Here are some baptism pictures to look at.

Hello Again Family and friends,                                August 27, 2012

I have now officially been on my mission for 4 months now, which just amazes me how fast that time has gone…… 1/6 is gone already just like that and I will be starting transfer number two today!!!  Time really flies…….. It’s crazy.

I have a few questions if anyone would like to answer……….. it would be appreciated
1)does anyone have any good contacting ideas (mainly street contacting)
2)how about any phone call approaches when calling contacts (it’s pretty scary I have to say)
3)anyone know any good work outs  for  ab’s specifically or just in general………… just curious

ANYWAY!!! Wow this last week has been quite the week.  It was just a very interesting one for a few reasons. So to start off I can’t remember what day it was but Elder Stradling and I we were doing some contacting and while we were out this guy stops us and is like "hello" (in English) so we stop and start to talk to him.  His name is Anton and so we talk with him and he just is a super nice guy and he just wanted to talk a little English with us so we did.  Then he got a phone call and said he had to go help his professor who was on his 5th wife and wanted to divorce her as well. Anton wanted to go tell his professor how important families were. So boom right there we were like here…… take this brochure about families.  We got his contact information and we went on our way. We called him later and set up another appointment with him but unfortunately he was unable to make it and said he was really sorry but said he really still wanted to meet up. We thought okay cool, but a lot of time people say they will call and never do. BUT, he did call and we were walking around 8 and he texted us asking where we were so we met up and he introduced us to his wife and just starting firing questions at us that were intelligent.  He wanted to know more about Americans and who we were as missionaries and just was a super “legit” guy and he told us his view on religion. He said basically that Christ is god’s son and that when we die we will be put into classes based on how we lived our lives. I mean this guy was so tight and so this next week Anton is who we will be focusing on mostly for a few reasons....

Transfers were on Thursday and Elder Stradling and I are still together and we had been told back and forth that there would be new Elders in our area and then the next day we were told, no they won’t, so we didn’t know what was going to happen. So transfers come we find out that we will get two new elders, which is awesome but they don’t have a place to stay yet. We were told they would stay in Donetsk until they found a place to stay, but also Elder Mika did not have a companion either because of one thing or another with a mini missionary (only 6 weeks for a non missionary who is preparing) so he was going to be in a threesome with Elder Stradling and I. We were excited about that, but then last minute they call and tell us that Elder Mika, Elder Harrison and Elder Mathias (greenie who was one group below me) will be coming and they will be a threesome. So we had to go pick them up from the train station and take all their stuff back to Elder Mikas place. That was on Friday morning so we get all that situated and Elder Strandling and I are a little disappointed because having three missionaries together are super fun (from what I have been told) so then Saturday comes around and things are just a little crazy.

Saturday there was a baptism and baptisms here are slightly different than in America or some other places. The baptism is at 10 am, we all meet at the church and at 10 am there was no one there. We seriously thought there was going to be no one there, but it ended up  to be a super good turnout.  We had about 20 people come and we all got shoved into this van and it was like a clown car when we finally all go out, people seem to keep coming out of the van forever. We drive about 30 minutes to this river where we will be having our baptism and most of the people who attended were not really dressed like they normally are in the states. It was a new experience for sure but it was great.  They went into the river he was baptized and then it started to just pour down rain.   We all jumped into the van and finished the program in the van. It was a little interesting but it was still pretty good, but it was just hectic getting everything situated and organized. However, it was amazing and he was confirmed yesterday so we now have one new member in our branch and another one coming in two weeks.  It’s super exciting!

After the baptism we all go back home and begin studies since we missed it due to the baptism and as we are getting started with our studies we get a call from Elder Mika. He tells us..... wait for it.... we will be in a threesome with him and so Elder Stradling and I will be taking some of our stuff over to his apartment and then Elder Harrsion and Elder Mathias will stay at our apartment. We do another switcheroo and have to quickly get things together for who know how long.  We could be together all transfer or for just a few weeks and the other Elders that are staying at our place are simply waiting for an apartment so until then we will be with Elder Mika until he gets a companion and if he gets a companion then we will move back into our apartment and have four missionaries there. Yeah, it’s been a little bit crazy these last few days with everything that has been going on.

