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