Thank you all for your emails, prayers, and love. It always means so much to me. It's weird that it's P-day again but it's been a good one so far. I bet you're all wondering who my new companion is? Well, I was pretty surprised at transfer meeting because I thought I'd be training but I am now serving with Elder Harris from Kaysville, UT! He is pretty cool and we get along just fine. He played percussion for several years and knows Gerrit (Elder Seymour) pretty well! So it's a small world. And for the first time in a long time, he is older than me in mission age, only by 1 transfer though. So he's in Elder Robison's and Bolingbroke's group going home at the end of May. SO if I stay in Mariupol next transfer I will be his last companion. Pretty sure I will but transfers have been changing all the time so it's hard to say. President Podvodov talked about this at transfer day and said that transfers were changed several times due to many different factors and he felt instantly who needed to be changed and with who. He asked us to all pray about our new companions though because the mission at this time is truly how the Lord wants it. I prayed and feel that this is true. Elder Harris is a hard worker and we seem to have the same views about a lot of things so I'm excited to work with him. We decided that we want to put a focus on working with part-member families because there are several of those here on Left Bank. This transfer is only going to be 4 weeks because of some scheduling things with Salt Lake so it's going to fly out the window. Our zone is pretty unique right now. Elder Harris and I together, missionaries at the end of their missions, Elder Bolingbroke and Fife, also going home in May and a greenie, and Sisters Erekson and Armknekt, going home in July with me and August. Basically we're an old district except for Elder Fife, but this also means we will have a lot of experience. But right now it's only us elders because Sister Erekson was still sick at transfers so they put her in Donetsk to recover fully from whatever Mariupol did to her (super bad air quality because of the factories) but then at the same time a new sister serving in Makeevka had had enough and went home so they put the sisters that should be here in Makeevka in a threesome and the APs are looking for a mini-missionary to serve in Makeevka but if they don't find any then it will just be us elders here this transfer. Interesting stuff. Sorry I just realized I've been ranting on and on and maybe it's boring to you but it's whats going through my mind right now haha.
The only investigator I have to give an update on is Denis. He's doing good but now his mom doesn't want him coming to Church until summer. And her other concern is that Denis won't make it to church, let alone stay for three hours because he can't sit up straight. So we've been thinking that maybe everything we've been telling his mom is coming off just things WE want to see happen, not what Denis wants and have asked Denis to explain his feelings to his mom. Tomorrow we have another lesson and are bringing our branch mission leader along so that he can meet him and maybe add some insight to the situation. There're a lot of things that go into play, like after baptism will he come to church every week, who will make sure that happens, etc. He is ready for baptism, no doubt, but we're running into a wall now it seems. This upcoming week looks promising, we've talked to several people on the phone (just old contacts and investigators) who are interested in meeting with us. Basically we just need to get out and really work the area, something that Sanger and I couldn't do. We're hoping to find several new investigators and really get the work moving.
Now for some comments/tidbits. No, I don't know who all will be flying home with me from other missions. And we can't leave the airport anymore on trips, so my flights home will just be sitting in airports and waiting for the next flights unfortunately. I really wanted to go to the Kiev Temple again but someday I'll make it back here. And it snowed a lot here yesterday, I forgot to mention this. The roads were really bad because there's no snow plows or anything like that. Most of the snow has melted for the most part already but people say winter will be here until April now. I thought we were done with winter! And for our district meeting Saturday we had a lesson about family history. It's a lesson I'd like to share with you all in FHE when I get back. But we got on the family history website, as well as createfan.com. We still have a few more family names to find but it's really cool to see all of the generations of family go back. I want to get more into family history when I get home. And you may have been wondering this the whole time you've been reading my email - but the title of this week's email is from Preach My Gospel because the world gets darker and darker and darker every day.
I love you all and hope that you have a great week! Know that you're always in my prayers and I think about you often. The church is true, I know it with all my heart. I'll talk to you all next week!
Старейшина Каун
Украинская Донецкая Миссия
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