a side note we had 4 Dima's there and 1 Valeri. Everytime I meet another Dima I always have to laugh haha. We love our Dimas! Prior to family night we did a little bit of P-day shopping which was a big success for sure so we can't complain.

Sumy

We had an exchange this week in Sumy and I was with Elder Hamzawi again!! Sumy is the furthest north city in our mission where there are missionaries. And there they speak a crazy mix of Russian and Ukrainian. It's absolutely awesome just one word Ukrainian the next Russian you never know what to expect. Everyone's mix has a little different of a flare as well. Sometimes all the pronouns are in Ukrainian and everything else Russian. Sometimes when they get emotional it just all goes into Ukrainian. I don't even know how to describe it. People are saying things like "немає времени" "Що він сказал." Что вы бачите?" And so forth. Our exchange was super great! We had a super successful day and made a bunch of contacts which was really cool! It's always been fun to serve with Elder Hamzawi! We drove there and back on a bus and that was great!

District Conference 

This week we had an awesome conference with the whole District!! It was super cool!!!! We met in this hotel called the Kharkiv Palace because none of the branches have enough space for all of the members of the church that would be coming! (What a great problem to have) so we met there and members of the church from a bunch of different branches all drove in to Kharkiv Center and we probably had about 300 people there! Maybe even more I'm bad at people counting. Members from Dnipro and Zaparozhe and Poltava all came in and we were all there together one big group! It was super cool! Those we are teaching were so amazed to see so many people! Dima (recent convert) absolutely loved the Conference and all the good talks!! This week he told us that he wants to serve on a mission!! Молодец!

Contacting

We did the Book of Mormon experiment here in one of the parks where you take pages of the Book of Mormon and give them out to people to read and then ask them to guess what book it is! It was really cool! We took Dima with us to contact and he rolled up in his suit and was ready to go! It was super cool. He was a little scared and shy from the beginning but by the end he'd had one or two conversations all by himself! Way to go!! 

Dima3

We've been teaching this Dima for a few months actually but he hasn't been progressing a whole lot so we'd kinda stopped and would meet with him once every 2 or 3 weeks. We made it a goal to get him to conference because we knew it'd be a bunch of really great talks and cool for him to see all the people there. He ended up coming and it was his first time in Church!! He really enjoyed it and now it seems like he's beginning to make further progress so we are really excited for him!!

Dima2

He loved conference as well!! He was able to talk with President Wirthlin and he really enjoyed that. He told him that he intends to be baptized! This week we are going to set his date. There are a lot of moving parts because he's ready really soon but he wants his family to be there. And at the beginning of April his brother should return from Poland and his Uncle from Donetsk and everyone will be coming in. And so it'll probably be then but the other challenge is that he plans on going to Poland for 5 months to work and then come back and that's gonna start somewhere in April as well so we're hoping that all will just work out nice and smoothly! Pray for us!

We had a meeting this week with our branch President and he's absolutely awesome! They have this 7 month old son whose name is Лев (Lyev, which means Lion) its actually a fairly common name. But he's the happiest little kid. He was crawling all around and he really liked us so he was always coming over to our chairs as we were sitting and eating or sharing the spiritual thought. They said they're raising him like an Apostle and I think that's the way to do it! A home centered on Gospel principles is one where the spirit and light will prevail in abundance and that's definitely true for this young family!! 

Плов

I made some plov and it was really good so watch out! I didn't take pictures so you'll all just have to imagine! It's yummy. It's like rice with chicken and carrots and onions which plov seasoning. There you have it.

We had so many people in church this week it was amazing!!! 3 people we are teaching and 5 returning members!!! Woah!

Spiritual Thought 

As I've been reading the scriptures I've been noticing so many verses about the gathering of Israel and the work of Salvation. There are so many great scriptures that talk about our day and the wonderful time that we live in! 

Jacob 5:61

"Wherefore, go to, and call servants, that we may labor diligently with our might in the vineyard, that we may prepare the way, that I may bring forth again the natural fruit, which natural fruit is good and the most precious above all other fruit."

D&C 6:1

"A great and marvelous work is about to come forth unto the children of men"

1 Nephi 22:8

"And after our seed is scattered the Lord God will proceed to do a marvelous work among the Gentiles, which shall be of great worth unto our seed; wherefore, it is likened unto their being nourished by the Gentiles and being carried in their arms and upon their shoulders."

This marvelous work of the Lord moves forward in our day. As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints we have the amazing opportunity to be apart of it! The Savior serves alongside us and there is much to do and great joy that awaits us in this great work!! "he that thrusteth in his sickle with his might, the same layeth up in store that he perisheth not, but bringeth salvation to his soul;" D&C 4:4

Have a great week!

Love, 

Elder Halls