Hello Again! (November 7, 2007)

Hello again everyone!

Well, we had a good week. One of the companionships in our district had a baptism this past Saturday, so we invited one of our investigators, Lilya, to come and see it. She came and brought her niece along with her, and they both enjoyed it. We plan on meeting with her this Saturday and giving her a baptismal date...we’ve set up a plan to keep in contact with her until then and to prepare her for it, so we have some good hopes about that.

This past Thursday we had the chance to go to a little selo (village, in case you speak English) outside of Kyiv called Irpin. Irpin’s a little larger than most selos, so it has a lot of apartment buildings in addition to little cottage-type houses (they aren’t as nice as they sound...). We met with a member family named the Nakrasov’s. Brother Nakrasov teaches at the militsia academy (“militsia” meaning “police;” it goes back to the Communist days—police were considered “protectors of the elite and rich,” so they organized instead a militia, or, in Ukrainian, a “militsia”). He had us take pictures of ourselves with his militsia hat and jacket on. We weren’t too reluctant.

We’re starting to see a Ukrainian winter finally...and unfortunately. I miss summer already. The temperature just dropped a good deal, leaving us in our winter coats and beanies (which we got for free from a man in a street market because he respected us coming here as missionaries). We had our first snow of the season a day or two ago; it was just a light dusting that melted pretty quick, but still...I remember when it was swelteringly hot as if it was yesterday...

All right, well, I hope you all have a good week! I love you!
--Elder Hurst