This week was much better!
We started to set smarter and
more meaningful goals and we realized that when we more prayerfully do things
the way that Christ would do it, we are able to achieve so much more. We
finally got settled into our new apartment this week too! This week we had
exchanges in our district which just means I had a different companion for one
day. We had them 2 days in a row so I had 3 different companions for 3 days! It
was kinda stressful to live out of my backpack for a couple days but I survived!! I learned a ton from my zone leaders and they actually helped our
companionship a lot. Good times!
Sad news, our investigator who
had a baptism date dropped us (it's all good though. We're gonna get him
back!)
The hardest thing right now is contacting is just talking
people in the street. Lessons are not
that bad because they’re more structured but when you’re contacting on the
street and just talking to people, 1.
Nobody wants to listen, nobody wants to hear you have to say. There’s
a lot of older people in Ukraine – lots of old grandma and grandpa's and they're pretty grumpy. They think that age equals
knowledge, which it sometimes does, but still they have a saying
that we hear a lot – “the milk is dry on your lips” – meaning you’re just a baby – and that you really shouldn’t be teaching them at all. A lot of the times people won’t even give you response they'll just
laugh at you and then look back down on their phone or just say “something
Ukraine” and keep walking which means no thank you.
Today for p-day we went up on a mountain here in Ivano Frankivsk and the picture doesn't do it justice! It was a super hard ride and
pretty far but it was super fun. I wish we had bikes in this mission! They're SO FAST.
Elder Lukach and I went to a euro shop too. It's kinda like
an outlet store where everything is discounted for some reason. It's really
hard to save my personal money but I'm doing good at that! We got matching ties for about 4 bucks. Way good deal. Then we went to our branch president's house for a barbecue! It was super good. We're planning an independence day activity for the 24th (Ukrainian
independence day) and it's gonna be SUPER huge. Independence day here is one
of their biggest holidays. I'll have pics of me in a vyshyvanka next week. Gonna be good stuff right there!
We also made some super tasty breakfast burritos with
homemade tortillas and stuff. I only cook so I can wear my apron to be honest (thanks Gma J). The food does take some getting used to in some ways. I bought everything for
spaghetti and pasta and all that and it turns out that the spaghetti sauce is
just like ketchup so that was an interesting meal. haha.
We had sports day on Friday – sports day is the coolest
and teaching English too. Everybody here, they have never seen a
football in their life, so it actually gets a lot of conversations going. I teach a lot of people how to throw a
football and it’s just terrible – they could throw it better with their feet
but it’s still really fun.
So with me and Elder Abraham, (from St. George and he played football
in high school too) he’ll just run really far and I’ll chuck
the ball like 50 yards and everybody just goes “yak” which means “how??”… like it's crazy.
I talked to 2 people on the street and I
UNDERSTOOD THEM!! We taught a lesson to
a lady about tithing – she lives across the street from where we do
activities. Another guy came up to me
and asked me how I "got my body". I was
super confused but then he asked how much we exercise…We exercise for an hour everyday. We usually run at the park. Anyways, it was cool because I understood him and had a regular conversation.
We have a busy week coming up and I'll try and take tons of
interesting and non boring pictures! Things are starting to smooth out
little by little and I'm adjusting pretty quickly to missionary life in Europe. It's super hard work but it's so rewarding and amazing to help other people and
also grow so much in such a short amount of time. Thank you all so much for
your prayers! We can really feel their power as missionaries.
Hope everyone has a good week!!
Elder Stott
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