Hello from Daky Makeevka!!

Privet family!
 

So this week has been insane, I don't know how else to explain it. I am out of the office and am now serving in DAKY, MAKEEVKA. Makeevka is a city outside of Donetsk, about 30 minutes. We whitewashed in, which means we don't know anything about the area, but I love it already. We have tons of members in our area and are getting to know them really well. Sisters served in our apartment before us so we have high expectations to live up to but it will be fine haha. We talk to lots of people and have a few contacts already so this week we just gotta start meeting with them and getting to know the area better. And I have other news. Hold your breath.... OK.. I'M TRAINING ELDER HARRISON FROM PAYSON, UTAH! He is the oldest in his family of 7, he went to BYU before his mission and studied Greek, super smart, got a full ride to BYU, and we get along great. I kind of had a guess I would train so I wasn't too surprised at transfer meeting when that got announced. Elder Harrison is an awesome elder, I'm convinced that he's the best one I could be training. He's basically training me! He already has amazing Russian, is talking with everyone, and has a great love for the people. I know that we're going to have some great transfers together. Thursday was pretty crazy because we got to the apartment and looked at the area and member books and whatnot and then we're like, Hmm, we need to eat... but I've just been in the office since June and all my meals were made so I don't know what to make hahaha..... but don't worry Mom everything is fine. We get along great and I'm really excited to be in Makeevka at this time. Saturday we participated in a service project with the branch so we got to meet members before Sunday. Very soon the Church is planning on building a new meeting house for Makeevka because they meet in the Center Donetsk one after Center branch gets finished. So we cleaned the site that the Church has purchased. It's a great location. Makeevka needs to have a 75 people average at Sacrament and right now there are tons of less-actives who are just waiting for the new building. But the new building can't be built unless there are good numbers so our work is cut out for us. It's going to be great several transfers though. I know that the Lord always places us in the places we need to be with the people we can grow with the best. My district is great, I love them all. I am training Elder Harrison, Elder Groothuyzen from my MTC group is with Elder Packard (Elder Packard just got trained and is in his third transfer now, he's also the District leader) and then Elder Fish and Efoshkin opened up a new Makeevka area. So I know everyone already and we're going to do some work here!
 

A few cool experiences with Elder Harrison already.... Very first day we were waiting for our taxi to come to the office and pick us up. I said, "Alright Elder, let's go finding while we wait." So we prayed then set off. I gave him the low down on finding and a man was approaching us in the distance. I stopped him and he was pretty interested in listening to the message. I talked about the Book of Mormon and asked him if he'd like to meet us sometime. He did so I asked him for his number. As I was getting out the phone, Elder Harrison just starts testifying like crazy out of nowhere, it was AWESOME! The man definitely felt the Spirit and took the Book of Mormon to read it. We passed him to Donetsk since he lived there, but yeah, miracle first contact. Another experience was we were finding a less-active and the door was locked so we can only call the people on the apartment phone. She wasn't home but Elder Harrison was like, Just say a prayer that someone will answer the phone and let us in. So we did and sure enough the next person we called let us in. The less active wasn't home at all so we left a note then tracted the house. No one was interested but they will be in the future. Basically Elder Harrison is an amazing greenie missionary. I'm so grateful I can be training him.
 

Really quick, some comments/tidbits. I did hear about the age changing for mission service. I already told Brynn my thoughts but I think it's way cool that the age got lowered. It's possible that when I get back Brynn could be getting ready to leave. I am feeling much better, not sick anymore. This weekend we'll be watching General Conferernce so I'll have more to report next week. And yesterday at Church Nadezhda was there and handed me a baptismal invite for this Saturday! She's getting baptized! Miracle!
 

Have a great week family! I love you so much and hope that everything keeps going well for you! Thank you for your prayers and emails, it means so much to me. Talk to you next week!

с любовью,

Старейшина Каун

Украинская Донецкая Миссия