I am SOOOO excited to be emailing you this week! i was ready to email you all last tuesday with some exciting news, but then the week just got better and better and better! and now i am just bursting to tell you all the things that have happened this week! i was told there is a point in missionary letters home where the focus is less on the missionary and more about the missionary work as the missionary becomes more and more engulfed and enjoying the work...and its happening this week! I can't promise i will be talking less about myself and my personal feelings about this whole experience, but i im so excited to tell you about all the work and blessings and success the Lord has just handed to us this week...Transfer 2...i feel its going to be good.
This past week me and my companion really focused on seeking out and finding service opportunities. like real service. we've been doing our fair share of "visiting teaching" service like baking people treats and telling people we will pray for them, but we know that everyone here could use and extra two pairs of hands to get done what they need to, so thats what we sought out and it is just really cool to have a goal like that for the week to unite us as a companionship. its like whenever we feel an awekward or weird moment about to come up in a street contact or a lesson we both know we could bring up service and know where we are going with that, "we want to serve you. or your neighbors..we know when we serve others we serve god..." the week before our unifying theme of the week was the book of mormon-the introduction and its power and teachings. we talked to EVERYONE about it-street contacts and members alike. i like the idea of these unifying goals, it is something we've just developed for our companionship to help us be on the same page and work toward the same goal. i'll tell you this week's unity goal in a bit...
i just want to tell you the amazing stories and experiences of this week person by person...so here it goes...let me introduce you to the people of the xarkovsky and nova darneetsky areas...
1. Okcana...we met okcana two fridays ago street contacting and she said she would be really interested to meet with us. right there she had a lot of questions about praying in tongues and if that was necessary. we set up an appointment for last tuesday and in that first lesson the spirit was so strong as she confessed her sincere desires to repent. she wanted to know who she needed to talkd to if she has committed serious sins and wanted to know the right way to repent, like so she never feels the weight of sins anymore....thank goodness we have the true gosple to offer with the priesthood power to bind things on earth and in heaven and loose the bands of sins here on earth so that they are loosed in heaven...It was our first lesson and we invited her to be baptized on June 5. she accepted and we think she will really prepare herself...AMAZING!
2.On Wednesday we went to a members dacha to do *service* yay! and did we. let me just give you a little insight on how most people live here. they have their very small appartment in the city then they have their dacha in the selo...usually a 20 to 60 min bus ride out of town (we went out to the selo a few weeks ago) anyway, at their dacha is really their life which is their garden. we went to pull weeds for her. so it was really excited to get dirt under my nails and really feel like i was helping someone. but, i just want to share my admiration for the people here. their life is their garden and what food they can grow for themsevles. as i pulled weeds i thought about the experiences i have had before with pulling weeds, and in america "pulling weeds" is usually for the aesthetic appeal-so your front yard looks good, or so the rose bushes look pretty. Here, no, you pull weeds so your fruit and vegetables can grow so you can have food to survive. and you work this garden all day everyday free day you can to protect your food supply. (for the most part the 40-60s year olds will work in the city monday thru friday then go to their dacha and work their garden on sat and sun, and then the 60 plus who are retired will live at their dacha and work all day everyday in their garden-so you can see when we caught on to this trend me and my companion really wanted to offer our young abled bodies to help poeple with their gardens-it was actually kinda hard to convince people that we could work hard and sweat and that we had other clothes to work in besides our skirts)...anyway, point of this bullet point is to say we were able to serve, work hard, and gain a huge appreciation for the lifestyle here.
3. Katya- this is the less active who hadn't been to church in nine years that came a two sundays ago. when I first met with here the week before that she confided in us that her life was getting to difficult and she had been contemplating a long time about bailing and getting a divorce. she has three adorable kids. i testified to her that we as missionaries couldn't empathize with how hard her life may be but through prayer her Heavenly Father could help her know the best thing to do. we can think and think and think about something, but when we pray, we can recieve and answer in our hearts and then we know that THAT is exactly what we should do-because that is inspiritation from our Heavenly Father who wants whats best for us. Anyway, we met with her again this week and she was SOOO excited to report to us that she starting praying againa and was sad she hadn't thought to do that earlier and she said she can see how the load on her back is feeling lighter even if nothing substantial has changed. wow, wow, wow. we are really helping people :)
4. Galena-Galena is Katya's mom who also hasn't been in 9 years. we had an accidental lesson with her when we wento over to talk with katya and she wasn't home but galena was babysitting the kids. what do you think we offered her? a spiritual thought and some *service* we went to her dacha on sat morning and she has a HUGE garden she tends to herself (her husband died awhile ago) she absolutely loved our company and again, it took some convincing to the the point of arguing that we could handle working the garden in the sun and getting dirty...but we did and it was so fun and it was so great to start to build a relationship with her. she said she would come to church again.
5.Olga- olga was baptized a little over a year ago and we'll meet with her once in a while to read from the book of mormon in engish with her-she's in her 40s and she has two goals over the next year-be able to play all the hymns in the hymn book and improve her english- a super motiated woman. anyway, while we were meeting with her a couple weeks ago she told us the commandment she struggles most with is tithing. it just doesn't make sense to her if god wants her to support her son and survive to pay money to the church...we bore our testimonies about tithing (it was good to find this out because we've beein thinking about helping her prepare for the temple-need to pay tithing to get there), anyway she kinda shook her head as we talked about it and said, "i know, I've heard it all before, but i just can't" we felt pretty useless and sad for her...well last week we had another lesosn with her and she was so happy to report to us that that previous week for some reason she had 1000 extra grieven (ukrainian dollars) so she decided to pay her tithing and felt the most satisfied, comfortable, good feelings about it :) yay! baby steps.
6. Igor and Olga- we were street contacting on saturday night on our way back to our appt for the night and we started talking to this sweet couple-igor and olga who have a ten year old son. they were surprisingly interested in our message. like wow....you want to listen to us? because for the past hour we've heard "no" "no, im in a hurry" "im provaslavnian, no thank you" so it was exciting to actually get past a first sentence with someone on the street that night. they said they didn't know when they could meet, but that they wanted to so that we should call them sometime. we went home and were pretty exctied about this potential, then during planning we get a phone call...and it was igor..."hi, we just met 15 minutes ago on the street and we really want to meet with you very soon, can you meet tomorrow at 8?" after we set up the meeting we couldn't hang up the phone fast enough to scream with excitement!!!!! we have been praying for a family to teach and they just called US to set us an appt!! so cool!! we had a potiential lesson with them last night and taught them about the book of mormon and joseph smith. they will need tomake a few changes in their lives, but i know that if they sincerely pray about the book of mormon they will reveice an answer and at that point the changes will be so much easier because when we gain a testimony and eternal perspective on life, wow, does our life and desires change or what? i know thats what happened for me.
so yes....lots of work and excitement this week. we got six new investigators this week...the most for a companionship in the mission this week...so cool. but yay. to mention our companionship unity goal for the week-be bold and weed out those who aren't ready for the gospel and move on to the people that are. they are out there, and we can just as many next week as we did this week....
to end on a sad note, NONE of the people mentioned above were at church this week :( wow, how sad. If i had time i would tell you all why it is sooooo important to go to church each week...but i'll let you all ponder that for yourselves and we'll see if i have time next time to tell you why...
out of time :(
I love you all and am so happy and excited for the work this week!
i pray for you all and hope the lord will bless you with what you need!
sister kylie little
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