Hello Family!
This week has just flown by!! I feel like i was just barely writing you all! This week we had a great zone conference with the President of the Europe East Area, Elder Schwatzer(something like that), which was great. It was amazing to see how deep of a knowledge he had of the gospel and how smoothly he could move from one point to the next, connecting seemingly impossible points of his lesson together making it very powerful. He presented a very interesting lesson on a different way of looking at the message we teach and different diagrams. He also taught us how to approach people and talk to them about the gospel by showing us how he would ask someone on a date using his wife. It was pretty comical and just slightly awkward but he had some great ideas that should help us talk to more people. His wife also had the chance to teach us too and it was really interesting to me and for some reason hit me pretty hard. She talked about being witnesses of Christ and how when we present ourselves as his messengers, we dont need to kinda skip around our real purpose of talking to them, just to keep them from yelling at us and walking away. We can go up to them and say with the power and authority of our calling, "We are Representatives of Jesus Christ and he has called us through a modern day prophet to come to you and share the message of his restored gospel." Just that statement right there is sooo powerful when you stop and think about it and honestly, any person who takes life seriously and is concerned about there salvation in the slightest would stop to at least hear what you had to say if they heard you say this. It's an approach I'm going to start applying as soon as i can. Sometimes, unfortunately, you get a little caught up in the routine of what you say to people each and every day, hour after hour, and you almost expect rejection each time. It was a breath of fresh air to hear about these different approaches we could use and i certainly hope that these will help us find those people who are ready or at least be able to plant some seeds. A miracle that happened this week was that i was able to sing without any hinderment for the zone and President Schwatzer, even with the nasty sickness I had. I still have something like a cold but for the time i was singing, it went smoothly. Thanks for your prayers! I know that it helped me portray the Spirit i wanted to be felt in that room. The Spirit is such a wonderful tool that is so desperately needed. Doing this work with the Spirit really makes all of the difference, literally ALL of the difference. We are basically just to American teenagers walking the streets of Ukraine speaking terrible Russian without it. I love this gospel and i love this work. Thanks for all the support you all give me. I received that package and i wanted to thank you so much Mom!!! It was so nice to get that. I used my Card and it works fine. Thanks Dad! Well I love you all and I hope you Have a great week ahead of you!:)
With Love,
Elder Ostler
