Dear Family and Friends!!!!
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
No comments:
Post a Comment