Well, it's transfers time again. Six weeks really seemed like a long time before my mission...now it's pretty quick. Well, I'm staying put in Kharkivsky, which will make this my third transfer here, and will make this the longest I've stayed in one area so far (including the MTC). But, as has become usual for me, I'll be getting a new companion (aside from the MTC and my trainer, I haven't had a companion for more than one transfer). But, the good news is I already know who my comp's gonna be--Elder Kauffman, my friend from my MTC group. I'm really looking forward to it. We've been in the same district for two transfers already, and we've been hoping that somehow we'd get put together. It should be a lot of fun. Plus, he's a harder worker than any of my companions up to this point so far, so that'll be a nice change. (My list of companions so far is sort of a mission joke).
Well, hopefully once Elder Kauffman and I get together, we can turn our area around. The past two transfers have been really tough here, and this last transfer has basically consisted of me trying to do the work of two while my companion talked about girls and school and how much money he's going to make in his future career (oral surgery...) and did little else. Not the ideal working situation, but it's also sort of the story of my mission.
Well, aside from that, the only exciting news I have is that I bought a new pair of shoes to replace my old pair. I wish I'd taken a picture of the old ones...I'll have to send a picture next week. It's pretty impressive to me. The right shoe has had its heel worn from the outside corner all the way down, and the inside had the slight tendency to make my heel bleed. As a result I can now safely advise any future missionaries: Rockports are not good mission shoes. Ecco's are the way to go.
Well, that's all that's been exciting for me this week. As today is Elder Miles's last P-Day in this area, we're going to be running around to all the different spots he's wanted to go to before he left, so it should be a pretty busy day. I love you all, I love the pictures of the family (could I get copies of them on paper? thanks! that would be fantastic), and I love all your emails!
--Elder Brett
PS - We can get emails from whoever wants to send them, but we can only send emails to family and the mission office, so Mom, if you want to tell Shawn Soelberg that he could write me regular letters that'd probably be best. Thanks!
PPS - Good luck in surgery on Monday Angie!
It's really, really hot... (July 18, 2007)
Hello again all, it's that time of week again. Well, things are going well, except it's really hot again outside. We have a mission standard of 3-4 hours of finding a day, and our area doesn't have that good of tracting (most of the apartment buildings have electronic locks that we can't get into), so we spend 3 to 4 hours every day at least (sometimes quite a bit more) out in the sun walking around. I really wonder sometimes how far I've walked in this area, because I bet it's an incredible amount. I know this area far better than any other I've had, mostly because I've been up and down almost every street here a LOT. But, thankfully, we've been able to meet with several members of our ward here, so we should be able to get some work going with them. There's a really, really cool newlywed family here named the Russo family that we met with on Sunday. Brother Russo is 24, I think, and he's served in the Ukrainian navy for 3 years and been on a mission to Latvia. He and his wife, Anna, have been married for about 10 months, and they'll be having a kid here soon. They invited us to go on a picnic with them and another newlywed couple from the ward, which would be a lot of fun; they were really excited to work with the missionaries, so we're expecting good things from this.
So, I'm not sure how many of you receive the Church News (or, if you do get it, how many of you read it...I know I certainly didn't before my mission), but in the most recent edition there's an article about the Kyiv Temple groundbreaking, and included is a picture of one of the families from my area! There's also a picture of Alexander Manzhos, a Ukrainian member of the quorum of the Seventy, and Viktor Kanchenko, our stake president. The picture of the Vashenko family is really cool. They're pretty much the perfect family.
On Saturday, we had a "frank talk" lesson with our eternal investigator family. In case you don't know what a frank talk lesson is, it's where we sit down with them and see whether they're really interested in our message, or not. This time was really hard because I really like this family. They're really nice and funny, and they love missionaries, but the problem is, they just don't care about the gospel. She's a happy seventh-day adventist, and he's a happy agnostic, and they're both content that "all roads lead to God," and that one should find the religion most comfortable for their own, personal wants. They compared it to the 12 tribes of Israel, saying that the different churches are like different tribes ("Ah, but didn't all the tribes follow Moses and Joshua and all the other prophets, together?"), they said that all churches were the same ("That's what prompted Joseph Smith to pray in the first place!") and that the Book of Mormon was just like any other religious book. This last one is one that we've heard a lot recently. The wonderful thing about the Book of Mormon is that it's worth more than the sum of its parts. If one merely reads it, they'll find a nice book with scriptural lessons and doctrines similar to the Bible, though in a different location, with different people, and sometimes explained more than is found in the Bible. But that's not the most important part! The most important part is what's written in Moroni 10:3-5, that after we have received the Book of Mormon and read in it, we can pray directly to our Father in Heaven and ask if it's true, and then receive a personal, private witness direct to us through the Holy Ghost that it is, indeed, true. That is what makes the Book of Mormon different than any other religious book--it's true, and God wants us all to know for ourselves that it's true.
