So this is Christmas...

Good Morning Everyone! This is one interesting Christmas! This letter may be just a little shorter than previous letters ive written, but we'll see. Writing this is fun for me.

So to start off, just wanted to wish everyone a real Merry Christmas!! It's the greatest time to spend with your family (Apologies to mine and every other family with a missionary in the field... we are currently indisposed😅), and friends and to just go about in good feelings. If someone is sad or has bad feelings on christmas... fix it with them.

Alright so I've got two stories from this week. One comes from a festival in the town im serving in and the other comes from our ride back from Zone Conference ( Our big missionary meeting).

So... this festival... To start, we had no idea it was happening. We were walking by one of the streets leading to a big open square in the Center of the city and as we were walking by this street we hear the sounds of a concert. We had no idea what was going on, so we decided to check it out. What we stumbled into was a tree lighting ceremony of EPIC proportions. There was a legit concert stage set up, with Orthodox Priests walking around on it,Orthodox Santa Claus, child Dancers and of course Olaf. Because why not? It was quite the scene. We stayed long enough to watch the lighting of the tree and the Fire Dancers who had a performance quickly thereafter. Yes... Fire Dancers😐. It was quite something for sure. I've got video of some of the ceremony... not sure how to get it to y'all, but i've got it😅.

(This is Shelby, I've added the video)

The second thing, our ride back from Zone Conference. Basically what happened was that USUALLY when we hop on  a bus for the ride back it is jam packed with people. This was not the case for this ride. It was literally just me, my companion and one other guy. So naturally I talked to him. and LUCKY ME  he knew english😁👌! Not a lot but enough that we could communicate fully when we used both languages as required. Pretty fun stuff! I talked with him in RushLish for 3 and a half hours. Pretty crazy, but it gets crazier! 

A few days later we were street contacting and I saw him! We were in a completely different part of the city, so I got a little excited and ran over to say hi🖐. Unfortunately he was busy and was on his way to practice with his band, but just before he left to do that one of his friends came up and said hi and all of us started talking. Anyways, bus friend ran off and new guy and I were left to talk. Come to find out this guy is a less active that has been living in Poland! We invited him back to church and got his Facebook to keep in contact! We are getting pizza soon👍.

So yeah. that was wild. Blessings, blessings, christmas blessings! 

Other notable mentions for the week; 

I had liver for the first time in my life. That is a whole other story right there. Personally I give it a 5/10. not good, not bad. 

Got called Mafia on the street. Stood a little taller after that.

Participated in the most intense White Elephant gift exchange I may ever have the privilege of participating in. Pictures of what I received included.

Had a random guy walked into the church and ask "Is this the mormons? I didn't know there were Mormons in Cherkassy." Yeah we taught him the first lesson right there and he came to church the next Sunday and he wants to meet again. Minor miracle👌. Best part is he came because he heard a Protestant Minister slam us and wanted to know if what the dude said was true... It wasn't🙄. We had to explain and clear up some stuff, but he is really intrigued now so hopefully he keeps coming. He even used the english word convert lol "If this is good i want to be... convert..." (Italicised in Russian)

So yeah, that's about it, Have a Happy Christmas everyone, and remember John 3:16; 

16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.   

Love y'all, be safe, stay smart and dont do bad things!

1. White Elephant Gift

2. Kiev Temple as seen from a bus stop

3. A Christmas Carol (In Ukranian)

4. The tree lighting ceremony

5. Bunch of lads we see almost everyday

6. Christmas in Ukraine on a budget

7. My english class did sentence by sentence storytelling and I decided to draw it out. I CANNOT BEGIN to describe the amount of wild stories they came up with

From Shelby

Well, we survived Thanksgiving.  It was a little rough, simply because it felt weird without him here.  Times are changing, I can't expect them to be with me forever, so I suck it up and keep moving forward.

Jake did great for Thanksgiving.  He was excited to mix it up with additional Missionaries at the Thanksgiving conference they had...I think they kept the kids too busy to feel like they were missing anything.

