Friday, July 1, 2011

Week 23

Another week, another pday, another email! its actually been raining all week and cold and today i had to bust back out the p coat, scarf and boots as it snowed a little bit this morning. its awful, but i know it will get warmer soon enough, it has to, its June. if the weather was like this and it was Sept i would definitely be little more depressed that winter was coming....

this week i'll just walk you through some significant events that happened....

Tuesday....we set a baptismal date with our investigator Irena. we have been meeting with her almost the entire time i have been here and she has finally been coming to church consistently the past few weeks and really showing interest in how religion can change her life. Tuesday night we were planning on showing her the dvd 'the restoration' at the church then extending the bapt commitment. when we got to the church we realized we didn't have our restoration dvd and the church's copy wasn't there. we scrambled around looking for it, couldn't find the dvd, but found the VHS of the restoration, so we tried to get the VCR hooked up to the tv to work, but it just wasn't working out. stupid adversary. my companion suggested plugging in the dvd player again and seeing if it was a problem with the tv or the devices so i plug in the dvd player to the tv and immediately the menu for the 'restoration' pops up onto the screen. we were both shocked. the churches copy of the dvd was with the elders we found out and just somehow there was an unlabeled disc already in the dvd player that was the restoration. miracle. so we were able to watch that according to plan and talk about baptism. we are excited for her. we began teaching her right after i got here and something that has made all the difference with her and how she is different from any of our other investigators is that she gets herself to church. she's already been 4 times and when we call her to remind her on Sunday night, she says, yes, i know, i am coming. it has really built my testimony that an investigator can only last as long as they are willing and able to get to church. that will help them gain a testimony and endure to the end afterwards.

Wednesday....i want to share this experience not because it has any spiritual significance but to share my gratitude for my knowledge and experience in nursing and how happy i am that, that path ia waiting for me when i get back. my companion and i were walking in the neighborhood behind our appt building to an appt and there were lots of people outside playing, running around, whatever, then we hear this huge "SMACK" and before i could turn around i knew that that sound was skull to concrete. i just knew it. so i turn around to look to see what happened and we see this young boy about 11 years old laying in day mans pose, face down, on the concrete sidewalk. sad, i do a double take to make sure he is going to get himself up and then realize this kid is not moving. at all. i ran over to where he was thinking, 'wow, that's how fast it can happen, a head injury and you could be gone' but anyway, by the time i get over to him, an older teenage boy has already picked him and and trying to get him to stand up but this boy is completely limp. his eyes are open but with a completely blank stare. i stayed completely calm while a crowd gathered around, people trying to call an ambulance or find out who his friends or parents are. I help to hold him up (we are holding him up because it is so against Russian culture to lay or sit on the ground) and i get down to his eye level and help support his head (which he cant do himself) and just looked into his eyes, looking for any sign of life, and start talking to him in the best Russian i could, in the softest voice i could, "can you here me? everything is okay...hello? we are here. can you hear me..." for about a minute and a half everyone is just watching me try to pull this young boy back into consciousness and to see what happens. finally, i can see his eyes move and focus on me. and he is able to take a deep breath and get some air to his lungs (up to this point we could hear him struggling to breath, short wheezes). so over the next few minutes he is breathing again, able to stand up on his own but very confused. and he starts crying and looking around and then just buries his head in my shirt, wraps his arms around me and just balls. I stroke his hair for a couple seconds just out of pure sympathy for this kid, but eventually get him off of me and we get him a pop sickle to put on this huge goose egg on his head and clean up his blood a little bit. his uncle and friend finally show up and we tell them what happened. of course they are just mad that he caused a scene and i am trying to tell them he needs to go see a doctor to check out his head...whatever, we kinda felt like i job was done and left. i was super calm during the whole thing but when i realized afterward what had happened to him, that he was racing his friend and he jumped over this fence, caught his foot on the fence and fell face first on the concrete, i got really freaked out. but, luckily i didn't know that at the time. so, anyway, yay, for nursing skills. i have actually been able to use them a lot this week. one of our less actives is the hospital so i was able to go visit her and see how a Ukrainian hospital is run. and my new companion has been pretty sick so i was able to keep her calm and talk her through what she has been going through and explain a lot of things to her when we went to the clinic.

im soooo out of time, but i promise more details and pics of my new companion next week. i am still in the same area and our new pres arrives this week.

i love you all!
sister kylie little

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