Week 14

Dear friends and family!!!

another week in ukraine! i just still can't believe that i am here. i think back to any given day in the past year and a half and remember how far distant serving a mission was and that how it wouldn't be real til i got to the country..that the prophet would change his mind or something...but no, i am here!! like really!! i think! i think its real!

this week i feel i made a little baby step with the language. up to this point, i haven't been able to pick apart peoples sentences when they speak to separate the words and the grammar out, but yesterday during the talks in church i was able to really listen and separate the words and look up the words that i didn't know to better understand their ideas. my standing goal is to be able to tell when people are speaking ukrainian or russian by the way they pronounce things, not just the vocab (as of now i can't tell by just the vocab either because while i don't know any ukrainian words, there are plenty of words russian i don't know yet either) but i am honing in on how they pronounce their "g"s as "h"s and then their five different "e" sounds. russian has like 3. so hearing a russian word pronounced with a different 'e' sound than i am used to.

so saturday was larisa's baptism. Larisa has been investigating the church for about a year, she is a beautiful 25 year old who works at the american embassy. her english is amazing. so she is quite a bff of the sister missionaries. my first sunday here she came up to us and said "i want the 16th, i want to be baptized on april 16th" my reaction was lke 'okay, lets do it' and my companion freaked out "oh, my goodness! ive been praying for you specifically everyday since i've been here that you would finally accept the gospel!!" so it is very special that she finally decided to make the dive. she will be a very strong member. and she is pretty self conscious that she is not married yet-apparantly in ukraine 25 is super old to be single, like more than in mormon culture i hear, but we have told her that she needed to accept the gospel first so that she can marry a strong priesthood holder and be the mother of a strong lds family in ukraine. i don't know if its part of the sister missionaries job to help recent converts find good husbands now, but we have our eyes open for her. the baptism was beautiful. we showed the last scene of the testaments as a treat and then invited a few of her friends to bear testimonies at the end. and then for refreshments (by the way, refreshments for baptisms are worked into the ward budget here...very important business :) we made banana bread and cookies and larisa used her sweet hookups at the embassy to have cheetos and tortilla chips and root beer!! these products were only appreciated by the missionaries of course. these products are nowhere to be found in ukraine, so it was an awesome treat!

this week at church i really put in the effort to introduce myself (without my companion glued to my side) to some of the ward members. it felt good to try to build relationships which is something i want to accomplish by the time i leave the area, well ideally before then, but anyway it was good. except i would ask a question like "do you have any family that comes to church with you" and i'd get a ten minute shpeil in ukrainian that i can't understand, so i would wait til they were done to repsond-if they smiled then i smiled, if they seemed sad, id give them a hug. another question i asked was where i could buy a bible (there are lots here, but we are trying to find one with a big pravoslavnian cross on it-their orthodox church here) someone gave me a really good place, i think, but i unfortunately didn't understand what store she was describing. thank goodness for senior companions.

i hope everyone is excited for easter!! we have stake conference this weekend so i anticipate it being amazing! one of oui investigators (the one who always cooks us amazing ukrainian food) invited us over for sunday dinner, so don't worry about me, i'll be well taken care of :)

Generally, quite a few people want to know if they can e-mail you, is that okay?

yes, i can receive emails!!! keep them short- i have about an hour to read/write

Tell us about what you eat daily...any crazy Ukranian foods yet?

nothing too bad, some interesting variations of borsh and cooked whole tomatoes. olena, our investigator who always cooks for us (by the way, we dont ask her to, we just walk in the door and she starts setting the table for us. she just wants us to be treated witht the best ukrainian hospitalitiy) anyway, olena has cooked us verenikee which is like tortillina/potstickers and they can have different fillings, like meat, potatoes, or cherries- i haven't had it with cherries, but thats apparantly very ukrainian and im excited

What do you do on Sundays?

sundays we go to one of our ward's ward council at 8:30, then we have church at 10am and our other ward starts at 2. then we run home for a bite to eat, then have a lesson or two at night.

Have you received any mail from the states yet?

no mail, but i haven't been to any big meetings where someone from the office can bring mail yet...for sure it is delivered to us every six weeks, and sometimes more often.

Share a street contacting experience you had this week

hmmm. well i started talking to this lady and she said "spacebo" which means "thank you" so i was so excited! and starting walking with her more to tell her more about the book of mormon! she said thank you! she's sees how amazing this is. for some reason my companion wasn't at my side when the lady said out straight that she actually wasn't interested. i turn around and my companion is way back where we started eating a piece of candy, "sister! why didn't you come with me?! she wanted to hear more about the gospel!!" "sister little, when they say thank you it means they don't want to hear anymore, they aren't interested" definitely a best two years moment.

Tell us something that made you laugh this week.

olena said she had a dream a few years ago that bill clinton came to her house by surprise and she started cooking for him and she's thorougly convinced it was a sign that she was supposed to let these american girls into her apt and cook for them and accept their message :) olena, by the way, was found street contacting a week or two before i got here and had a baptism date for the end of the month.