Then to top it all off yesterday we had to be in by 7 o clock because it was miners day and two days before that it was Ukrainian Independence Day.  There were lots of fireworks and lots of drunks these last few days so it was unsafe for missionaries to be out past 7 pm. Yeah, that is what has been going on here.  Since the 2 new missionaries came, most of the investigators we were working with are now in their area. We have to basically start all over, which will be a great experience. I feel it will work better with having soon to be 6 missionaries here in Lugansk. Our area has gotten smaller and things are finally settled down and transfer number 2 is now on its way.

Mom here are the answers to your questions, but I figured a lot of people might be interested in the answers, but if not, I apologize ha ha
We do have a cell phone and I think most missions now have cell phones and so we are able to text others in our area about things that we need or they need to do and communicate pretty well so its super nice.
We are a 3-4 hour train ride away from the mission home roughly but the time also depends on the train we take some are faster some are slower
Which leads to the next question of how we get from place to place……….. Most of the time we walk everywhere since we are in the center area.  It’s pretty much all within walking range but when we do have to go anywhere else we take a bus and their bus system is crazy here. They just jam as many people in as they can.  Today we were on a bus that had maybe 15 seats and there were at least 30 people on that just all smashed together.  It’s always an adventure. We also occasionally take a taxi if we have too much stuff to take onto the bus.  When we have to go really far like Donetsk we take a train.
I’m sure I could get the address to the place I’m staying but it’s not really worth knowing.

If anyone else has questions, feel free to ask and I will be more than happy to answer them!

Thank you Maiava's for the letter it was wonderful.
Thank you Suzanne for the letter as well it’s great to hear from you.
Thank you Rachel it’s a bummer the other letter got lost.
I will do my best to write you all back in a timely manner……….. thank you again!

I love you all and am so grateful for all of the support I have from you all.  I know the Lord is blessing you for all the support you have shown me.  I am so grateful to be a part of this gospel and know that where ever I go I will always have family I can turn to, because when we are a part of this church…….. we are all family and we are all willing to help one another out and that is part of  why I love this gospel so much.   I want to be here is to share that joy and happiness I have from it. I love you all and wish you all a wonderful school year for those of you returning or with kids at school.

Love Elder Litchfield

                                              And the long road that lead to nothing ha ha

                      Thunderstorm pictures from a few days ago and yesterday…….. it was awesome!

                                                                  Some cool statues.

Elder Young and I,  he just went home on Saturday.

A nice cool temple.

The graffiti says, “God Exists” ha ha quality

                                             What the Ukraine has done to my feet  ha ha

Ukraine Week 6 August 20, 2012

Dear Family and Friends!!!!

I love you all so much and after this week I know that the Lord is blessing all of you for your support and prayers you offer for me. Thank all so much I know that the Lord has answered them this last week. This last week has been an amazing week to say the least.  It was full of amazing things.  So to start off  things have been a little slow for the last few weeks and we had been praying for just one new person each day that we could maybe talk to again and since we started doing that we have been blessed with at least one new contact or person possibly interested in the gospel.  I know that when we are specific with our prayers the Lord answers them; no doubt in my mind about that.
This last week we were blessed with 5 new investigators.  We met these two guys from Nigeria who came to our little family night thing that we do on Monday nights.  They seemed to be super interested so that was amazing and we also met another guy from Nigeria who we had the first lesson with and it was an amazing lesson. He is just amazing! As we were reading from The Book of Mormon he was analyzing the words and breaking the verse apart and figuring out what it was actually tell us.  Ii mean this guy is amazing and it just so happens that he knows another member that he has been going to school with for the last 5 years here, so there we go we got fellowship already and it was just perfect.
We also met with a member’s wife; she is not a member of the church and has been really against the church for many years. They have an adorable little girl together and apparently we are the first missionaries who have met with them. And from what I heard, she was super against the church. But in our lesson we talked a little bit about families. She was super happy and super into it and seemed like she was really interested in what we were talking about. She brought up some concerns about eternity……. so perfect, next lesson: plan of salvation.   She is wonderful and super, super nice person.  They fed us some super Ukrainian food, my companion said and it was good.  She did like chicken with plum inside of them and these little sandwich wrap things and this soup called akroshka not sure on the spelling especially since it was in English but basically its like butter milk ham greens and a few other things but it was really, really good and it was a cold soup which surprised me but it was great. (I looked this up for Anthony and added the definition Okroshka…… The classic soup is a mix of mostly raw vegetables (like cucumbers and spring onions), boiled potatoes, eggs, and a cooked meat such as beef, veal, sausages, or ham with kvass, the so-called bread drink, which is a mildly fermented black or rye bread. Okroshka is usually garnished with sour cream.

