Good blessed Monday morning my wondrous family :)
This week was pretty solid. We had a ton of stuff going on
throughout the week and stayed pretty busy. A busy week means a fast week, so
this week zoomed by pretty quickly.
We only went to the gym one time this week, but we're gonna
go again later today. We were super busy and so was Zhenya. He said he hadn't
gone to the gym at all either so we didn't feel too left out. haha. But we went
with him and Dima small and Dima shred (not to be confused with Dima Yacked
(birthday cake-face Dima)).
We also went to Dima, Lesya, and Zhenya's house on Tuesday
to make pizza with them. It was so whack to be honest. First things first is
that we kinda got super binked on "splitting-up" the cost of everything between
all of us. I bought the meat and the cheese and Zhenya bought the oil. The
missionaries spotted me a little bit so my MSF for the week didn't disappear,
but it still was a sucker punch straight to the wallet. It ended up being the
most interesting pizza that I've ever had. It was kinda pizza but more like an
open face chicken pot pie with pizza feeling..(?) It was all going great until
Zhenya proceeded to pour about 750 ml of mayo straight onto the pizza. No one
said anything, but all the missionaries looked at each other and our faces and
looks said it all. It was homemade mayo too (the best mayo I've ever tasted in
my life) but it ended up being a little much. They piled all of the the food on
the pie crust and shoved it in the oven.
While it cooked we made green borscht that was pretty tasty! Funny story about making that borscht. In the midst of my
confident moment in the language, I wanted to ask them if we should "peel
the potatoes" in Ukrainian. Not a super common word, that everyone knows,
so I was excited to give it a shot. To make a long story short, it took a
couple minutes for them to stop dying from laughter and they finally responded
that "I don't think that you can circumcise a potato.." and then we
all started laughing again. I could've sworn with my life that that's the word
I had learned for peeling. It also makes grammatical sense because the way the
word spells out means to "cut around". I guess I didn't read between
the lines on that one. Always getting humbled, even if it takes talking about
circumcision to do so!
For our game night this week we had the idea of doing some
type of Fear Factor night but blender edition. Basically it was crazy fun and
crazy hilarious. Thankfully, I managed to snag the blender job, leaving me too busy to
drink any of the smoothies. We had some crazy and nasty combinations. It all
kinda fell apart at the end and turned into people dumping everything down the
drain and then we all played ping pong instead. haha.
We did a branch picnic in Dendro Park that turned out to be
super good. We planned food for 30 people, but only 13 came. Some of the best
Shashlyk that I've had in a while. We spent some super quality time with our
small branch and the members that we have here are so awesome and fun. It's
always fun to be able to tell them stories from the mission and also before the
mission because they get to see that you're not just a "robot"
missionary and then you can have a little bit deeper relationship with them. We
told them tons of stories about all of our language messups. They were dying
for a super long time haha.
That night, also, we did sports night that turned
into one of the biggest rainstorms that I've ever seen in my life. We were
tossing the football around (Elder Cluff and I) while we waited for people to
come, and the rain started coming down. Within a couple minutes, we were soaked
from head to toe, but it didn't stop us. Not too long later, we were in
ankle-deep water. We were having a blast. Ball is life!!!
On Sunday we had the opportunity to go to Ternopil. We had
our investigator Vadim come, another investigator Luda, and her husband, us
missionaries, Naadu, Kaiser, and Samuel (the Ghanan members) and the senior
missioanries from L'viv Elder and Sister Andrus with us. We had 10 people in
Ternopil!! Church was awesome. For the first time on my mission I had to
translate for 4 talks and a Gospel Principles 2nd hour. Man it was so fun!! But
hard at the same time hahaha. Vadim drove 110 kilometers just to be able to come
to church, which was super awesome. He wanted to see what church was like in a
smaller city, and said that he felt the same Spirit and loved it just as much,
even though it was led in English! My favorite part of Sunday was when our
other investigator Luda was talking to Vadim who has a baptismal date. She said
to him, "how did they convince you that this is the true church?" and
he thought a little to himself and said "you know, no one really
"convinced me" at all. I just did the things that I was supposed to
do. I read a lot and prayed a lot and with time I receive the answers and
revelation from God." It was so awesome to overhear him so casually
testifying about the gospel to someone he had never met or talked to before.
I feel like so often we are all fear sharing the gospel with
other people, but we forget how simple it all really is. One thing that I
realized while restarting the Book of Mormon earlier this week was simply how
the love of God is the reason behind everything. The reason the restored gospel
exists in our time is because of the love of God. The reason we are blessed
with the gift of families is because of the love of God that is perfect and never-ending. It's the reason behind everything! I was so surprised when I was
reading in one of the first chapters of the Book of Mormon about Lehi's vision.
Despite the things that he heard and saw and felt that overcame his soul, the
first thing that he testified about directly after that intense experience was
of the love and goodness of God. When we teach the gospel in an atmosphere of
this Christlike love, then the Spirit is present there with us. When the Spirit
is present, conversion takes place. Love truly is the catalyst of conversion.
I love you guys!!
Have a powerful week.
--
Elder Dillon
Stott
Vul. Yabluneva
1
S. Sofiivska
Borshahivka
Kyivska oblast
08131
Ukraine
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