Here are some tennis pictures. J It was way fun.  I played with a member and his name is Artyom. He was pretty good but I beat him 6-1 6-0 ha ha

View from that huge dom.

Kind of funny we put this picture of Christ on the less actives wall.

My friend the pizza man he was walking around.

Where I sleep, it was a mess, but I cleaned it up……… dont worry.

Last night we saw the other Elders contacting in our area, so I took a picture………….. they walked passed us and we scared them........it was super fun haha.

Dear Family and Friends!!!!

 Sept. 17 2012  Week 10 in Lugansk Ukraine

I need you all to know that this church is true the Lord is preparing people all around us and the only thing He asks us to do is either open our mouth or continue to live the commandments and show our faith by the way we live our lives. I love you all so much and I am so happy to be here on a mission in UKRAINE. It’s funny how things go before my mission.  I had no idea where I would be going and it never even crossed my mind that I would be serving in the Ukraine. I received my mission call and it was interesting telling everyone and seeing everyone’s reaction. It was great in the MTC and talking to everyone that also has a mission call.  It was a completely different experience to see their reactions in the MTC and now for me to be able to react myself to my mission call and then finally being here now in the Ukraine. People no longer ask me where I am going, but now  people ask me how long I have been here and it’s usually funny to see their reactions and hear what they have to say after they figure out I have only been here for 2 months. I just love it here……….It’s amazing!!!
So along the lines of people’s reactions………………. Last week I stopped an older gentleman and started speaking to him and afterwards he realized/recognized my accent and asked where I was from and then he said wow you speak very well for only being here for 2 months.  That felt super good but then after he said that I didn’t really understand much more of what he said. ha ha So it’s give and take for sure. That put me up a little and as always when we get prideful even a little, the Lord humbles us and I got a nice humbling a few days ago. So again we are out contacting and I stop this guy and he looks at me with a blank stare and I repeat what I had said and he looks at me again very puzzled and proceeds to say "could you please speak Russian"....ouch that one hurt!  My companion comes over and is like, that is Russian. Then later that same day the same thing happened, except this guy told me not to speak Ukrainian. Man that was a shot to my language skills! But, it just made me think that I need to slow down when I say things sometimes.  I get in a routine and it’s all just jumbled and mumbled like my English sometimes can get. So all in all it was a good learning experience for me.

But this week has been amazing as I said at the beginning the Lord is preparing people for us and I know this for a fact 100%!!!!! Last week we were walking to a dom and we were looking for a less active member and she lived in this huge dom.  It’s hard to explain what it looked like because it’s like nothing else there is (Dee you probably know what I am talking about though) but anyway it was like 10 doms all connected and so we walked to basically the very end went to the less actives dom went up to her floor and she wasn’t home...bummer I know.  So we were walking out of the dom heading back to the streets and this lady yells at us "hey give me that book" we look at her and she says "what you don’t want to give it to me?”  We obviously say of course we do.   We ask her if she will you read it and she says of course I will. So we give her the book and schedule to meet with her the next day. We go there for our lesson and she had already read a few chapters. LEGIT!!! She has a family with 3 sons and a granddaughter and she seemed super interested.   We gave the restoration lesson and she had quite a few questions. She said that she believes there should only be one faith.  We go home that night thinking she is just legit and then we get a phone call from her and you know what she says.  She asks if she can write her questions in the back of the book………uh yes of course you can!  She has such desire to know more………. it’s awesome!    We have a lesson with her on Wednesday…….. Wish us luck because she is an amazing woman and extremely nice too. It was way cool. Oh also on our way to our lesson with her we stopped a guy and he thought we were Jehovah’s Witnesses and once we told him we weren’t he talked to us.  It was great! We had a lesson with him as well and are planning on meeting him again.   People are being placed in our path……… that’s for sure.

Now also last week we were doing our morning contacting (we go out at 7-8:30 every morning to contact the men going to work) so we walked by the train station and we  stopped this guy who happened to actually live in like Eastern Ukraine, but we talked with him for awhile and also gave him the Book of Mormon.  He told us he would love to read it and would love to meet with missionaries as well.  It was awesome, so we got his information and we’ll pass it onto the missionaries in that area and hopefully he will be contacted and taught. Even though we will not see the fruits that come from him……….. It’s a seed that has now been planted.  Another seed we planted was when we talked to a guy who really had no interest in religion but only sports.  So we talked sports with him for a few minutes and he finally got interested in who we were (his heart was clearly softened) so we told him we are missionaries. We told him what we are doing here and where our church is and gave him a brochure. He didn’t give us his number but it was alright because he now knows who the guys in white shirts are.  So next time the missionaries stop him……….. He can clearly say yes, I know who you are. Small things can bring to pass great things!!