As I've said before, when I read Jacobs emails, I don't think I see them the way other people do.  Take this last week for instance...

First-Why is he drinking something that "tastes like a CAMPFIRE"?  What is that thing?  Whats in it?  Did he even check before drinking it?  Did the other Missionaries drink it, or was he the guinea pig (because he LOVES being the guinea pig :/ )

Second- Air raid sirens? AIR RAID SIRENS!!??  And to this day they still have no idea why that happened.  What? THEY ARE ON THE BORDER OF RUSSIA!  He said the sirens went off for several minutes.  Their main protocol in this situation is to shelter in place and call to get further instructions...but NoBoDy AnSwErEd the phone.  Wait, what??  *sigh*

That's just a few examples of the things that go through my head.  Nonetheless, he is safe and doing pretty well.  He's a little sad to loose several companions.  There were five Missionaries including him serving in Cherkasy area (a 3-4 hour trip to get to the next closest group of Missionaries) and they lost three of them last week, leaving just Jacob and Elder Maximo from Brazil.  He and Elder Maximo are plugging along just fine, but it's a little lonelier with just the two of them.  Jacob was excited to tell me that they were promised some new sister Missionaries during the next transfer period.

So I attempted sending a Christmas package to him, but the whole situation is sketchy at best.  I may have to dish about it in another post later, but suffice it to say that I got the dang thing out, for the rock bottom price of $70 to ship roughly $40 worth of stuff.  Now the real test is to see if it actually gets there in time!  There are conflicting reports from other parents about how long their packages take to arrive, so I think I'm playing a bit of roulette (Russian Roulette!)  here in hoping it makes it by Christmas, and all I can do is cross my fingers and wait.

Say a prayer for Elder Coleman...He REALLY wants to make more progress in their missionary work, so if y'all could pray for him do be successful in his endeavors, he'd really appreciate it. 

Week 20- What do you do?

There were a few things that have happened recently that made me ask this question. For Instance: 

What do you do when you have no clue what's going on?

What do you do when you need to prepare English for a bunch of Ukrainians?

What do you do when you prepared a lesson for the wrong Vladimir?

What do you do when the air raid siren goes off in the city you reside in?

In this email I will be telling you what it is exactly that you do when faced with circumstances as wide in variety as these. Let's look at the notes

I have figured out that sometimes i really have no clue what is going on. This happened last Sunday at church. I was just sitting there minding my own business and doing minor translations for a New Zealander who doesn't speak russian that currently resides in our Branch. It came to a point were I realized it had been a few minutes and i had no clue what they were saying. The words sounded familiar, but i was just about as lost as my first day of the MTC. I then realized they were speaking Ukranian... I don't know ukrainian😓. So basically what you do is first make sure they are speaking a language you "know". After that step has been taken you sit back and wait for the language you "know" so that you can again continue the struggle to understand and learn😅👌. 

I figured out this week that i was going to be teaching the advanced class for our Free English courses. This means that i had to prepare games essentially. but i thought to myself "I don't want to play the games we always do... what's something new they can try..." and then this evil thought dawned on me. "I bet the don't know the Alphabet Aerobics" *Laughter emits from somewhere behind me* and I proceeded to print out and teach my class the alphabet aerobics as an exercise for their pronunciation... they wouldn't let me record them trying😂😂😂. Lesson to be learned here is if all else fails just do something that you think would be fun to see them try and go with it... I think this week we are gonna do and idioms comparison. We will see what the большая шишка has to say about it though. Go ahead translate it. I dare you.😐

So something funny about the names here is that basically everyone has like... the same 15 names. That's being generous. But anyways when we started to get a lot of lessons with Vladimirs it got a little mixed up and we prepared a lesson for someone that wasn't the person that showed up😓. So what do you do? Say a really good prayer and take what the Lord says into consideration. "Take no thought beforehand..." Turned out to be a pretty good lesson anyways, so something went right. Must've been a good prayer. 😅

To end off this list, what DO you do as a missionary when an air raid siren goes off unexpectedly and all you were doing at that particular moment was studying🤔🤔? You sit there (obviously) and wait for the second sound of the siren to really make sure it was, in fact, not a fluke. After this you simply yell across the apartment to the companion who has been here since march to see whats up. It went about like this. Me: "How long have you been here" Him: "7 months" Me: *Walking towards the window to see what i can see outside* "This ever happened before?" Him: *coming out of the bathroom (and going to wash his hands)* Nope... we should probably call somebody... Me: ... I mean... no ones running... 

