4-26-2011

Hello Family!!! Sorry its been so long since i sent pictures! Hopefully these will be sufficient for a while. I'm just starting to realize how much more i should be taking pictures of what i am doing:) This week has been pretty good! This last Sunday was a lot of fun in our branch. Since it was Easter Sunday it was great to see all of the traditions they have here that i never knew about. One of the main traditions was the making of this little 'cakes' of some kind. They kind of looked like muffins but were much taller. I think in the Provaslavnic church here they take the cakes and have them blessed by the priests with holy water. So, since we don't really believe like they believe we had a great time just eating the cakes and talking. They also have the fun tradition of painting eggs like we do but they have a little game to go along with it. After the eggs are all set and hard boiled, we would all grab eggs and hold it so that the nose of the egg was pointing up and we would tap them against others egg's until one of them would crack. Whoever's didn't break that was the person that won. It was pretty funny and I'm actually not too shabby at the egg cracking game:) you'd all be surprised:) Then to top things off just perfectly was the confirmation of Kolya. We had the opportunity to stand in the circle as the branch president gave him the gift of the Holy Ghost. It was such an amazing feeling to take part in that and realize that he had finally become a member of the church after so many years. It was great!!

SO, below are the pictures.  I hope all is going well at home and it was so exciting to hear about the baby blessing!  I'm so happy for you, Megan and Joe!!  You two will be great parents!  i love you all and I can't wait to hear from you!

With love,

Elder Ostler

This is a picture of the Azov Sea.  It was pretty cool!!!

This is an old USSR piano at the church building where we meet.

This is me eating one of my first Shaorma's (maypma) and Mariopul is famous for having the best!  the meat is kind of sketchy so its one of those things in life you try once and don't really have the desire to try again. :)

This is our church building here in Marioupol.

Where our toilet once was.

Our lovely sink.

One morning, we had a very large man come and start banging on the door so he could come in and fix something.  That something ended up being the whole sewage system in our apartment.  Soon, we had all the apartment's workers walking in and out of our apartment carrying big, rusty metal plumbing out and then replacing it all with plastic parts.  Pretty exciting morning...that's for sure!!  We ended up giving all three of the plumbers a Book of Mormon.  Great opportunity to share the gospel just from inside our home!

This is our district watching conference. Something was wrong with the recording, so the Russian translation went at the same time as the English so we heard both at the same time and had to pay VERY close attention in order to understand.

 This was a picture from the baptism of Kolya.  Elder Smith, Kolya and I.

 This is a picture of pretty much everyone who attends our branch,

though last Sunday we had a few more because of the Easter holiday.

          This is me singing "I Know That My Redeemer Lives" in Russian at the baptismal program.

So....we had some previous elders who used the wall as a dart board, so we had the opportunity to wall putty the holes and put up new wall paper! 

This is the wall after the wall paper was removed.

This was after new wall paper was put up. It was beautiful!  I think you would all be proud. :)

This was taken when I was on a split with another elder when we were searching in the countryside for a contact we had received a while back that needed to be found.



4-18-2011

Hello Family!!


So the baptism this week went very well! Kolya will be receiveing the Holy Ghost this next week and we look forward to this. It is somthing hard to describe when you see the happiness of the individual being baptized as they come out of the water. I had never seen him smile as much as he did that saturday. I think he will make a great, strong member of the church here in Ukraine. For the part of the program before the baptism, i had the chance to sing I know that My Redeemer Lives in russian. I felt like it went really well and many of the members thanked me afterwards. Somthing i am really striving for is the ability to portray a message through music in a way that does not pull attention to myself but points it all towards the savious and the feeling of the spirit. It feels so much more rewarding to know that the spirit was brought into that room and that is all i need. To answer your question i have been translating some of the hymns i have accompaniment for that are in English to Russian. This gives me more options to choose from when members ask me to share something or i volunteer.

So, this week we had a rather interesting experience while i was on a split with one of the zone leaders from Donetsk. We went tracting in the afternoon when the people are not quite soo hostile and we got let in which is almost unheard of. There was a really nice old grandma who led us into her tiny flat and then commenced to tell us of how she knew we were missionaries and that she had met with some sister missionaries a while back, maybe a couple of years ago. She kept asking if it was really just by chance that we were there with her but we assured her that everything happens for a reason and that God wanted us to be there at that moment with her to share our message. As we proceded to share a message about the plan of salvation, we learned that she had both a book of mormon and Doctrince and Coventants which was rather interesting to us. What even further amazed us was when she started quoting from the D&C. She knew it extremly well but was very confused on a few points because she had come to conclusions about the meanings of words by herself and not with the assistence of church members and priesthood leaders. We ended up just trying to help her understand what she didnt understand in the D&C and left with prayer. She was a pretty interesting lady but it was amazing to think that there were people out there that were already so far along that had just gotten lost along the way because they didnt have anyone to direct them. Hopefully we can help her out. Well, my time's about up but thankyou for all that you do for me. I love you and i hope to hear from you soon!