Now one last cool experience we had was with our investigator Martin who is an African from Nigeria.  We went by his place last week to take him to church but did not have his address so we weren’t able to get him.  The other day as Elder Stradling was looking out our window………. He sees Martin.  Elder Stadling yells out to me, hey its Martin!   Quick get dressed! We are going to go chase him down before he leaves. We quickly get dressed and as we get outside we see him walking the other direction, so we quickly speed walk up to him and as we get close to him we nonchalantly slow down and we see him and we are all like………. oh hey there,  like we had no idea he was there.  So we talked with him and got his information and he said he would come to church this week. Now the only sad part of the story is that we went to his house yesterday to get him for church.  We called him, knocked on his door, rang his doorbell and everything else we could think of, but we think he was asleep.  It didn’t work out this Sunday but it is a start.  We have his house number and we can stop by now and see how he is doing.

The little miracles we see; are what keep me going.  There is always something good that happens in each day and I know that as long as we are looking for the good rather than looking at why the day was bad, the Lord with bless us.  I have really worked on being optimistic about everything.  I try to find the good before the bad or ignore the bad or I try making the “bad” a joke and laughing about it.  Because as long as we are thinking things are good, they will be good and everything that happens is often based on our attitude. Always be happy and glad and positive and things will happen. I apologize for this long letter or other letters that have been long but I hope you enjoy it.   I love you all and I know without a doubt that this church is true!

Love Elder Litchfield

   

My new haircut.

The hole we dug for our member Lance.

Me, hanging out. ha ha

Me and a mini missionary…… he is from Kharkiv.

The waters where the baptism was.

Elder Mika and Olya, the girl getting baptized.

Cool fountain. ha ha

Dear Wonderful Family and Friends,

Week 9 in Lugansk  Sept. 10, 2012

Another great week has come and gone here in the Ukraine and I am still alive and being blessed  by the Lord.  We bought a volley ball and a net so we can get a little more exercise other than all the walking we do.  We helped a guy in our ward named Lance, he is originally from Canada.  We were helping him dig out a water pipe and it was great to help him out.  We went to a members house and we made them Mexican food as our American meal.  Ha Ha.  I’m still sleeping on three couch cushions for my bed, but that’s ok. I truly love this work and there is nothing else in the world that can bring this kind of joy to my life and the lives of others.  Sometimes there are times when we feel we are not progressing or things aren’t going how WE want them to go, I seem to remind myself of why I am here and who I am serving. Never forget that the Lords work has nothing to do with you and if you are living your life and doing the things he has commanded us He will bless you more than you can imagine. I know this is true because when I feel our week was not very successful, I remember that no matter what, as long as I am keeping the commandments the rest doesn’t matter and the Lord will bless me in his own due time.

So with that said, this week has been in simple terms a little bit of a slow week. Unfortunately a lot of our contacts did not want to meet up or were unable to meet or simply didn’t show up to our appointment we set up. We have talked to so many people this last week and I know that even though they were not interested right then, it’s okay because as it says in preach my gospel, there is no wasted effort. No matter what we say or do the people are either prepared or not and the spirit is always the one who converts people not us. The thing that I have been working on though is having the spirit with me more. I read a little article this week about purifying yourself. Basically it was talking about how there are a lot of things that will poke at our spirit and we need to find those things and get rid of them. So yesterday I started my 40 day fast from a list of things that I felt have been poking at my spirit and I immediately felt the spirit stronger as I made that covenant to strive to stay away from such things that drive away the spirit. Especially while out on a mission there are a lot of things that poke at the spirit, mainly it is distractions. One of the things I had to put on the list was motorcycles and driving a stick because I think about those a little too much and they are not important. For all of you missionaries out there I would suggest doing this 40 day fast. I only started but I can feel the spirit stronger already.

This week we were able to have a few meetings with our investigator Roman. He is still slowly progressing and our last meeting we gave him the commitments to pray about a baptismal date that we can set for him.  So I hope that the next time we meet with him he will be able to tell us when he feels is an appropriate date for him to be baptized. He is a great guy, he does everything he is supposed I mean everything. He reads, he prays, he comes to church, he comes to the activities.  He really wants to know but the thing is that he is looking for this great big answer and so it may take him a little longer to finally realize that the gospel is true. But he is coming along and I am blessed to be able to teach him (and it’s a bonus because it is in English ha ha)

Our mission is doing wonderful. In our little area in Lugansk we had a baptism last Saturday and it was wonderful.  We had a good turn out and a good service. We had the baptism at a lake/river again and this river kind of looked like the river where Christ was baptized………… it was kind of cool. Elder Mika is the one who had to privilege of baptizing her and on Sunday he also confirm her as a member of the church. As a mission we have 10 more people set on date for baptism this month already, so the work is moving along and it’s a blessing to be able to see it all happening.