We did end up calling some of our leaders and when none of them answered and we received no phone calls in return we figured all was good and that we could just go on with our day. We did have lessons we needed to teach anyways, so we didn't want to be late. What kind of missionary would that make us😅? 

So yeah, life lessons from Ukraine i guess. This week as actually successful despite trying to figure out "what to do". We've still got plenty of lessons to teach, people to bring closer to God, and english to teach to some eager(ish) Ukrananians👍😀👍!!

For my spiritual thought i will use the scriptures to back up some of the decisions that we made in these circumstances. It comes from Nephi 3:7 (Also, this is the youth theme for this year and if you haven't watched the Youth Theme video, now's the time) anyways here it is

7 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, said unto my father: I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them. 

Kind of a cop out, but it is still useful knowledge to have. When we go forth in righteousness intending to do the will of the lord, we will be able to see that through all things he will help us. Remember that the Lord wants us to succeed, he IS our Loving Heavenly Father. 

I hope everyone has an enjoyable week and don't forget to stay smart and remember who you are!

1. Buncha goofs, and then some youth from the branch

2. This drink, I kid you not, tasted life i was straight drinking the smell of a campfire... I hope you're confused because i sure was

3. When you are spear fishing all day and you don't even like fish

4. Another picture of that snow from last week. I didn't get sick of it, luckily, but the ice is getting to be quite the nuisance

Week19-Its That Time of Year!!

This last week was Thanksgiving which means that Christmas Music is ofiicially LEGAL!!!! I really like christmas music, so im pretty excited. For those of you that arent fans or can only take it in small doses... i still love you too... just dont push it. Jk jk. But really though. Its Christmas time so step up with the Christmas Spirit!!

Anywyas, this week we had a crazy full week of things to do and only some of that was in Cherkassy. My companionship had to go to Kiev and teade companions with the Zone Leaders (The companionship that serves in a leadership position over our area). It was super fun doing work in another area of the mission. We even had a really promising contact that lives in Zapporozhia, so hopefully she finds the missionaries there! 

I also got to help run english practice at their english practice, which was super awesome. We had ia round table discussion of what books should be made into movies. Super fun to hear all the ideas they had😅😂.

On thanksgiving we meet as a big ol Missionary group and chowed down on some food together. There was a also a couple who had just gotten married that came in and decided to celebrate with us. They gave us some of their wedding cake to, so big plus! 

As the Christmas season rolls around i would seriously hope everyone remebers the "Reason for the Season" so to speak. There is a really great new video put out by the Church called The Christ Child and it is really worth the watch. 

Love yall, sorry about the short letter, i had to go and kill my first companion today, so as one would expect i had to do a lot of traveling. See yall around!

1. Snow Oh yeah!!! ...ill prolly be sick of it by next email, but it was cool to have it land where i didnt have to travel to see it

2. Found a cool tank painted to match the Ukranian flag at a museum here

3. Shrek says 'sup

4. A wall in Cherkassy that has legit bullet holes from when WWII rolled through.

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Week 18-You may be confused. im in a rush

Hello hello hi hi. Hope everyone is doing well, this may be slightly shorter, for I have not much time today. I'll just share some updates... and maybe a story😁.

So to start, we have got some pretty cool friends we are teaching right now. Vitale, Igor and Ira. Ira has still got a baptisimal date, so keep rootin for her!!!👍👍 Igor has been coming to church consistently for 3 weeks now, and we have only known him for three weeks, ain't that just something! Vitale has been taking lessons for like 7-8 weeks now, he's just pluggin along. He is honestly just super cool, so we are just working hard on getting the ward to fellowship him now. 

