Week 26

Wow, its zucchini season here. their zucchinis look a little different than ours-they are sooo big and light green, so it took me a while to figure out what everyone was carrying home from their dachas on the buses. but very generous members and others have given us lots of zucchini from their dachas and been giving us their two cents worth on how to cook/eat them. so i tried one of these ways to cook them the other day, thinking i might as well start eating like a Ukrainian. And no matter the recipe they tell you, its always followed by the phrase, "oh, its soo healthy for you" (i am seeing they kinda say that about everything here....'bees honey! oh that is so healthy for you!' 'potatoes! they are so healthy for you!' 'Oh, sala, (straight pig fat they but on bread) thats so healthy for you! here have some more!' ).....Anyway, we'll save those food stories for another day, but yes i decided to try this extremely simple way to cook zucchini that was going to apparently be so tastey and so healthy for me....okay, peel and slice in thin pieces, check. Lay the pieces in flour, each side having a good amount, check. lay in a pan of hot oil, okay...i have like six pieces in the pan before i realize, "Wait a minute....we have this in America! but we call it 'fried zucchini' which is not something healthy at all! it was a kinda funny realization and i ate them anyway, and they were good, anything fried in oil is good, but they can't pull the wool over my eyes, i don't think they are that healthy. like sala (the white pig fat) i don't think they will ever be able to convince me that that is healthy. But that aside, I love how open they are with sharing their food and recipes here with us. I think we got three 'master classes' this week without even planning on it on how to cook a few Ukrainian dishes. yum!

Well, we're half way through the transfer and i want to update you a little on the work we've been doing with our 'new ideas'

we've started having 'missionary evening' on Wednesday nights at the church. the point is to pretty much through out a topic and have the members share personal testimony about it and practice by role playing missionary situations and scenarios. the first week we had two people come-the husband and wife converts who wanted to do the class in the first place (they are the two in the picture i sent home, he's in his Ukrainian outfit...) and then last week we had...5. more than double, thats right! And serge, the recent convert husband who helped us start it, gave a talk in church and totally gave our missionary evening a shout out and talked about how he is so grateful for the opportunity to just simply come and learn something in the middle of the week simply by the means of testifying. and he invited everyone to come (are you catching on on how awesome these recent converts are..they get it. we gave them a preach my gospel and they were just ELATED! "wow! its all here! the gospel, how to do missionary work! its all here in one book!) anyway, so these Wednesday nights can be so good if people realize how simple it actually is. we want people to come and feel the spirit they create simply by answering questions like "why do you go to church" or 'what does prayer mean to you' we didn't want to develop a whole syllabus or whatever right away and really, i don't think we need to. the members who have come have brought their humble, real testimonies which is enough to inspire us and them to share the gospel.

We are still teaching our couple families with the young boys but this week we were more prepared with something 'fun' it was simple-we taught them the principle of faith by blindfolding them and making them guess what objects were by touch/smell/sound and it was perfect! well, it may have turned into a little brawl as we told the siblings to disagree with them when they guessed correctly and they were screaming at each other, "I KNOW ITS AN UMBRELLA BECAUSE I CAN FEEEEEEEEEELL it!!!!" But hey, thats how sure we should be when we feel the holy ghost, and how we know that God is there for us. to take the principle even further, we know what some objects are because we have seen them before, so its our previous knowledge that helps us recognize a pepper or a flashlight. we all had some sort of testimony before we came to earth but we can't see things now like we did then, but we can feel them, and feel that peace. and we're here to help people define that as the holy ghost, that sweet feeling of the heart, and let them know how they can have that always.

im out of time, but here's a cut and paste of a little of my letter to president to let you know what else is going on here:

Dear President,

Something you said in your letter last week i was really grateful to hear...the last bullet point was something about getting the relationship back between the members and the missionaries here that never should have been lost. Definitely in our meetings with active members over the past couple weeks they have related to us as they have shown us pictures of ward activities and their old missionaries that its not the same as it was "ten years ago." "ten years ago" has been our sarcastic quote the past couple weeks between our companionship as we reflect on what we can do to get that fire back that was here in these wards 'ten years ago'- the fire of the relationship between the members and each other and with the missionaries and just the plain excitement that the church is in Ukraine! according to the council of our bishop in kharkivsky, three of the four missionaries that were in the congregation got up and bore our testimonies in sacrament meeting last fast Sunday. Previously none of us would really get up and testify because we figured it was the members time to share their testimonies, but the bishop called us out and said all the missionaries need to get up and bare their testimony each testimony meeting to show the members our excitement for the work. So this past one we did and I didn't think it was anything special until the third hour of church two different members came up to me and said something like, "thank you so much for your testimonies today! the missionaries bring such a special spirit to the meeting when they testify, and to have 3 of you testify! i was just flooded with the spirit. Todays meeting felt like it did ten years ago. exactly like that!" Okay, wow. we're tapping into this secret that the missionaries had ten years ago that we don't have. I am still trying to figuring out what we can do to get this feeling/excitement/relationship back but i think it starts with showing the members our excitement. And i got a glimpse of that great feeling of showing the members our excitement and personalities yesterday and it was a glimpse of heaven.

Sister Zanger and i have been working on a couple small projects/new ideas for the wards (even though some members have told us "its all been done before, no new ideas are going to change anything...) We have been doing a 'missionary class' the past couple Wednesday evenings to help members practice testifying, and each time it has been an extremely spiritual experience for those who come and one of our members who comes gave a 'shout out' to us in his sacrament meeting talk about how grateful he is that we are holding these meetings, that his testimony is growing. and invited more people to come. Awesome! I promise we didn't pay him to say that. then in our relief societies, we made a little poster of what will become a bouquet of flowers but now is just a vase with stems sticking out of it. at the beginning of relief society sister zanger and i did a quite 2 minute skit about how she had a 'missionary moment' that week by inviting her neighbor to family home evening and now she gets to pick a flower that we have cut out and put it on the bouquet. We invited the sisters to have a 'missionary moment' so next week we can add more flowers to our empty bouquet. The sisters loved it! And i can tell you, its not the idea they loved and its not our artistic talent (or lack of) that they loved, they simply loved seeing the missionaries, their sister missionaries get up in front and do something cute for them to show our love and excitement for being here to serve them. It was a great feeling as the sisters all the sudden became so open with us and telling us about their missionary experiences they had already that week, and they were inviting us over and offering to help us on lessons! WOW! where did this come from?! I think I saw a little spark of what was here "ten years ago' and i want to help get it back. to strengthen the ward, get them excited again to just simply be at church and to maybe even sit next to each other in relief society. Honestly, our wards i think are very complacent and our investigators have said its just simply boring. I wasn't even here 'ten years ago' but i want to get back whatever was lost.

I love you all and i hope you all are safe and happy and enjoying summer! i miss you all! I wish you all health and joy in everything you do! i pray for you!

Sister Kylie Little