With Love,

Elder Ostler

4-11-2011

Hello Family!!


Great News!! Our companionship will see its first baptism this Saturday!! We are really excited! My companion Elder Smith will be baptizing him about which he is very excited. He would not stop pacing the floor and calling missionaries the moment we got home to let them know he was getting to baptize someone. The story behind this investigator is pretty amazing and his desire for baptism completely came out of the blue. He has been investigating the church for the last 2 or 3 years. His name is Kolya and he is about 25 years old. Just thursday night we were on a lesson with different investigator named Michael who had seemed to be making good progress from what i had heard from previous elders. We met with him for the first time and i noticed that he kept showing doubts that Jesus Christ really did what he did. We were supposed to get him to the point where we could ask him the baptisimal questions so it was surprising to me that somehow he had made it through all of the lessons and believed the book of mormon was true without having a testimony of Christ. So, we've got some serious re-teaching to do coming up here soon.. but thats another story for another day. Sorry, back to Kolya. So, we had invited a new convert who is about his age to be on the lesson with us named Sasha who is a super great guy. He was running a little late but just happened to see Kolya at the bus stop and so he asked him to come on the lesson with us. He said sure and they both showed up. Since the concern we had for Michael was about faith in christ, We watched Finding Faith In Christ with him and testified. The movie was great but once it was done, Michael started get mad about how in the film he didnt help the rich and continued to talk about how he didnt think that Christ really performed the miracles he did. This is when the natives took over:) Both Kolya and Sasha defended our beliefs fearlessly and pretty effectively. What suprised us all was that Kolya was one of the first to testify because we had never heard him do that before. He told Michael that he wasnt even a member of our church but he had gained a testimony of the reality of what Christ did and proceeded to bear a great testimony. Though the lesson brought up some serious issues with Michael, we all came to the agreence that we needed to invite Kolya to be baptized and that he was ready. We set up with him the next day after institute and talked about his testimony that we had witnessed just a day before. He eventually told us that he was ready for baptism and everything thing went great from there. He has already been interviewed and seems to be doing great. It was amazing to sit back and see how the Lord has blessed us without us having really done much with Kolya. I know this is a result of the efforts we make to be obedient and i am so grateful for it. I can testify that the Lord works in mysterious ways. This baptism totally came out of the blue. We are excited for this baptism and it sounds like i will have the chance to sing at it too which will be fun. Anyways, thats about it for this week and i hope to fill you in on our other investigators this next week. I love you all and I hope you have a great week!!!



With Love,

Elder Ostler

4-4-2011 A DAY OF MIRACLES...A DAY OF REJOICING!

Hello Family!


Well, this has certainly been a week of surprises! This last friday I was transferred to the city on the Azov Sea called Mariupol. I have also been called to be senior companion over an elder a transfer younger than i am named Elder Smith from Houston, Texas. We are about 20 min from the beach here and it was pretty amazing to look out across the waves after church this last sunday. For some reason they didn't try to watch any of conference live here is this branch even though they just had all of the satellite stuff set up on our building not to long ago. I think we should have the opportunity to watch it soon this next Sunday which will be great. Im really excited and i sounds like it will be really great. Since i've gotten here, we have had a couple lessons with investigators and its amazing to see the gift of tongues come so steadily and suddenly. I dont think i've talked that much before in my life since, as you all know, im not the most talkative person.:) The russian just seemed to flow and make sense, even with my limited vocabulary. I could see that the people we taught understood. It was so encouraging to see this small success and know it would have been impossible without the Lord's help. It feels sooo good to finally be getting a grip on this language! It was so interesting to me when i heard of RM's who would say that it took 6 months for them to start speaking and about 2 weeks ago i was feeling like it would be impossible to be effective with me as senior companion. It all came so suddenly and it seems like Heavenly Father just loosed something in my mouth that enables it to speak. I can now testify that the gift of tongues is real! I know that the Lord fulfills his promises to us and that when we feel like our weakness hold us down, through our trials he lifts us up. My theme thus far on my mission has been the scripture Ether 12:27, how God gives us trials in order to grow out of and strengthen those places that were one weak. I am so grateful for the opportunity to be out here on a mission. You are right Mom, this is the most trying time of my life and is a test of all that i have every second of every day. Thanks for all your support and love! I hope all is going well and that your surgery went well Mom. I love you all and i cant wait to hear from you soon.



Love,

Elder Ostler