That's about it for news on friends, now i suppose its simt for a story then yeah? Alright alright if you insist. Let's see then.... 

*Scene fads out to black and, with the effects of a mirage, slowly start to come back in and solidify into the shape of an apartment with seven missionaries preparing to participate in the evening ritual known as... SLAMMING*

(Now i feel that i should Preface this by saying slamming is a FOOD related ritual) to set this seen up, the only reason there were SEVEN😐 elders in an apartment this late at night was because we had interviews with the Mission President that day and we needed a place to sleep for the night before we set off for our city the next day. To continue...

I will leave you all in the dark on the specific details of SLAMMING, but basically we just consume unhealthy matter directly into our digestive system. Absolutely delicious👌👌. Unhealthy if done regularly, which was what the topic of conversation was about at the time. Whilst in the midst of this discussion on the physical repercussions of SLAMMING, one from them who are more seasoned than I remembers an Epistle.

Now when I say Epistle I mean something that matches in style and vocab to Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians. This beautiful beast was written BY a missionary in our mission to another missionary in the mission, but wisdom can be taken from it and applied to all. It literally reads like the Bible, with verses, chapters, and links to other scripture for reference and cross reading for comprehension.😅😅

I don't know how best to describe that evening other than it devolved into reading these Epistles and examining them for knowledge, whilst doing the very thing that it sets forth guidelines to protect against. What a great night. On request I may provide more specific details on SLAMMIMG 😁

I've got just a scripture this week for us all this week. James 1:27

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

This scripture is neat because in my mind it does not apply just to believers. The main message here is basically saying, "What greater act is there than to serve those afflicted worse than you are. Its difficult but it's possible. As this christmas season rolls around I would encourage everyone (if you haven't already) to visit the Light the World page on ComeUntoChrist.org and just take a casual peruse around. I'm sure you'll find something that spikes your interest. 

1. We found a tank

2.I made fried rice and had bell peppers with it. I only made it fancy because it was easier to organize i promise

3.Mike Tython is everywhere. And Connor McGregor.  

4. This depicts an over exaggerated deadlifting statue

Week 17-The Still Small Voice

This week was a little slower than some, but blessings abound anyways! We had to travel to Kiev for my SECOND mid transfer training... wooo😐... so that ate up a lot of our week but no big deal because we still got to do some lessons with our friends. 

Like i said we had mid transfer training this week. We traveled to Kiev and back in two days. On the way to Kiev we took a Marshutka and instead of sitting next to a companion, we split up to hopefully catch someone that we could talk to. Jokes on me because instead i got an 8 year old child sitting next to me😓. I honestly had no clue what happened. I thought her dad was gonna sit next to me and i could talk to him maybe, and all the sudden he steps aside and there's a child there and he's motioning towards the seat.

Anyways, this child sits next to me and knocks out IMMEDIATELY (it's about 6-700 at night) and starts snoring. Hard. I've heard some impressive snoring in my time, but coming from this 8 year old I was absolutely floored😅. It was honestly impressive. And then when the father went to wake this child he had to give her a good shake to wake her😂. I thought it was pretty funny. Also, minor blessing, but i heard the ever glorious song Take On Me play whilst traveling on this bus👌. Needless to say I very much enjoyed that.

We also played Sparkle in our english class this week. For those who don't know we basically take turns spelling a word one letter at a time until a word is spelled. Little did I know that somehow we were going to end up spelling the word eleemosynary😅🤨😅??? Yeah. I felt bad afterwards and just gave them a few synonyms to make them feel like they learned something. 

To finish this off ill just share a really neat experience we had this week. We had a lesson with витали (Vitale) one of our quickly progressing friends. During the lesson we asked him a question about the importance of the Spirit and while he was giving his answer the Spirit was insanely strong. Just us missionaries were talking about it after and we were just like "Holy smokies I think he's ready for a bigger commitment..." we all felt the spirit super strong when he was talking and our next lesson will be fun we are thinking.