Well, I've got to get going again, time waits for no one, and as usual, I've been long-winded. I love you all, I'm jealous of all your various vacations (the dilophosaurus footprint was really cool Mom, and I'm impressed by your cliff jumping escapades). Have a good week everyone!
--Elder Brett
So, I'm not sure how many of you receive the Church News (or, if you do get it, how many of you read it...I know I certainly didn't before my mission), but in the most recent edition there's an article about the Kyiv Temple groundbreaking, and included is a picture of one of the families from my area! There's also a picture of Alexander Manzhos, a Ukrainian member of the quorum of the Seventy, and Viktor Kanchenko, our stake president. The picture of the Vashenko family is really cool. They're pretty much the perfect family.
On Saturday, we had a "frank talk" lesson with our eternal investigator family. In case you don't know what a frank talk lesson is, it's where we sit down with them and see whether they're really interested in our message, or not. This time was really hard because I really like this family. They're really nice and funny, and they love missionaries, but the problem is, they just don't care about the gospel. She's a happy seventh-day adventist, and he's a happy agnostic, and they're both content that "all roads lead to God," and that one should find the religion most comfortable for their own, personal wants. They compared it to the 12 tribes of Israel, saying that the different churches are like different tribes ("Ah, but didn't all the tribes follow Moses and Joshua and all the other prophets, together?"), they said that all churches were the same ("That's what prompted Joseph Smith to pray in the first place!") and that the Book of Mormon was just like any other religious book. This last one is one that we've heard a lot recently. The wonderful thing about the Book of Mormon is that it's worth more than the sum of its parts. If one merely reads it, they'll find a nice book with scriptural lessons and doctrines similar to the Bible, though in a different location, with different people, and sometimes explained more than is found in the Bible. But that's not the most important part! The most important part is what's written in Moroni 10:3-5, that after we have received the Book of Mormon and read in it, we can pray directly to our Father in Heaven and ask if it's true, and then receive a personal, private witness direct to us through the Holy Ghost that it is, indeed, true. That is what makes the Book of Mormon different than any other religious book--it's true, and God wants us all to know for ourselves that it's true.
Well, I've got to get going again, time waits for no one, and as usual, I've been long-winded. I love you all, I'm jealous of all your various vacations (the dilophosaurus footprint was really cool Mom, and I'm impressed by your cliff jumping escapades). Have a good week everyone!
--Elder Brett
I'm a nine-month missionary... (July 11, 2007)
Hello again all! I hope everyone had a good week. Ours was pretty good, although, as usual, it could be better. Our area is pretty cold when it comes to investigators (we have one promising potential investigator we're meeting with on Friday, and one "eternal investigator" family...and that's it). We spend most of our days on the street contacting or in the buildings tracting while we wait to meet with the members in our ward and do work with them (which, as I'm sure Adam will tell you, is the best way to do missionary work--when a member gives a friend as a referral, then the member is able to 1. Help bear testimony during lessons, 2. Use their home as a great place to meet and have lessons, 3. Answer questions or address concerns when the missionaries aren't around, and 4. Be friends and fellowshippers during the crucial first year or so after baptism). Unfortunately, this transfer, a lot of the members weren't available to meet for a long, long time (I...kind of suspect they don't like my new companion...not to be mean, but...I don't really blame them...); however, good news is, this week we've basically got every evening taken with either lessons to pump members up about missionary work, our English class, or our investigator (Vasil is his name). So, things may just be looking up.
