Power in scripture study

This week was an awesome week! Ukraine is an amazing place and such a fun place to serve the Lord. This week I started contacting on the street all on my own! It's the most horrifying thing in the entire world. It's really hard to just start talking to anyone because the culture is completely against doing something like that, so what works really well is using a 'survey' that just pushes more and more told gospel questions and wanting to learn more as the questions go along. I started giving it to people on my own and it was the hardest thing ever hahaha. I can't understand them, they can barely understand me, but I'll keep working on it. Most people are really really nice and understand that I'm clearly very new with my language and help me out. One thing is for sure though, the spirit testifies to people no matter what skill level my language is at. I'll continue to try my best to testify to people and to tell them that the truth has been restored!

Eating at Пузата Хата, a really amazing Ukrainian restaurant. We ate there for Elder Prolo's birthday. Food from Пузата Хата. Definitely doesn't taste like anything from America but it is AMAZING.

One really great contact that I had this week was with this man on a bus ride. I asked him if we could practice Russian and he said "We can try" in English so then I was so excited that I could actually talk to this man! Tender mercy from the Lord. I tried to use Russian as much as I could but it didn't get very far, so we just started conversing in English. He said that he wasn't trusting of churches, which is understandable in Ukraine because the prominent religion is very corrupt and essentially a business. I told him that in our church none of our leaders are paid and that I'm not being paid to be a missionary. In fact, I'm paying a lot of money to be here. He was really amazed by that. I gave him a card and he got off on his stop. It felt great to testify to this man that there is a true church on the Earth today.

We also had a TON of lessons this week, which was really fun and very surprising that almost none of them were canceled. We teach a lot of 30/30 lessons which is half teaching them English and half teaching them about the gospel. I'm really useful for the first half and I struggle a lot in the second half, but I'll keep trying. I testify when I can and just trust that the spirit is working through me.

Meeting and eating with the Шулген family.

One amazing thing that has been a great testimony builder for me this week has been the power of scripture study. We had a zone conference that talked about how we can improve our daily scripture study and it was amazing. One of the things that were suggested was not just reading from cover to cover, but serious topical study and searching for themes, connections, and patterns. As I've tried to implement this over the past week my study has improved tremendously. I also talked about this topic in sacrament meeting this week during my first talk! It was really hard but it went quite well. I want to encourage all of you to continue to study your scriptures and seek ways that you can improve your learning. When we actively seek the word of God he blesses us tremendously in our lives.

Elder Prolo, Elder Day, Elder Whiting

Love you all so very much. Continue to grow your faith through prayer, scripture study and church and you will be blessed. Love you!

Call Home:
This morning we also got to talk to Elder Day. He video called from the family history center by the church. He shared some other stories too.
The pigeons are scary and huge, but everyone is nice to them because there isn't a difference between pigeon and dove in the bible there.
People are surprised when he says he likes it there. They expect an American to not like it.
The grandmas there (babushkas) remind him of Grammy Day. Spunky and loving and strict.
The ward there feels just like our home ward. The people act the same, he just can't understand them.
The work is really hard but he is loving it!