So a few weeks ago this lady who lives in our dom came down to us while we were playing some basketball and she told us her baby was super sick and wanted us to pray with her to help heal her baby. So we did that.  Then we didn’t see her until yesterday and she told us that her baby was healed the next day. It just shows that when we have faith God will help us though anything we need. This woman had some great faith to help heal her baby and it was super cool to see that happen. Unfortunately, her husband is against the church but we will maybe try to meet with her because she is super interested in what we do and she knows we are servants of the Lord.
Yesterday was Sunday and Sundays always get me, because it is still a lot of Russian running through my head so I last about 30 minutes before it’s over load and I fall asleep but it’s getting better and better each week so maybe by the end of next transfer my brain won’t be “fried” from the Russian language.   Ha Ha   We will see though after church.  We went looking for a less active person and walked about 45 min or maybe an hour to get to the house.  We struggled to find it and once we found it the guy had the door open for maybe 5 seconds and then slammed it in our face.  It was disappointing, but we went on our way and as we were walking got caught in a nice storm and just got dumped on by rain and we loved it.  That is what missionary work is about.  Doing things in sometimes poor conditions and seeing the bright side of things.  Then we walked for about an hour and a half more and nothing happened, but then on our way home we met this guy who accepted us.  He wanted to meet again, so I know that the Lord places us where He needs us to be, so that we can find those people who need the gospel. We may never know if that person will accept the gospel right away, but it is still a success when we talk to them because we may have just opened their hearts for the next missionary.
We are always preparing people as well as harvesting those that are ready. So no effort is a waste ever. This week was just full of spiritual answers and I know that the Lord blesses us for our efforts and will continue to do so as long as we are doing what is asked of us and doing what we are commanded to do. I love this work and as I said a few weeks ago I could see the work was about to pick up because all of our efforts were just building up. I know for a fact that the Lord is on our side and he is here to help us bring his children back to him and he wants us all to return to him and that’s our purpose as missionaries. I know this work is true and I am so happy to be out here. I love you all so much and I pray for you all every day.

Love Elder Litchfield

This babooshka fed us but she is a little silly.  ha ha

             The next few pictures  are of our church. It’s where we meet.  It’s an interesting set up.

We actually had a full fridge for once. ha ha

We do our dishes by hand and sometimes we let them pile up.  ha ha

Super nice view we had yesterday.

 Some cool graffiti we saw.

There is always trash everywhere.

Cool little church building (we walked from the south end of town all the way back home, which was about a two hour walk, it was a long ways ha ha).

Elder Strandling and I enjoying our hammocks.

We made a nice peach cobbler on p-day.

Interesting animals made out of tires ha ha.

We had a district meeting and ate some super good melon (elder Mika and Elder Young).

Limo Ferrari so cool.

Pond fountain thing by our house that kids actually swim in.

Just some funny pictures. We jumped off the tree and we are just having a good old time!!!!!

This is what ate at our BBQ.

This is the tree I fell out of…… ha ha as well as the remnants of the smashed watermelon ha ha.

Hanging out in the hammock.

Week 5 in Lugansk, Ukraine August 13, 2012

Hello family and friends again!!!!

Let me tell you first off about my day today :) so we did like a little BBQ today as a district (of four) and I was sitting in a tree as we waited for the other two elders to show up. I was just hanging out, having a good time and they showed up walked down with all the stuff we needed.

 I saw Elder Mika had a watermelon and it looked so good.  He walks over to me and I thought he was going to fake throw the watermelon at me, but no! He actually threw it to me.  I was thinking hmm this isn’t going to end well for me. I caught the melon and as I caught it the forced me…..well, kind of pushed me out of the tree. Yeah, I fell probably about 10 feet from the tree to the ground and landed nicely on the watermelon.  It exploded on me and my shirt was nice and sticky for the rest of our time. It was a good start to the day ha ha, but I am okay, so don’t worry! The bees were all over me because of the watermelon juice ha ha.