In other news, we had exchanges last Friday and Saturday, so I was paired up with Elder Kauffman, who was in my MTC group and with whom I've gotten to be pretty good friends. We decided, as usual, to go contacting, and so we decided to explore the area a little bit (there's a few far-reaching parts that I'd never been to). We had just traveled to the farthest boundary from our apartment when we realized that the sun had just gone dark. Now, I've probably written about this before, but in Ukraine rain works differently than in in the Western US. There are some days where the clouds move so fast that they overtake you in automobiles, and when they're full of rain, that leads to sudden torrential downpours that get you soaked, then disappear in an instant. So, just as Elder Kauffman and I realized how far from home we were, we also realized that we were about to get drenched. And then we realized that the black clouds went all the way back to the horizon--it wasn't going to blow over quickly. We decided to start heading home.
We made it about a hundred feet when the clouds basically turned on the faucet on top of us. We ran to a sidewalk next to a partially-constructed apartment building that had been covered with wood by the construction crew, only to find that the rain was coming so hard, and there were so many cracks in the roof, that we might as well be standing in the rain anyway. We saw a covered bus stop about two hundred feet away, and after psyching ourselves up a bit, we sprinted to it. Now, we've been on our missions a while now (as of today, 9 months since I went in the MTC), so our shoes are starting to get really pretty worn down, and when they do that, they get really slippery, especially on wet surfaces; and for some reason, the white paint lines on crosswalks (they have the horizontal "zebra stripe" crosswalks here) turn incredibly slick, so as we ran, we had to dodge puddles, cars, and white painted lines, all the while getting soaked thoroughly. We made it to the bus stop, then realized that we had a sport day activity that evening, and we'd have to get all the way back to our apartment before that. We quickly found out as well that there were no buses or anything that came to that stop that would take us anywhere we wanted to go. We had to go it alone.
We ran from cover to cover, trying to wait for times when the rain would die down, but in general just having to sprint through the worst of it. Finally, we reached a large parking lot with several covered spaces. We went into an empty covered space and waited, trying to plan our next move, when we noticed a little old man slowly walking towards us through the rain. He came in and walked up to us and, obviously drunk, asked, "Is there life after this one?" We said, "Yes," to which he cackled maniacally, held out his hand, and said, "Where's my dollar?" We told him we didn't have any money, so he asked again, "Is there life after this one?" Elder Kauffman and I looked at each other, then at him (to which he cackled again), bid him "Dopobachinya" ("See ya") and ran out to the street. We stood there for a minute, waiting for traffic to die down, when we glanced back and saw the crazy drunk man slowly walking after us. Thankfully, there was a convenient break in the traffic, so we darted across and ran a brief evasion maneuver, eventually stopping at an overhang on an apartment building. We waited there for a minute before deciding that we were already wet enough, we might as well just go the rest of the way home, even though it was still a good fifteen minute walk.
The worst part? As soon as we stepped into the apartment, the sun was shining through the windows, and the storm had passed.
I've included a picture of myself in the middle of this excursion, just to help show how wet I was. This, mind you, was after the rain had died down quite a bit. All in all, it was a really fun adventure, and now that I've dried off, it makes a good story.
Well, that's my long-winded email for this week. Talk to you again later!
--Elder Brett
In other news, we had exchanges last Friday and Saturday, so I was paired up with Elder Kauffman, who was in my MTC group and with whom I've gotten to be pretty good friends. We decided, as usual, to go contacting, and so we decided to explore the area a little bit (there's a few far-reaching parts that I'd never been to). We had just traveled to the farthest boundary from our apartment when we realized that the sun had just gone dark. Now, I've probably written about this before, but in Ukraine rain works differently than in in the Western US. There are some days where the clouds move so fast that they overtake you in automobiles, and when they're full of rain, that leads to sudden torrential downpours that get you soaked, then disappear in an instant. So, just as Elder Kauffman and I realized how far from home we were, we also realized that we were about to get drenched. And then we realized that the black clouds went all the way back to the horizon--it wasn't going to blow over quickly. We decided to start heading home.
