1-4-10 From Elder Hyer's companion

Elder Hyer realized that his trainee wrote such wonderful letters he had him forward it to us. It was fun getting his view of all that is happening:

Been a big week here. On Monday we went bowling with New Homes (we do everything with them), and then, as I said last week I went on a greenie split with Elder Lot and we ran family night in XTZ. It actually went really well and it made us speak a lot. We can tend to rely on our older companions alot. On Tuesday we went contacting on our way to visit 8 inactive families... none of which wanted anything to do with us... but we got a really good contact named Ana. She is a young mother and seems very interested. On Wednesday we went to center (which is the only place there is Christmas) and we taught Ala and Sergey at Elder and Sister Reeds' home. Ala is a less active member and her husband Sergey is a seventh day Adventist (but he doesn't believe that the Adventist church is complete, and believes in a prophet from some church in south Africa, and believes in the Torah). He likes to bible bash a lot, so missionaries stopped going to him, so now he is better, and he just asks a lot of questions. Vasia was also there to help translate with Elder Hyer, since the Reeds don't speak Russian. Vasia is awesome. He is kind of less active but we've basically made him active. He also just became our ward mission leader. He served a mission a couple years ago in Novosobirsk, Russia. They would take turns translating but sometimes they would be teaching/answer their questions and so I would try to translate what they were saying for the Reeds. At the end Ala wanted us to translate her testimony for the Reeds and then wanted to speak privately with sister Reed with Elder Hyer translating. She told them that she loves the church so much but Sergey is too controlling and won't let her go to church and she didn't know what to do... It is very sad. On Thursday we planned a bit and contacted a babyshka named Xenaida. We went into her apartment and we saw a picture of two younger boys with white shirts, but no name tags... then we looked closer and saw that it was in our apartment. Then I turned around and there was a picture of the Restoration on the wall. We asked her if she knew what it was and she said she doesn't remember. Apparently she met with the missionaries 3 years ago, but she couldn't understand them and doesn't remember anything. Then we headed to center for dinner at Pyzata Huta for Christmas eve dinner. We got 2 chicken Kiev, 1 other chicken breast, 1 pork steak, 2 sausage links, 1 thing of meat vreniki (perogies with meat in it), 1 cherry vreniki (perogies with cherries in them.... sounds disgusting but is delicious with sour cream and sugar), perechki (bread with meat in it), borsch, polish potatoes and drinks all for 100 griven... which is about 12 Canadian dollars. It was so good. Then we headed to center branch for the Kharkov District (stake) Christmas party. The missionaries in XTZ were in a skit with the “youth”. We were all dressed up like presents, and one elder was a Christmas tree, and then the 3 youth were dressed up as bunnies... it was a really fun and funny skit. At the end of the skit we sang Joy to the World... I have it all on video. Then the next day was CHRISTMAS! We got up, opened all our presents and headed for the branch building where we had district meeting with XTZ and New Homes...all together 10 missionaries. It was a fun district meeting/Christmas dinner with a Christmas spiritual thought, then 2 elders had to debate why sisters are better than elders, and the 2 sisters had to debate why elders are better... we played card games like UNO and spaz. Then we had a huge Christmas dinner with mashed potatoes, 2 chickens, a roast, stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole, and for desert freshly baked cookies with ice cream in the middle ( me and Elder Hyer made them). It was all homemade by the missionaries obviously since none of this stuff really exists here. We had the other elders over for dinner and we had spaghetti and garlic bread. We tried to put our one investigator on date.. because she comes to everything and knows everything... but she said shes going to go work on a cruise for 6 month in march, and if after the cruise that she feels her testimony is still good, then she will.... ugh it was frustrating but we will work with her to change her mind. She met with the sisters like a month ago and she told them that she always feels good when she reads the book of Mormon... and she isn't sure that that is her answer... she thinks its just everyone feels good when you read it...so we've been talking a lot about answers and the holy ghost... who knows what will happen. Well that's everything for now.... me and Elder Hyer are staying here for another 6 weeks together. We are going to double our numbers from last transfer... which means we will teach over 100 quality lessons... and in our final week we will teach 30 quality lessons.... which is hard. If anyone gets 20, President Fry takes you out to dinner... so 30 Is hard... it would be a record in the mission I think.

That's Everything. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year


Elder Clarkstone