Elder Dillon Stott - Ukraine, Kiev Mission: Week 65

August 20, 2018

Hello My Family-

So this week was super sick. Elder Baxter (Baxton) and I are getting along literally perfectly. There's not a whole lot more that could be going better between us and our ability to work and live together! We're basically the same exact person, so we've just clicked since day one.

This week we had a ton of stuff going on, and there's no way I'd be able to write about it all, so I'll just give a couple highlights.

1.Elder Gallafent went home this week. It was really weird and sad standing at the train station, watching him get on a train, and then knowing that I won't see him again until we're both at BYU. We have served together for 4 transfers, so we've gotten to know one another pretty well.

2. After an investigator sent us home with a kilogram of grapes, we decided to try and make our own Kompot and it turned out pretty good. This week we branched out a little bit more and our fridge now has 20 liters of this stuff in it. We ran out of room both in our fridge and jars and bottles, so we made our last batch super gnarly. It was like 3 litres of water with 5 pounds of grapes, and no sugar because we ran out. Now I've never tasted wine, but let me tell you, this stuff HAS to be as close as it gets!!

3.I waved down what I thought was a taxi to get to the Lohinov's house for family home evening because we were running late, and then this dude that was driving was just driving like crazy and got us there in 15 minutes instead of the 25 it should have taken. I was kinda sketched out but it was so fun. I asked him how much it cost at the end and he just said "whatever you fellas will give me" so I tossed him 100 grieven and busted out of the car. He would win a record for the most laws broken on the road in the shortest amount of time. And then to top it all off, right before we got out, he pulled up and stopped by cops and swore at them and then kept driving. Craziest fake-taxi driver out there hands down. It also wasn't his car that he drove us in. Yeah.. sorry mom!!

4. We bought train tickets this week to go to Ternopil. We wanted to go on Saturday to meet with a couple of people there, and also to run the English Practice that they hold there. We were kinda worried a little bit on Friday night because we wanted to make it as effective a trip as possible, but we didn't have a ton of things to fill our time with. This is where the ~divine design~ comes in and saves us. We get a call from the sister missionaries in L'viv saying that they have a referral for us from Church Headquarters! (It's always nice to get a referral from Headquarters) Then we found out that we needed to call this guy as soon as possible because the sister missionaries in the Temple Square mission were chatting with him on Mormon.org through google translator, so they needed some help quick! We called this man asap. Long story short, of course this guy lives in Ternopil!! So we called him and told him that we can bring him a Book of Mormon and have a lesson with him there the very next day! What a lifesaver. We met with Yuri in Ternopil after walking right passed him and he said hello, then we walk 100 meters more then we get a text from him that said, "didn't I just say hi to you guys? Or was that not you?" We lost it. It started the conversation with him (the second time around) off on the right foot. We had just eaten in a restaurant called Faine Misto before we saw him, and he says: "hey let's sit down and talk at a cool restaurant here!". Next thing you know we're sitting in Faine Misto drinking more and more Kvass.

Yuri is one of the coolest guys that I've met in Ukraine hands down. He's so "golden" as missionaries would describe. For 2 hours we just talked about life and the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and about the Book of Mormon. The nicest thing about it all is that this guy has his head so screwed on his shoulders. He's 25 years old, served 5 years as an artilleryman in the army, and has a ton of questions about faith and God. He said that he would go to church and read the Book of Mormon and pray about it! We all became homies even before we taught him. It was one of the most comfortable and "flowy" lessons on my mission so far. We're hoping that he will quickly progress and grow in the Gospel. My guess is that he definitely will. We ended up spending 5 hours with him that day. I'll be sure to fill you in on what happens with him.

6. I'm not even gonna try to beat around the bush on this one, I'll just be straight up honest and say that we found a pair of hair clippers in the apartment, and with me and Elder Baxter being so impulsive, we each ended up testing it out on one of our legs. Getting in bed yesterday and putting on pants today has never felt so weird. We're going for the "least hairy companionship" look at conference this week. :)