I know that the Lord blesses people in his own due time and he prepares people and we don’t know who or when they will come into our lives but we must continually be worthy so that we can teach with the spirit and be able to help them come unto Christ and enter the waters of baptism. I know that this work is true and that we are here for a definite purpose to build up the Kingdom of God and as long as that is our main goal, He will bless us how he sees fit. I know that our Father in Heaven loves each of us and wants us all to return to him and I know we all can if we do what he has asked and follow his commandments. I love you all and I wish you all a happy week and a moment of silence for the victims of September 11th.

Take care and keep your spirits high!!!

Love Elder Litchfield

These are pictures from a huge wind thunderstorm we had. It was crazy! The thunder like shook the whole house. It was legit.

This is an actual church building in the Ukraine first one i have been able to see. :) It was way cool.

We rearranged our apartment a little bit. ha ha

Dear loving Family and Friends!!!  

Week 8 in Lugansk   Sept. 3, 2012

I hope that with school starting all around it has not been too hard of a transition from the wonderful life of summer back into the swing of school. I just wanted to wish everyone luck that has started already and that will be starting in the next few days. Don’t forget that the Lord is there to help you even with school and the small things. He wants to help us anyway and anytime he can but we have to remember to ask him for the help because of our agency. I love you all and have an awesome school year (parents and kids).

Well it has been another bit of a crazy week for me out here in the field. So last week we got put into a threesome and we did not know how long that was going to last so it was all kind of an up in the air thing. So we moved all of our stuff over to the other elders place as I said last week and then two days later we found out that he was going to be getting a new companion. It was a sad day but also exciting because that meant there would finally be 6 missionaries in Lugansk again which there hasn’t been for a long, long time. On Thursday we had to take a train down to Gorlovka (about 2 hours away by car & I’m sure longer by train) because he had a zone leader training. He had to go to and we could not just sent him alone so we went with him and spent the night in Gorlovka and basically left the next morning. It was a very quick turn around trip.  While we were at Elder Mika's I slept on a mediocre air mattress and it wasn’t too bad, but then in Gorlovka I slept on a couch that was basically straight wood and that was not comfortable at all……………. so not the best night’s sleep this last week.
Now we are finally back home to our apartment but there is a slight catch to that all.  We were also waiting for the other two new missionaries to find an apartment but they have not had any luck yet, so we are in a house with 4 elders with two beds and a hid-a-bed and the 3 couch cushions.  Yeah, that is our sleeping options. Since the other elders already kind of moved into our room we just decided to let them stay. Elder Stradling got the hide-a-bed and yup I get these three "super nice" couch cushions that I can barely fit on long ways and sideways. So needless to say it’s been a little bit of a rough week of sleeping, but regardless of sleeping arrangements, it does not change my attitude towards the work and that is still progressing.
While we were in our three some we taught a lesson to one of our contacts and I honestly can hardly remember the people after we get their information because it is usually just so fast boom, boom, boom gone. So I didn’t remember this guy but when we went to go meet him, I remembered him because he was like 6’8” a giant. He was towering over all of us, even elder Mika who is a pretty tall guy as well. We go to his place and we start talking to him and you will not believe this. This guy is a world champion volleyball player from Russia. He has won the world championship multiple times and he also played on the Russian Olympic team.  That was just super cool and our lesson went really well. It seemed to me like it did. The language is still very hard to understand, but it will come.  He accepted the Book of Mormon and he PRAYED at the end of our lesson and that was super cool!!!! Unfortunately he is out of town for two weeks but when he gets back we are for sure going to be meeting with him and his family.
A few of our other investigators have been extremely hard to get a hold of, but this week we are going to do all we can to meet with all of them and get them progressing.  With our first visits with them, they just really took everything in but for some reason it’s just been hard to get the second lesson in.  Hopefully this week we meet with them.  I really can see them progressing extremely quickly after we get to teach the next lesson. Things are going good here and things are starting to pick up and there will be a baptism this weekend here in Lugansk. For the mission total we have 3 already baptized this month and 15 more on date, so the work is picking up here and I know it’s because of all of your prayers for all of the missionaries who serve around the world.  Thank you for your support!
I love this work.   I am exactly where I need to be right now and want to be right now. We are teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and I can see the joy in people’s faces when they finally come to realize what we are really about. It is one of the best feelings in the entire world. I love you all and wish you all a wonderful school year, a wonderful day and a wonderful everything else.

Love Elder Litchfield