This week was an interesting week, so I’ll start with some good news about our mission as a whole. There was a baptism last week, which was I think the first one in a while. That was extremely exciting for the mission as a whole. Well, a few weeks ago this random guy came into the church and seemed pretty interested in the gospel and he came to a few activities and the other elders in our district have been teaching him and have him set on a date for baptism for September first!!!!! So amazing!!! They also have another girl who they may have a date set up for baptism for September first as well, so it’s awesome.   Now as a whole mission there are going to be 7 BABTISMS this weekend. That’s a crazy amount and it is so great to see the gospel spreading and I have come to realize that I may not be getting a ton of personal success, but who cares about me, we are all on the same team here and when one person joins, it’s a win for every single missionary and member throughout the world! So that is super exciting!

Now as for Elder Stradling and I we have been trying super hard to get lessons with members and just lessons in general but most of the time there is always something that comes up, so our people are cancelling or they don’t show up.  It’s been a little difficult lately, but this week we had a few lessons that went really well.  We had a lesson with Roman who has now come to church the last 3 weeks in a row, so that is amazing progress! He is moving along and I hope he figures it out that the reason he stays around is because of the feeling of the spirit. We had a few member lessons and talked about missionary work and they seemed super receptive.  Hopefully in the next few weeks things will start to pick up, like I kept saying they would.  We had a lesson with this taxi driver the other day and since he is super busy, he has not really been able to meet and he kept bailing on us.   But this time he found a little bit of time and so we hopped in his taxi and sat in there and had a lesson with him in his taxi.......it was a little odd to me ,but it was a lesson so it’s a starting block! We have been getting a ton of contacts, but all of them keep telling us they are too busy. I hope that some of them will be able to find a little bit of time and just hear our message and see how the gospel truly blesses and changes lives!

On our last p-day Elder Strandling and I bought some hammocks.  We got to relax in our hammocks for awhile and we did that again today, it was a very relaxing time just sitting and enjoying a hammock. We started a puzzle a few weeks ago as well, but have not gotten very far. We got the boarder completed, but when we get home at night we are just so tired and didn’t feel like focusing on a puzzle. We played chess one night and Elder Strandling said that I was his first companion he has ever beaten, so that made me feel pretty good about my chess skills. ha ha My chess skills are nonexistent!

We had an Elder Per G. Malm of the 70 come and talk to our mission last week and he spoke at the MTC as well.  He talked a lot about the time we have with our investigators is very small and so we need to find ways to get them more involved with the church throughout the week, rather than just the 90 minutes we get when we meet with them.  I thought that was a really cool idea to think about.  It’s really hard to meet with people right now for some reason, but a simple text or simple phone call can really go a long way for new investigators and for new converts……… so that’s our focus right now.   We also want to work with members and help them be more involved.  Things are good here.  It’s a lot of work and a lot of fun.  If anyone was wondering what the hardest thing about being a missionary is, I will tell you……... you may think its finding people or teaching people or understanding the language, but no, it’s none of these.

The hardest part of being a missionary is figuring out what tie you are going to wear that day, especially when you have a large selection! ha ha

If anyone of you were wondering about the mail system here, this is how it goes……. The mail gets sent to our mission home and that’s in Donetsk and the only time we get letters is when the AP’s (Assistant to the mission President) come to do splits or we have a mission conference.  It could be a long time before I get any of the mail, but when I do get it, it comes all at once.

 I just thought you would like to know that.  Thank you all so much for the mail.  I love to get it!

Uncle Joe, thank you for all of the letters you send from the other missionaries.  I got three of them all at once, so it was nice to read them right in a row.
Aunt Suzanne, thank you for the recipe.  I forgot to tell you thank you for that.
Grandma and grandpa I can’t remember if I thanked you for the general conference Ensign.

So I will say it again. Thank you.
O’Neill’s I got your post card, thank you very much.  It’s nice to see the beach and the water.

Thank you to everyone else who is supporting me.  I know that I am being helped through my mission from your prayers and support.  Ii love you all and am so grateful to be a part of such a wonderful gospel and I know that it is true and it brings so many blessings to those who live it.

I love you all and wish you all a happy day and hope gearing up for school will go nice and smoothly.   Love you.

