Elder Dillon Stott - Ukraine, Kiev Mission: Week 71

I cannot believe it's October... Blows my mind.

This week was so fast and so good!

We did service out in the middle of nowhere in the outskirts of the city, and it was so fun. We did a lot of manual labor, and a lot of lifting stuff and carrying it back and forth. We harvested a whole field of corn, a whole field of HUGE beets, and then gathered walnuts off the ground until we couldn't see them anymore because it was so dark. I haven't done yardwork or manual labor altogether in so long and I just loved it.

The field is white...

These beets are bigger than Dre's

We are nuts

Our new Pumpkin Gun - a gift for our farm-work

I ate a lot of interesting food this week. We had Krovyanka, blood sausage, and I actually loved it. We ate it cold and warm. Then after that we washed it down with some boiled eggs that were in the water for no more than 60 seconds. It was not as bad as I thought it would be. Then we had basically liver meatloaf, raw meat cooked from salt (???) and then some other stuff too that wasn't half bad, it was actually pretty tasty. I did have the worst food of my mission this week though. I hated tomatoes before my mission, and now I love them. But they offered us pickled tomatoes and I thought to myself that it wouldn't be half bad. Then they showed me how to eat it. You poke a hole in it with your fork and then suck the juice out. I did, and then my mouth was full of this FIZZY tomato juice stuff and I about gagged. I got it down, got scared, and popped the hole thing in my mouth and just chewed it and threw it down. Then the second one, to get it over with and enjoy the rest of my food, and of course, because I cleared those bad boys out so fast, they piled some more on my plate, thinking that it was my favorite food on the plate.. RIP. They were just pure death.

Post-service feast

Blood sausage and Liver loaf - mmmm

Then the next day my comp got food poisoning for some reason that we still can't explain!! We are just super suprised that anything that we ate this week could make either one of us sick. hmm. We're still trying to figure it all out! He would wake up in the middle of the night, sprint to the bathroom and just slowly walk back. Then do it a couple more times before the morning. I felt so bad for the man!!! hahaha. I turned out perfectly okay though. Seasoned veteran.

I prepared to give a 30 minute talk on Sunday, but time got eaten up by the other speakers, so I had to make a last minute plan and talk about something else to save that talk for another time. I ended up thinking of a couple quick stories and wrapping it into the gospel, and then I gave a talk for 10 minutes that I prepared in sacrament meeting while I was playing the hymns on the piano. hahaha. I talked about the idea of looking where you're going, especially in sports. How if your eyes aren't LOCKED in 110%, you'll never get to where you want or need to be. I talked also about how when someone is running a track race of any distance, the second that they look anywhere but forward towards the finish, they become slower. I shared a story about how I was running a 200m race in track, and because I was in 1st place during the last 30 or so meters, I started looking to see if there was anyone around me. I look right, and I'm doing good. I look left to watch this guy go right past me in the neighboring lane. I finished in 2nd. Then I compared it all to 1 Nephi 8, the Tree of Life. How we have to stay LOCKED in on the tree. On that fruit! That joy and happiness!! And how although it's not a race or competition, we can get so distracted by all the things around us that can slow us down. It's interesting to separate the different groups of people in that chapter and to find out what kind of people we can compare them to in our time. Who are the people that got to the fruit and stayed? Who are the other people who got lost, got ashamed, were in the building, etc? If we look ANYWHERE but where we need to be going, our progress is hindered. A big one that I didn't think about until this talk was the effect that looking at other people on the path to the tree can have. It can serve as motivation when you see whose footsteps you can follow, and you can give advice to the people who are behind you and where they should be careful, etc. But if we start comparing ourselves to other people, we get so caught up. We get discouraged and lose hope, or we get prideful and stumble over ourselves and fall. Go study that chapter this week! It's so good. I know I'll be spending some quality time with the Tree of Life this week in my studies. :)

It's getting so cold here.. but I kinda like it. Sweater weather is my favorite and it reminds me a little bit of home. Things are going good with members and investigators here in K-town, and we should have a baptism in 2 weeks from Saturday!! We're so stoked!! We're gonna extend a lot of baptismal dates this week, hopefully.