Elder Dillon Stott - Ukraine, Kiev Mission: Week 85

January 7, 2019

Happy New Years and a Merry Ukrainian Christmas!

My new sub-zero parka

This week was pretty uneventful, but a solid one. We had to stay indoors from Monday evening at 6 pm until the morning of Wednesday, so nothing too exciting happened within the walls of our apartment.

Just a cool little experience that I had that humbled me (as do most experiences on my mission) was when we went out to eat to a place called Matsuri that does a whole pizza/sushi deal. Super good, first off. But in comes this group of 3 teenage looking boys, and they were looking around the restaurant for a place to sit and I just said pleeeeasseee sit anywhere other than right by us. And of course that's what they did. It'd be too long of a story to try to explain why it is that teenage boys have become my least favorite people to talk to on my mission, but long story short is that the vast majority of experiences and encounters with teenage boys especially in groups have not been my favorite, so I've become a little bit more hardened towards them, as I felt like I've had to throughout my mission. Anyways, they could hear us speaking to each other in English and I could tell it caught their attention, and they started talking about English and America and a bunch of other American things, not knowing that we could understand them. Once they said the word America pretty loud, I made a face, trying to catch their attention and show them that I understood they were talking about us. One of the boys raises his voice towards us and was like "hey, don't worry guys, it's not about you!" and so we had a good laugh and then we started talking to them and they were blown away that we new Ukrainian. They asked if we were students, because of our badges. When I gave them the whole spiel (???) about who we were and what we do, they were super respectful and thought it was the coolest thing ever. We had about a 15 minute conversation and left on a super good note, inviting them to our English Practice, and I hope they'll come sometime soon. They were missionaries too, and a group of 3 solid kids! They were from a Pentecostal church and showed interest and common ground with some of the main things that we believed. God always helps me out and humbles me with little experiences like this every time I start to get a little hard-hearted. He's so good at softening our hearts, and I know that first hand.

In conclusion, along with that little story, there's a verse that I love so much that talks about what it is exactly that God can do with our hearts, as long as we allow him to. Ezekiel 11:19 - "And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh,and will give them an heart of flesh". As long as we are willing to give it to the Lord, I know without a doubt from my own experience that He will immediately take our hearts of stone and replace them with one of flesh. It is at that very point that we are able to take upon ourselves the name of Christ, and declare His glad tidings of great joy which are "written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of STONE, but in FLESHY tables of the HEART" (2 Cor. 3:3). When we give our hearts to God, we are giving Him the one thing that He doesn't actually have the power to take from us, because of the eternal gift of agency that we have. Once we GIVE Him our hearts, it is THEN that He has us completely. Once we totally give ourselves to Him, Christ's Atonement can then take action and place in our lives, as we enable it to do so.

I know that God can truly change us in ways that we can't comprehend. It can be hard to give our heart to him 110%, but the second we choose to do so, we will always see that it's worth it, and not only is it worth it, but the blessings that we receive in return are worth so much more than the price we are asked to pay.

Have a great week.