So that was super awesome and the next day he came to Church with his Girlfriend! They were both super into it and oddly enough both of them at different times commented on the hymns. They really enjoyed them! If everyone could throw a quick prayer out for him that would be peachy! The Spirit will be there when you need it, you just have to recognize it and act in accordance with it!

Love yall and i hope you have an enjoyable week! 👍😁👍

1. Homemade chips and salsa. They don't have any mexican food... so we improvised

2. Some absolute lads that are hanging around our apartment all the time. I caught them just lazing around that day.

3. BBQ chicken wraps with homemade tortillas. (We were really missing some staple foods this week)

4. This park banned a lot of things, but not Proselyting!

5. Helping Hands project cleaning up leaves at a local orphanage

Week 16 -Travels and a Small Message

I'm going to cut some people some slack and say that if you are bored or don't have time to read the whole thing, id just read the Spiritual thought. Stories are fun, but if you're low on time read the thought👍 

Hello Hello! This week was BUSY. Holy smokies. Not that every week isn't busy or anything, this week just felt busier because we had some traveling to do. How about I give you the rundown? 

So this week we had Zone Conference with Elder Golden, our Area Authority. We had to travel up to Kiev for that (roughly a four hour endeavor by the end), which was interesting. It went kinda like this.

Hop in a BlaBlaCar (Uber, just think Uber) To the Metro to where we were SUPPOSED to meet the Elders who were gonna host us for the evening. They weren't there so we got on a Marshutka (A bus) and had a minor scare we had gotten on the wrong one. Got off the bus (STILL no Elders) so we call them and they said to wait in a shop, but its 1000 at night and they were all closed or closing.

We onLy figured that out after we walked into a store and the owner was in the process of closing. It was this healthy food shop where they sell all natural foods or whatever. Anyways, I felt bad and bought some expensive healthy food (why? Why does healthy need to be expensive?) and we moved to a 24 hour Bread shop. The owner happened to be a member and got really excited. Him: "Are you Mormonski?" "Yeah..." (Expecting maybe a little heat or something) Him: "Sweet, Me too!" and then I got lost and when he went rapid fire russian. All i got was that he'd been a  member for about 4 years and he loved it and was glad to see us😀👍

Anyways the Elders found us and brought us to their apt. The next day basically finishes the more exciting part of our travels when a drunk guy stumbled right into me on the metro, I caught him, redirected him, and he sat down ALMOST on the guy next to him. Fun stuff.

Anyways, the rest of the week was super awesome! We got two knew really awesome friends who are SUPER interested and one of them came to church on Sunday! Urrah for Igor! We also had another lesson with Ira. She is the one getting ready for Baptism and im pretty excited about her! We have lessons almost everyday with so many people, that its hard to say im not busy. Almost everyone we teach has a desire to know more about the Gospel. And if they don't we still get to teach them some stuff anyways , so... yeah😁 

Something that was said by Elder Golden this week really struck me, and id like to share it because it's remarkable how true it is. 

"The Battle for everyday is won before you leave your apartment."

Or house or trailer or mansion or loft, but you get the idea. If we don't have the right mindset when we get up and get going, that will reflect onto our day, and it just make sit that much more difficult to so things positively. I know that I have sometimes felt this. It's important to make sure you start your day right, however that may be. Good breakfast, exercise, sitting down for a few pages with a good book (maybe a scripture or two?😁🤞), organizing the things you need the night before, etc.

I wouldn't recommend you do much with technology to start your morning other then music. It's an easy way to get you distracted and lose out on time to prepare yourself for the day. Try it out, I think it'll be worth it.

Anyways, enjoy some pics... ill try and take some better ones😅

1. Biscuits! I'm gonna try and perfect biscuits before I get home. these weren't too bad, just a little dense...

2. Kiev Temple!

3. Sweet Drops... I may need to slow down on the sugar, but oh well. Them's good stuffs

4. I Circled my area on this map. you can read the names of each area in our mission

A Note From Shelby

Some people have asked me how the communication with Jacob is going since he got to the Ukraine.  My answer...better than when he was in the US!!  In Seattle he did not have a data plan on his phone, so he needed Wifi to talk to us.  This meant that they had to go to the church building during the day to hop on their Wifi. He was at the mercy of the Elders he was with so we never quite knew what time he would be there or for how long he would be able to talk.

