Week 11 - Reality Bites

First full week in…was hard.

Mosquitos WRECKED me. You have to sleep with the windows open because it’s hot and there’s no A/C.  These pictures do not do it justice…this was from when I had less than 80 bites. Now I have about 130 and a throbbing spider bite on my knee. But they’re healing. 

We’ve had 4 lessons all week. It seems like every day our plans completely crashed. No one wants to talk to us on the street. Our apartment is a little sketch and our fridge broke last night. We haven’t had any time to unpack so our stuff and luggage is just sitting around in these empty bedrooms. It’s been so hot and humid. This week was just really hard for me. Probably one of the most discouraging weeks of my life to be honest. The hardest thing is that I just don’t know how to talk to and understand the people yet. It’s really frustrating. BUT IT’S OKAY. 

I love reading the Book of Mormon. I’ve never really READ it for myself and applied it to my life. My advice to all of you – READ it. It’s really important. I wish I would have read it more in highschool...it would have helped me so much.

I like Ivano. It’s probably one of the safest cities in Ukraine. I have some funny and semi-scary stories that I’m going to save until after my mission. We walk everywhere. The missionaries don’t use bikes here. We eat personal pizzas from the market bakery every day. They’re good, but eating them every day is getting kind of old. The juice is good, but it’s never cold. Nothing is refrigerated here. Water is always lukewarm. The members don’t feed the missionaries here like they do in the states. We’ve had one meal at a member’s home. It was really good. No meat jello yet. Thank goodness. The Bontsov family (the one that tricked me last week) is so great. He was the former branch president. He’s really a homie.

We have an investigator who’s looking to be baptized maybe in September. Baptisms are going to be minimal here, which is unfortunate, but I already look forward to helping missionaries post mission. I’ve also never realized how important church members are until now. You should help the missionaries with everything you can. They need you. We had 60 plus at church!

I’m not doing a lot of the teaching yet. I teach with other elders sometimes and they do the lesson part and I just take time to try to talk to the person during the lesson, letting them know that I want to help them and be their friend. I bare my testimony a lot.

I love my Savior and this gospel.  Next week will be better!

-Elder Stott