12-21 - Planning Christmas activities

This week was good. the In-actives we are working with a lot are coming to church!! And we got 2 of them to stay for all 3 hours. They are these 2 way cool guys, Vasya who's like 25and Gena, who's like 36. They are so cool, and Vasya served a mission in Russia and is our WML. So we've starting meeting with him weekly for that, and we visit Gena weekly too. The good thing is that they are best friends so it seems like thay can help each other stay active as long as the missionaries keep working with them. The other inactive that came was Alla, with her non-member husband Sergay (?), who is kind of a 7th Day Adventist but doesn't believe the true gospel is on the earth and we're just waiting for the millenium when Christ will come establish it. We meet with them and she's really nice, but he's really prideful and we don't seem him changing any time soon. But who knows, miracles happen. Zhenya is still scared to get baptized, but she just needs to strengthen her testimony. Her big thing now is that she doesn't want to live in fear of sinning, and in fear of trying new things, because that's what she thinks members do. She is still reading though and progressing, so we're meeting with her. The Christmas activity at the orphanage was fun, but we couldn't play with them like we wanted to or stay as long as we planned because a lot of them were sick. So we just talked with the kids and sang Christmas songs and stuff. This Christmas is going to be fun. We are having District meeting at the church with the other district that meets at the same building as we do. They made assignments for food and we made assignments for what to do. Me and Elder Clarkstone have the bonding activity and so we are going to go outside the church with the sign-board (this board that tells about our church and the Book of Mormon and has pictures and stuff) and sing Christmas Carols. And he had the good idea to buy candy canes and to attach Christmas verses from the Bible onto them and to pass them out. It's going to be awesome, we'll also have some other activities like the Christmas scripture quiz, spiritual thought, etc. It'll be a lot of fun.
With transfers I don't know if I'll still be in XTZ or not. I hope and think that I will be, so we'll see. XTZ is starting to improve, slowly but surely, but it still has a lot of problems inside the Branch itself. I hope I can stay so we can continue to work things out and work with every one to actually do something about it and make it better, rather than complain and ask for a new Branch President. It would be perfect to just get one more transfer here. No matter what happens though, we'll just keep spreading our Christmas cheer, our mission and Ukraine are both lacking in that department. So we'll be changing that here. it sounds like you guys are doing a good job of spreading Christmas joy there. Love you, Merry Christmas!! and we'll talk to you Thursday.
-Elder Hyer