Well, the minute he got to the Ukraine they hooked him up with a data plan, so now when he wakes up at 5 am in the Ukraine he calls us right off the bat (9 pm our time).  Even better he can just call my phone, as opposed to Seattle, where he had to send an email when he was ready to talk and I had to contact him.  If I was in meetings at work I would sometimes miss those windows which, if I'm being totally honest, let me in tears more than once. 

So usually we talk to him Sunday night 9-10:30ish, go to bed, and I usually wake up Monday morning to him trying to get hold of me.  Sometimes he needs money, sometimes he wants a recipe, sometimes he just has the time to chat with me.  So Monday morning is now my personal one on one time with Jake, because everyone else has left for the day.  I generally continue to get missionary related requests (scripture references, conversion story, photos requests of specific events or places, stuff like that) from him until about 10 am (9 pm his time).

So that's how we roll now.  I now live for Monday instead of Wednesday!  Whoda thought?!

In other news, when you go to get your hair cut in the Ukraine and you don't have a really great grasp of the language, you get a Ukrainian cut!  Pretty sure this is literally the shortest I have EVER seen his hair, and I've known him a pretty long time guys.

Week 15-What's happening? Meh I'll just go for it...

This was a week. Yup. This was in fact a week. First full week in Ukraine, and im ready to go for more! So, hows about i get right to the exciting stuff for yall!

So, in terms of food, kinda wrecked me for the first few days not gonna lie. I find that i actually enjoy all the food here. Ive had Borscht, Gretchka, Pelimeni, a whole slew of preaniki... i don know how to spell that in english... and this interesting Dessert wafer thing that was like tres leche, but not because it was like lasagna form of that. I honestly dont know and i forgot to take a pic so... sorry? 😅

In terms of people we are teaching there are alot! We teach quite a few people everyday, 2-3, and we have some people who are progressing really well! This last week we were able to actually put someone on date for baptism that the elders here have been teaching forever. That was a super interesting lesson... story time!😁

So heres the deal, the woman has been taught by missionaries for a REALLY long time, and this week we had a pretty normal lesson. But what i wasnt informed of was that one of my companions was planning on dropping her that lesson (telling her we couldn't teach her anymore because she wasnt "progressing"). So anyways, during the lesson i was just trying my darndest to follow, but i was having a rough go of it. All i knew, the only two thoughts that were in my head were "Elder Maximo doesnt look very happy" and "I need to include her son somehow"

She always brings her son to these lessons and from what i was told he never participates to much, if at all. So i said a quick prayer and started looking for a scripture i could have him read. I settled on Ether 12:4 and 6. When i came my turn to give my two bits, i called over her son and had him read. I dont know what changed, but elder Maximo immediately perked up and apparently while i was talking something clicked with him AND her and we invited her to baptism and she said yes! 

So that was our fun, exciting news, now for something funny.

Earlier in the week we were handing out little pass along cards and inviting people to an open house our Branch decided to do (super fun). While i was handing these out i gave one to an older gentlemen who was walking by. He asked "whats this" and i responded "church" because thats the best way to get across what its talking about to help them decide if its something they want (yes people stop and ask more questions when i say that).

So i handed one to this guy and all the sudden ive been stopped in the middle of this public square by him and hes straight up yelling about God and Church or something. Idk. One of the perks of not completely knowing a language is that i dont know what people are saying sometimes, and especially when they are aggravated. At some point he motioned to his belt buckle and it had the hammer and sickle on it so i could only guess what he was trying to get across. 🤔😅

Eventually my senior companion comes over and officially gets him to move on, because all i could do was stand there and smile and shrug. Prolly made im more aggravated, especially when i replied "no" after he asked if i was understanding. Very interesting... conversation? It was pretty one sided.

This week ill just share the scripture that i shared in our super awesome lesson 

       4 Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God.

