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