Love Elder Litchfield

Week 4  August 6, 2012

Dear Family and Friends,

Well again I just want you all to know how much I love you and am so grateful to have such a great support system back at home. I feel like I am finally into the routine of things here and that things are going to start picking up in the next couple of weeks. We have gotten a ton of contacts but everyone is extremely busy and they say that it is way to hot to meet and other stuff like that. It should be cooling down over the next few weeks a little bit and kids will be in school again and I just have a feeling the work is going to pick up.
Our investigator Roman who has been investigating for the last 5 or 6 years has come to church the last two weeks in a row and that is amazing progress from what I’ve heard and so we are extremely excited about that.  He is such a great guy and loves the Mormons. He even has his own CTR ring in Russian and he loves it so much. I don’t think he ever takes it off. One thing about him is that he is very much a thinker and thinks he has to know everything about the church before he can join and that if he prays or comes to church he is basically saying he will join so I don’t really know how to go about helping him out with that, but he is coming along very well.  I feel that in the next few weeks we have make some major headway with him.

On Thursday I went on an exchange with elder Mika and we were in my area and we had a member lesson to go to and we were getting ready to go but then the lady called and said she had to cancel on us so we were trying to decide what we needed/wanted to do. So we decided we would just go out to her place anyway and find it and just contact a little bit around there. We are both still new to the area of Lugansk and we don’t really know what transportation takes us where; we saw a bus that said the name of the place we wanted to go, so we hopped on. We started going and it was about a half hour in and we realized that we had gotten on the bus going the opposite direction.  So after we had passed things we had already seen and passed where we started, we decided we will just stick it out and get there just to know where it is.  We were riding on the bus for an hour.  We finally got there and we were a little frustrated that we got going in the wrong direction, but we just kept on going with a smile. Elder Mika & I were walking around and we were getting close to the building we were looking for, when a woman stops us and she starts to ask us all these questions and was extremely interested in everything we were saying.   In the end we gave her a Book of Mormon and she said that she felt that every word we were saying was true and that she felt the spirit. The next day she called us a few times and was asking us all these questions about the Book of Mormon, which she had been reading, so it was a great thing to see something good come out a wrong direction bus ride. This experience built my testimony of the fact that the Lord is preparing people and apparently we needed to get on the bus going the wrong direction, because it is very unlikely we would have met this woman had we gotten there a half hour earlier. It was just a great experience.

This last Saturday we had a branch picnic which was extremely fun and it was a fairly good turn out and we played games and just kind of hung out together. It was difficult for me to really know what to do, because my Russian understanding is still developing, but there was an investigator who came and who the week before had randomly come into church so I talked with him quite a bit.  It was an interesting conversation trying to interpret what he was saying and then being able to say what I needed/wanted to say.   But overall I think it went well.
The other elders in our zone had 6 investigators at church and we had 1 but none the less we are all on the same team here so we had a total of 7 investigators at church. It was so great, it seemed like we actually had a full house and that is another reason I can see the work picking up. It’s so great to see progress and success even when it is not my own, because it is not about individuals it’s about the church as a whole and we must be able to rejoice in the success of others as much as we rejoice in our own success.   We are here to do Heavenly Father’s work.
Things are just moving a long here and we are continually trying our best to do all we can to find people to teach. As long as we are doing what we need to do, the Lord will bless us for our efforts. If He doesn’t see it fit for us right now to find and teach these people It’s okay because everything we do is not for us to count numbers or anything like that.  We are all here to build the kingdom of God and the way we may be doing it right now is by introducing people to two young missionaries in white shirts and ties and someone later on down the road will be the one who brings them into the fold.

I love this work.   I know it’s hard and I know that the Lord blesses me for not complaining when things don’t go our way or the way we want them to. I am so grateful to be a part of this church and be able to do all the things I do and receive so many blessings from the gospel. I know it’s true and that’s all that matters.  No one will take my faith away from me no matter what they say, because I have a testimony that it is true and no matter what people say to me here to try to make me change my mind I will just tell them thank you for your time but I know what I know and that is that this gospel is true and that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and that through Joseph Smith the only true church is on the earth today and that Thomas S.  Monson is leading that church today and that families can be together forever and the plan of salvation/happiness is for everyone who will accept the gospel and see the blessings pour into their lives.
I love you all and wish you all a wonderful day and hope the summer has treated you well!

Love Elder Litchfield

Cool looking slide thing

local movie theater

Our branch picnic

watermelon yum :)

Elder Mika and I

Elder Strandling (my companion) and I