Week 40

wow, a lot to report this week. We had our two ward activities, and it was stake conference-the broadcasted kind, so i guess 'regional conference' for all of eastern Europe. i'll talk about our activities first:

first, our cultural night for shevchenkivsky ward. a pretty good show-15 people-actually pretty bad, but like ive said, we're working on reminding the members that coming to church for three hours on Sunday and forgetting about everything else is not living the gospel....anyway. it was great-utah, vegas, latvia and georgia. So cool. i talked about Vegas and still, everyone even this far away from America thinks "casino' when they hear Vegas and most people have seen or heard of the movie oceans eleven. so i figured a lot of people had a good idea of what Vegas is about. so as i talked about Vegas i casually talked about some of the temptations there-like"advertisements for girls and every kind of gambling game to steal your money" but that members still live and thrive there because we focus our sights on the temple- i showed a picture of the temple all lit up in the foreground with the strip in the background. my spiritual thought attached to it was about how living in Vegas is a very real type of Lehi's dream. i showed the picture from the liahona and compared it to the picture of Vegas i showed. Really good thought i thought....but as i was talking i saw on everyone's faces how casually i talked about "advertisements for girls and gambling away money"...they were shocked. all the sudden it wasn't cool to be from Vegas. i sat and thought about it afterwards...maybe i over exaggerated. maybe Vegas isn't that bad, let me think about it....No, yep, its definitely that bad. maybe even worse. wow, i thought. Vegas is a disgusting place. what a reality check of what the world is coming to. but anyway, the rest of the activity was great...sister pliha showed off Latvia and the Georgian missionary did some knife dancing for us-if i learned anything its that everyone in Georgia does everything with a knife. (Georgia the country)

okay, Thursday night, our fireside with the president. we were all a little nervous, but excited. we announced it big time on Sunday, made flyers, everything.....it was supposed to start at o'clock and at 10 minutes before 7 there were...ehem. 3 people there. and then president walks in. yep three people from our entire ward to listen to the mission president. I was listening to him greet the people there. one Ukrainian women said, "oh, we're just Ukrainian! no big deal! more people will come later...you know its just our culture! when we say we start at 7 it means we really start at 7:30" president didn't think that was very funny and replied, "well, that may be Ukrainian culture, but im from Germany and when we say we start at 7, we start at 7"....oh my. not looking good. sister pliha and i ran upstairs to grab some people from institute to ditch class and come to our fireside so it wouldn't look as bad-we got another 4 people (there were only 5 up there)...but oh well, time to start. 10 people in the audience. (ill just quickly say by the end there were a total of about 20 that came.) each of us missionaries gave a short talk and testimony about different aspects of missionary work-i closed with my miracle story of irina when we thought she wouldn't call up back after her trip to Greece, but did AND wanted to get baptized-we later found out because she had been in Greece with a member of the church...blah blah blah, you remember, so that members are the best missionaries, best influence on people. then us four missionaries had to the musical number because our girl who we wanted to do it fell through. we had practiced a few times-we'll bring the world his truth-acapella in ukrainian. not to bad. We get up to sing it and at the start of the second line one as we're singing of the elders just loses it and cannot stop laughing. we sounded that bad. then the other elder loses it. then i lose it. and luckily my companion, who actually has some singing talent, keeps the song going and at most of the times in the song is the only one singing because the three of us can't keep it together....we can't stop laughing. so embarrassing. I look back once to see what president klibingat is doing...He has his iphone out and video recording us, laughing too. Oh my gosh. awful. then president was the concluding speaking after that. luckily he had a sense of humor about it all...said he was going to send this out in a video to everyone after the meeting and that it is written in the scriptures that where there is two or three people that is enough for the spirit to be there, so we have enough people in our meeting to feel the spirit. He talked about the joy we should have in the gospel and the success we are having in the mission. the stake president was even there the last little bit (i count that as success if you can get the stk pres there...) anyway. good meeting. after the meeting the stk president asked our mission president for special permission to have us at the adult session of stk conference to meet some of his 'friends'-referrals. he said we could. Awesome! i didn't realize what this would really mean for me....

Saturday night was the adult session for the whole stake. since the Sunday session was going to be a broadcast, all the wards were meeting at their own buildings so i wouldn't be able (like i thought) to see everyone from my old wards....but the Saturday night session....yep that was for all the adults in the stake. in one place. OH MY GOSH! it was like being in the receiving line of a wedding reception watching all these people from my old wards come in! i even had to resist a few hugs from people. BUT the best....IN walks in my Aliona!!! who got baptized a few weeks ago and i didn't go to the baptism because i didn't know...."Leeetel!!!!! my sunshine!!!!" oh my gosh!! i couldn't believe i got to see her again!!! i asked her how things were going.."SO wonderful!! i went to the temple for the first time today to do baptism for vladim's grandparents" (vladim is the dentist/boyfriend)....she said she's working on her own family history to get it their work done...OH my Gosh! She gets it!! she gets it! she went to the temple!! oh may gosh, it was an amazing experience...amazing feelings of reunion. Wow. i just sat in that meeting overwhelmed with happiness and love for these people. its come. love for the Ukrainian people. and a glimpse of what the kingdom of heaven is supposed to feel like. so much more of the eternal perspective is being opened to me. This is the kind of joy we are to have with our families. i can't wait.

Sunday's broadcast was great. in Ukrainian, but it was okay for me. heard from elder Clayton (area 70 for this area), elder Oaks, sister Barbara Thompson, and Pres Uchtdorf. all mentioned tithing. a lot about getting the youth out on missions. getting married. living the gospel. activating and still loving the less actives. its was great.

So. joy is service. im sure more to come. i love you all and miss you so much!!!

sister little

here are pictures-my Halloween costume and then us four missionaries who put together the fireside and can't sing for the life of us. we made this collage to put with referral cards to put in our church foyer.