July 20 - Teaching in Harkov

I hope Thompson's greenie is enjoying all those investigators we worked hard to find, because starting from scratch again is gay. No, I'm kidding, it's not that bad. I like contacting and we've been having alot of success with it. Our investigator Alla came to church yesterday with her grandson. She was great and participated in all the classes. We picked her up and I talked to her a while about the book of Mormon and the Bible, and about what she read in the book of Mormon and some other stuff. She's a smart lady and a great investigator. She said that she and her husband loved to drink beer together, but one night he got wasted and fell into the subway and got killed. Yea, I didn't know what to say either when she told me that. But they loved church and the members were great to her. Also, yesterday when we were contacting, we had one of the most powerful lessons that I've ever experienced. We contacted this lady who didn't want to talk to us at first, but we asked her some questions and she suddenly just opened up to us. She started to cry as she told as us that her husband of 30 years past away, then shortly after her daughter did, and she lost contact with her sister also. She said she was a good Christian woman who follows the commandments and asked why God punished her and why all of this happened to her. We just testified that she could see her family again, and that we couldn't understand how she feels but Christ could because he already suffered everything for us. We committed her to read Alma 40 that night and promised her that it would comfort her, and that when she read it she would feel Christ's love for her and that she's not alone. She's the perfect person that needs to hear our message about the Restored Gospel. Rarely, if ever, do we have a street lesson that I continue to think about throughout the day. Usually you contact a person, then kind of just go to the next one, but I'm still thinking of that one, it was so powerful. The work is picking up and we're actually finding people to meet with who aren't ,e,bers, which my comp said they didn't do all last transfer. So we're grateful for the success God's given us so far and hopefully we can just keep it going.

Ward Party

Gorlovka at Dusk

First District Mtg.-3

First District Mtg.-2

First District Mtg -1

July 13 - White-washing

Yea, I got transferred, so it stinks that me and Thompson didn't stay together, but I like where I am now too. I'm in Harkov, yes the great land of Harkov that is amazing for everything but missionary work, so they say. But I'm in Alekseevka, in maybe the best branch in the mission. We get fed by members 3-4 times a week. I can't even describe to you how amazing that is, that's so not Ukraine. Usually, if you get fed once a week, it means you have a good area. The Branch here is amazing; they'll be great to work with. My companion is Elder Whitehead from St. George. He's cool and we'll have a good transfer together. The sad thing is we have 0 investigators and not really any prospective investigators. I kinda feel like we're white-washing or something. They just didn't have much success last transfer. The last two days while we were contacting I've given out two books to these cool, interested people and they gave me their numbers, so hopefully something comes from that. My comp said those are the first legit books they've given out in over a transfer. Hopefully we’ll get things going here.

So I’m on my 4th transfer, 5th companion, and 4th city because of the emergency transfer and switch and everything in my 2nd transfer here. Life's good though, it was sad to leave Lugansk, but I like where I'm at. We just need to get some investigators and it would be amazing.

July 6 - Leaving Lugansk

I'm getting kicked out of Lugansk for a gay greenie. Yep, Thompson's training, so I already hate his greenie for kicking me out of this great area with all the work we having going on. As far as the ones that have committed to baptism, Tattuyana is working to quit drinking tea and coffee; Kereal just needs some time to make the decision for himself and know that his parents will still love him; Toleg is ready and is awesome. We've taught him the 1st three lessons, he's almost done with the Book of Mormon, and he's just really sincere about what he's doing. He wants to find the truth and live correctly, and he asks great questions, he wants to get baptized and for the right reasons. It's so hard to meet with Katya because she's working so much, I really want to meet with her again. Our lessons were always so great with her. This was a great week. A while ago, our mission was challenged to get 15 quality lessons, a lesson with a prayer basically, but it’s really hard to do and most missionaries never get it. We somehow got 16 this week, it kinda just happened. We had a lot of lessons with investigators, so that was awesome. We met with this guy Anatoleg, who's a smart guy and understands everything really well. We had a good lesson with him. Also we had a Ward Picnic on Saturday, but it rained so a lot less people came and we had to do it in the church. It was still fun though. Sunday was just an awesome day. More people came to church than I've ever seen, over 50 people! It was such a great testimony meeting too. It's probably my favorite church service since I've been in Ukraine. Then after church, we had 2 lessons with investigators, one lesson with a member family, and then our regular night at the president's home. It's just unusual to be this busy in Ukraine and I so don't want to leave. Me and Thompson serve so well together and the work is going great and it is so gay that I have to leave again. It all makes sense for him to train right now though, so I'm not mad, but I just don't want to leave.