We made it about a hundred feet when the clouds basically turned on the faucet on top of us. We ran to a sidewalk next to a partially-constructed apartment building that had been covered with wood by the construction crew, only to find that the rain was coming so hard, and there were so many cracks in the roof, that we might as well be standing in the rain anyway. We saw a covered bus stop about two hundred feet away, and after psyching ourselves up a bit, we sprinted to it. Now, we've been on our missions a while now (as of today, 9 months since I went in the MTC), so our shoes are starting to get really pretty worn down, and when they do that, they get really slippery, especially on wet surfaces; and for some reason, the white paint lines on crosswalks (they have the horizontal "zebra stripe" crosswalks here) turn incredibly slick, so as we ran, we had to dodge puddles, cars, and white painted lines, all the while getting soaked thoroughly. We made it to the bus stop, then realized that we had a sport day activity that evening, and we'd have to get all the way back to our apartment before that. We quickly found out as well that there were no buses or anything that came to that stop that would take us anywhere we wanted to go. We had to go it alone.
We ran from cover to cover, trying to wait for times when the rain would die down, but in general just having to sprint through the worst of it. Finally, we reached a large parking lot with several covered spaces. We went into an empty covered space and waited, trying to plan our next move, when we noticed a little old man slowly walking towards us through the rain. He came in and walked up to us and, obviously drunk, asked, "Is there life after this one?" We said, "Yes," to which he cackled maniacally, held out his hand, and said, "Where's my dollar?" We told him we didn't have any money, so he asked again, "Is there life after this one?" Elder Kauffman and I looked at each other, then at him (to which he cackled again), bid him "Dopobachinya" ("See ya") and ran out to the street. We stood there for a minute, waiting for traffic to die down, when we glanced back and saw the crazy drunk man slowly walking after us. Thankfully, there was a convenient break in the traffic, so we darted across and ran a brief evasion maneuver, eventually stopping at an overhang on an apartment building. We waited there for a minute before deciding that we were already wet enough, we might as well just go the rest of the way home, even though it was still a good fifteen minute walk.
The worst part? As soon as we stepped into the apartment, the sun was shining through the windows, and the storm had passed.
I've included a picture of myself in the middle of this excursion, just to help show how wet I was. This, mind you, was after the rain had died down quite a bit. All in all, it was a really fun adventure, and now that I've dried off, it makes a good story.
Well, that's my long-winded email for this week. Talk to you again later!
--Elder Brett
Big news from Ukraine... (July 4, 2007)
Hello everyone! So, this has been an exciting litle period of time recently. First of all, I had my monthly interview with President Davis, and instead of the usual "How are you? How can I help? Well, see you later," he instead revealed to me the reasons why I've had every companion I've had up to this point, and he revealed what my plan was for next transfer. Up to now (and even including now) I've had a lot of companions who, though in some cases were really cool people, they just weren't exactly the best missionaries in our mission. I've spent a lot of time wondering why that was always the case, and then, in my interview, the "veil was parted" so to speak, and pretty much everything was laid bare. At first I thought President Davis was angry with me, but it turns out it was almost exactly opposite, which is good. It was really a cool interview.
Then, the biggest, coolest news in a long time--the Kyiv Ukraine temple, which was announced in 1998 and has held the "record" if you will for longest period after it's announcement before work began on it, had it's groundbreaking a week ago from Saturday! It's estimated to take about three to five years to build, but the important thing is, it's on its way...finally.
Well, sad as it is to say, that's about all that was exciting about this week. We've been doing a lot--a LOT--of street contacting and tracting, but so far, little has come from it. We keep trying to work with the members in our ward, but I have a sneaking suspicion they don't like my companion too much...he doesn't exactly go out of his way to be endearing to people...
Well, have a good week, I love you all, and I'll write again next week!
--Elder Brett
Then, the biggest, coolest news in a long time--the Kyiv Ukraine temple, which was announced in 1998 and has held the "record" if you will for longest period after it's announcement before work began on it, had it's groundbreaking a week ago from Saturday! It's estimated to take about three to five years to build, but the important thing is, it's on its way...finally.
Well, sad as it is to say, that's about all that was exciting about this week. We've been doing a lot--a LOT--of street contacting and tracting, but so far, little has come from it. We keep trying to work with the members in our ward, but I have a sneaking suspicion they don't like my companion too much...he doesn't exactly go out of his way to be endearing to people...
Well, have a good week, I love you all, and I'll write again next week!
--Elder Brett
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