Elder Anthony Vaunn Litchfield

Ukraine Donetsk Mission

Prospekt Bogdana Khmelnitskogo 67a

Donetsk, 83087

Ukraine

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Dear Family and Friends,              July 4, 2012                                                                                                                                        

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!!!!!!!!!

I love you all so much and I don’t want you to ever forget that!  I know I can’t tell you in person but I have grown to love you even more now that I can’t see you all every single day or talk to you all on occasion. Don’t ever forget that I love you and there is one person that will always love you and there is other who will never stop loving you and that is Our Heavenly Father. With his help we can accomplish all things if we are just willing to let him into our lives and ask for strength and help throughout our lives. I know that our Heavenly Father has helped me so much throughout my time here at the MTC and made it go by quickly and now I am about to leave on July 10th for the wonderful world of Ukraine.

This week has been a little hectic because I will be leaving on Tuesday, which is extremely exciting and I am so pumped to leave to the Ukraine. My  schedule is:  I  will leave Tuesday at 5 go to Salt Lake and then I’ll fly to New York, then to Munich Germany and final to Donetsk Ukraine at about 3 o clock! So that was the really big news that happened this week.

So this week was fun but not a ton happened. The one thing that I really felt was the power of a testimony. We baptized both of our investigators last Saturday and we had the opportunity to bare our testimonies. I know that there is so much power in a testimony and that when it is truly from the heart and not pre planned exactly what you will be saying the Lord will fill your mouth with what you need to say. I saw that in my life on Saturday as I bore my testimony IN RUSSIAN. It was so cool to see that I can bare my testimony and that the Lord will help me say what I need to say and I know that is because I have been tried to be obedient in all that I have done and I am giving it my all. I love this work and am so excited to get out there and share my testimony.

One thing that is kind of funny and it always happens to me is that my shirt always seems to get un- tucked. They call it duck tailing and so people are like afraid to tell me, so when they finally do, after  its been out for a few minutes I un- tuck it completely just to try to be funny.  It is   probably not that funny, but I think so. Ha Ha
OH we got another mouse in our room but I think that we sent it over to the room next to us because they said they have a mouse now.

To end this letter I want to share what happened on Sunday night. We have firesides every night and this one was like none other than before. Basically the fireside was a member of the Seventy playing a role of one of the people who was with Joseph from the time he was called a prophet all the way until the time he died. He gave all of the accounts that took place leading up to the death of our beloved prophet Joseph Smith and it was so powerful. The thing that stuck out to me was that Joseph Smith received a revelation about this man, I forget his name, but this is what the revelation was "people will fall to the left and to the right of you and there will be bullets flying round about you, but there will not be a single bullet hole in your garment not a single one". So when the shots began to fly and Hyrum was shot in the eye and then John Taylor was shot multiple times and finally Joseph Smith was killed.  The man who is telling this story is standing in there with all these bullets coming at him but there was not a single hole in him, the only thing was a little scratch where a bullet had crazed him. That was so power to hear and it truly strengthened my testimony of Joseph Smith and I know that he was a prophet and at the end of the monologue we all sang  Praise to the Man. We all stood there and sang and there was so much power, it was ridiculous crazy strong spirit there.

I know that Joseph Smith is and was a prophet of God called in our last dispensation to restore this wonderful gospel we have now on the earth. I know that he translated the Book of Mormon and that it is the Word of God. I know that our Heavenly Father loves each and every single one of us and He knows us all personally.  Heavenly Father wants us all to choose the right and be able to live in his presence again. I know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Savior and Redeemer of the world and that through Christ’s Atonement we can be forgiven of all our sins and be clean so we can have the Holy Ghost in our lives always. I know that this church is true and that we have so much joy from God’s church and that the lives of all those who are a part of  it can testify they have joyous lives. I am so excited to share this joy and love with the people of Ukraine.

I love you all and so excited to get out there!

Love you

Старейшина Литчфид (Elder Litchfield)

No comments:

Post a Comment