January 31, 2011

Hello Family!


Wow! that is amazing that Caleb is already getting the priesthood!! That's so awesome! It was great to hear about the many great experiences you have been having Mom. It was so interesting to hear about your experiences with Sister's Dibbs and Wixom. They seem like amazing people. I'm glad you enjoyed the pictures i sent. I hope they give you all a little better idea of what we are doing here and where we live. I was able to give a Book of Mormon away this week again which is always a great feeling. Getting to testify and try to connect with the spirit they have already felt but have forgotten, is always an interesting experience. I can feel the language slowly getting easier for me to understand and speak. I'm still a long shot away but it is coming and it is really exciting! This week i went on a split with an elder from the 2nd district of russian elders in the MTC while i was there and it was good for both of us as we tried our best to testify on the street and teach during the two lessons we had scheduled. The Lord definitely makes us for our inadequacies when we need him most and it was neat to see that at work through out our split. Currently we have 2 investigators on date for this Saturday but its looking like it will need to be pushed back again. Its amazing how hard the adversary works on some of the people here. Sometimes i just wish Satan would learn that he's not going to win and just give up and quick trying to hinder these people's progress. They are so close and we are confident they will soon be baptized. Please keep Stepan and Toleek in your prayers. This week i unfortunately had the mishap of either being pick-pocked or dropping my wallet on a crowed bus. I had pretty much everything except for my passport in it, including about 100$ for rent that we had just pulled off an ATM. We are hoping that some honest person will turn it in but as of right now it hasn't shown up. Other than that this has been a great week full of member reactivation efforts and getting investigators ready for baptism. We had the chance to take an investigator to a baptism this Saturday which was the first i had seen here in country. It was so neat to see the happiness on the man's face as he came out of the water. This gospel in true and i know that with all my heart. I see the happiness it brings to the people who abide by its precepts and it even furthers my testimony of its truthfulness. Thanks for all you do back at home and i hope you all have a great week ahead of you. Cant wait to hear from you.

With love,

Elder Ostler

Hello family!! Another tender mercy this week!!! The computer will actually read my camera this time so im hurrying and uploading a few right now! I'll put the picture number and description below to give you a better idea of what is going on.

Provislavnic Temple, kinda interesting. They are pretty big and they seem to be just about everywhere. The insides of the newer ones are pretty bare but i hear some of the older ones are more decorated. Sometimes as we pass by they do these prayer rituals things outside the building so hopefully i can get a picture for you to see. Most of the people here are Provislavnic from birth because there really hadn't been any other church here for many years.

        This is a memorial for the city of Makeebka because there is alot of mining that is done here in this city.

     This is the Christmas eve dinner we made in our apartment we left. The food was really good and we definitly had a good christmas eve!

When i called home! its kinda blurry but thats alright. Just thought it would be fun to see.

This is the culture building where they used to hold many concerts and performances during soviet times. Its a little run down now but they still do some things there. We could see this from our apartment window.

As we were contacting out on the outskirts of the town we found this garden that had been fenced in by old doors. haha It looked pretty cool!

Also nearby this garden there were some ruins or unfinished building. You see alot of these in that area.

This was the day after new years trying to contact. This was our main area to contact in and there was maybe four or five we talked to the whole time. New years is definitly a big celebration here!

This is the apartment building that we lived in that got closed down. just a little sketchy:)

Another view of our building with the most common transportaion vehicle driving by, the Marshootka! We take these everywhere we go.

This was our district of elders getting ready to sign board. We had 3 native Russians, 1 Canadian, and 2 Americans.

 This is Elder Brady and I in front of our sign board! We had alot of fun doing this in our area.

This was a view of the city in our last area. It shows pretty well how everything was built around the mining factories.

This is me bowling! this is what we have been doing for the last couple p-days and its super cheap. It cost us only 2 or 3 dollars last time we played for 2 hours.

This was at our branch christmas party when they were doing a reinactment of the Nativity. It was alot of fun!

Well, I hope you all enjoy the pictures and are having a great week! We have a baptism coming up this week for a man named stepan so please keep him in your prayers! thanks!

With Love,

Elder Ostler

12-06-2010

Hello Family!!

Well, its been absolutely crazy this last week! So many things have happened that were not really expected. First of all, the Lord has blessed us with many investigators who have committed to be baptized. This hasn't happened in Sumy for a long time. We have two great families we were teaching and a few other great, younger college students, all of which speak English!! It was so wonderful! We also had to call President Fry this week because my companion Elder Kofoed was having some problems with his tonsils. We had to go to a few doctors right away and talk with doctors in Germany and the US. They came to the conclusion that he needs to go to the US and have his tonsils removed. This has really been a little discouraging to both of us because of the timing of it all. With so many people on date for baptism and so many others on the way, we've been trying to figure out why this is happening at this time. We are afraid some may get lost because there is only 1 other pair of elders in Sumy who already had alot on their hands taking care of the our senior couple there. So, just last night we took the 10 hour overnight train from Sumy to Donetsk. For now, it looks like i'll be staying with the office elders for about a week until I can get another companion. Some older elders leave before the end of this transfer so I guess i'll just have to wait and see. We are still not quite sure why i was taken out too but i know that it is all in the Lords hands and that things will work out. It is definitly very hard because i love the people there very much and it has been so great to come to know them better and see the progress they have made. I hope and pray that all will go well there in Sumy.

