Lutsk, Religious Conference, and Chernivtsi 600...

Hello everyone! We just finished up a pretty packed week...

First of all, last Tuesday we went off to the little northwestern city of Lutsk for an exchange. Lutsk is a tiny little city with very little that's interesting except for a pretty cool castle that we got to see. There's a really nice restaurant right near the castle that served some of the best borscht I've had in Ukraine, as well as a really good Caesar salad and actual fried ice cream. It was a good exchange.

We got in on time to help set up for a large community religious meeting, which was held in our church. Every year the ministry of religion for the city of Chernivtsi invites all the local leaders of the local churches together for a meeting on how to promote religious tolerance and cooperation to help solve local social and community problems, and this year they chose our meetinghouse as the meeting place.

Several local religious leaders spoke about social problems that their churches are working to improve, including a Catholic priest, a Baptist pastor, and the local Seventh Day Adventist leader. Representing our church was President Malonos, the second counselor in the mission presidency, who talked about the abnormally high divorce rate in Ukraine and the need to help the family remain sacred. In doing so, he talked about our belief in the centrality of the family in the plan of God, and the necessity and importance of eternal marriage and families, mentioning that he himself had been married in the temple for time and all eternity. While the crowd had been relatively quiet for all of the other speakers (many barely even paying attention--one young pastor in a really expensive suit read a newspaper for most of the time), everyone was on the edge of their seats for his talk, and almost as soon as they opened the floor for questions everyone tried to challenge his claim on eternal marriage, asking him to show bible verses proving that doctrine. He told them that he wasn't here to convince them whether or not our church is true, but rather to share an important social problem and the revealed solution to it. He bore testimony of Joseph Smith and the Plan of Happiness, and in the end, everyone applauded and commended him on his talk. The Spirit was present in a very strong, literal sense.

This weekend was also the 600th anniversary of the founding of Chernivtsi, and they had a huge celebration for it. We got to wander around a little and take a look, and it was really amazing. Everything was remodeled and made to look really nice, and a lot of little additions had been made, including a street with sidewalks lined with the name "Chernivtsi" written in Ukrainian, Russian, English, Polish, Romanian, and Hebrew. It was a lot of fun, and a really great experience.

Well, hey, thanks for all the emails, and I hope you all have a great week!

--Elder Hurst