6 And now, I, Moroni, would speak somewhat concerning these things; I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.

Faith is important. Put your faith in God and you will feel him anchor you in life, provide you with something steadfast and sure in the storms of life. Dispute not because you see not. Keep the Faith.

Love yall, enjoy the pics, and enjoy your week!

Дай пять!!!

1. Elder Robinson and Elder Maximo (My Companions) taking a break in between lessons

2. We had a Halloween party with our English class and one of the games was bobbing for donuts. they enjoyed it

3. Georgian food (dont know what its called so uhhh... yeah) Super good. washed it down with apple juice because it was a worthy meal

4. A cool building. not entirely sure what it is, but it looks pretty important so i took a picture.

5. We cut open a few preaniki and put some homemade chocolate frosting in it. super unhealthy, SUPER delicious.

Week14- It's a grand old time

GOOOOOOOOD MORNING EVERYONE. We have officially arrived in Ukraine! Boy oh boy. Exciting stuff. So, where do i start, because ive got a few things to say and not a whole lot of time... ill just pick the highlights and if you want to know anything more specific all you need to do is ask and i will do my darndest to respond next week😁.

So, i got the call that my Visa came in last thursday, and was scheduled to leave on tuesday. My fun begins almost immediately upon walking into the airport because I accidentally walked past my train to get to the terminal, but it ended up being minor blessing. I found two other people who were trying to look for the gate like me and we banded together to figure things out. Together we successfully made it to our terminal. One from the three of us was a man trying to return to China and he spoke not a lick of english. Its ok though, i think i pointed him in the right direction👍.

Next on the plane flight, i sat next to a lady who ended up being able to speak russian. Unfortunately for me russian was also her second language, so we kinda small talked about food and where we were from, but in the end she complimented my russian after i told her it had only been three months of learning. Felt kinda good... more language stories later...

So then i landed in Amsterdam, and met up with 12 other Missionaries who were going to Kiev (I knew them from the MTC so it was cool to see them again) and we zipped off to Ukraine! 

Successfully made it through customs and then waited around trying to figure out where some of the other Missionaries bags were. It took so long that i was like, "Hm, im bored and still technically a solo Missionary sooo... lets go find Pres. Kumferman". So thats just what i did. Here our story gets fun.

I walk through the gate, much to their surprise. "Why surprise" you may ask. "Weren't they waiting for Missionaries?". Well yes, yes they were. Just not ME. You see, Elder Coleman was not on their roster of incoming missionaries, so when i walked through the door it was like a surprise child or something. Fun stuff.

Aint that just something? So I didn't have an assigned companion until the end of the day, and because they had no clue where to put me for the night i got put up with the Assistants to the President (The two Missionaries who work directly with the mission president). Kinda fun honestly. 

Long story short, im now in черкаси (Cherkasy) with 4 other missionaries and we are just having a grand old time. My first Sunday this week was tiring (apparently theres a club) and I accidentally told someone that i like to cry as a hobby... yeah. In russian the words Swim and cry are pretty similar... плакать/plakat (to cry) and плавать/plavat (to swim)... so yeah. Learning languages is fun👍👍. 

That was a SUPER quick summary of my past two weeks and I can go more in depth, but it was already kinda long, so i hope it was at least entertaining. For my spiritual thought i'll just share a quick quote from Neal A. Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. 

"While weak hope leaves us at the mercy of our moods and events, “brightness of hope” produces illuminated individuals. Their luminosity is seen, and things are also seen by it! Such hope permits us to “press forward” even when dark clouds oppress (see 2 Ne. 31:16, 20; Heb. 6:19; Ether 12:4; Col. 1:23). Sometimes in the deepest darkness there is no external light—only an inner light to guide and to reassure."

Stay happy and healthy everyone, love yall!

"Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints" (in Ukranian) w/ the Fonz

Kiev Temple!!! and in the fog!! I was like ~50 yards from it...

Endless clouds... Probably. it was just blanketing the Country(ies) in every direction

Who is... is that... it is, Bob Ross!!

 View from my Window of my apartment