This last week it snowed about 6 in and it is beautiful. Its a little cold at times, about 22 degrees celsius with wind. My coat has been great thus far but i will definitly have to layer my socks because my feet freeze! the shoes are waterproof though which is a great blessing.

So, im anxiously waiting for these other packages that are coming. They are so much fun to get and everyone just loves it! Thanks again for all of that other great food! It will make this season so happy for us:) Oh, and thanks for sending that Ipod. I really hope it gets here safely. Im here at the office so i should get it soon.

Thanks for everything and and i hope everything is going well back at home! I love you and i cant wait to hear back from you!

January 10, 2011

Hello Family!

Its been a great week here in Makeebka! We had transfers this week and we were told that they are taking us out of our apartment and moving us into another one already be rented by the mission. This is great because that means we will have a shower, heaters, and washer for our clothes!!! Woopie!:) We now have only 4 elders here instead of 6 so we are covering 2 areas now which means we will be doing alot of riding on buses. We have alot of members though so it will be great to be able to work with them. It will also help me with the language and teaching lessons which is great. We also have two investigators that have been meeting with missionaries for a while who quite suddenly wanted to be baptized! they seem pretty solid! One has a family too which is great because that is exactly what our branch needs.  We did alot of tracting this week when we had time and were able to get in a few times which was great. We went across the river near our old apartment to some buildings that hadn't really been touched by us or the Jehovah Witness's so it was great because we were able to then talk to a bunch of people. We hope that those people get back to us soon but we are not sure if any were quite that interested. We hope and pray that they were. Sometimes its pretty crazy and perhaps a little overwhelming to think about the importance of the message we bring and share with the people. Soo many people have not heard or felt the happiness we have felt the happiness that we feel and it makes you want to share the message we have just that much more. We also had the chance to sign board this week in to centers of two areas which was soo much fun! i gave away my first Book of Mormon and held a few conversations with people which felt so good to be able to do. We got alot of contacts to find later which was also great. We had 3 elders singing hymns by the sign board while the other 3 handed out pamphlets and brochures and talked to people. It was a great success and i think we will be doing it alot more now that we have a sign board to present. Well my times up but thanks for all you do family and i hope all is going at home. Congratulations to the Koffords and their son Devin!!! i cant wait to see pictures! I love you all and i hope to send some pictures soon, its just been a kinda strange transfer :)

With Love,

~Elder Ostler

1-3-2011

Dear Family,

I hope you all had a great New Year's this last week! It was such a good time to set some new goals for the upcoming year and I'm excited for all that will come in this upcoming year. This last week we were able to get into 2 different lessons from our tracting some apartment complexes. One was with a younger girl who lived with her boyfriend who seems fairly interested in what we had to tell her. I was showing her some of my family pictures and she said she had seen some of those temples in a book before which was really cool. We have no idea where she saw them but it was great that she was able to make that connection. She also started out by telling us she had a firm belief that the Provaslavnic church was not true which made it alot easier to teach her because she listened to us with an open mind. We are hoping to find her at home this week so we can teach her more and help her progress.   Many of the people we talk to always bring up some of the traditions they were taught to believe and when we ask them how they came to know whether it was true or not, i have not yet met one who answered they had received an answer. It was just something they did.  Its been really interesting to me and has strengthened my testimony when i think back on the times where my testimony was strengthened by the Spirit i would feel when i would seek it out through prayer and obedience. The second person we met with was quite the character. He invited us in right from the start as soon as he heard we were missionaries. He was pretty distracted by different things in the room and it was hard to keep the focus of the lesson as he would suddenly want to show us his medical license or pictures of his family or his cat etc. By some miracle we taught him the first lesson. We hope that he still is interested and hope to get back to him later this week also. Besides that we have been continuing to contact and tract and also meeting with one of the only members in our area. They are great and we hope we can start teaching some of their friends. New Years here was a huge celebration! This is when most of the parties and gift giving happens. We were asked to come in a little earlier so we could be off the streets. The people above us were having a grand party because we could hear them most of the night. Around 1 in the morning, a firework show went off out side our window and we all popped out of bed to watch it. It was super loud but fun to watch. My companion and I said happy new years and went right back to sleep. :) I'll try to remember my camera cord this next week so i can send some pictures of our town but I hope you all have a great week and may the lord be with you in all that you do.

With Love,

Elder Ostler