Hello Family!!
Well this week has blown by! Monday we travelled back to Donestk for the 4 time within the last week to drop me off at the office to fill out visa papers. That night i was on a split with Elder Garlock, another elder from Mesa, Az and stayed at their apartment for the night. The next morning we called up a taxi and went to go pick up a sister who was coming with us and took off to the airport. We met with a member who works in the mission office got through security allright and made our way to Bulgaria stopping in Kiev to pick up some more of our missionaries and on through vienna where we went out of the airport to eat some McDonalds and returned for our final flight that evening to Bulgaria. The mission president didnt have time to meet with us or house us so we ended up paying for a few hotel rooms. Bulgaria was a beautiful place and was expecially great because of the american fast food resturants they have there that are not found in Ukraine. :) We had half of a day waiting for our passports and werent allowed to do any procelyting so we occupied the rest of our day with seeing the area. We travelled back to the airport the next day and made our way home. We have had a chance to meet with a few investigaotrs and one that is getting very close is a divorced mother named Yawna. She is very nice and knows english very well. She is moving right along and agrees with most of what we say and has faith to believe and find out the things that she doesnt. Its a great attitude to have and right now we are trying to get a member or two to friendship her on our lessons. We had a great sunday with 5 investigators at church and a few visiting members from past branches that i dearly love. They helped me so much in adjusting to my new area after being taken from Sumy. I was so great to see them! We had a few lessons after church which went fairly well with those investigators that attended and made some good progress with them in answering their questions. Those Sundays always feel so good and productive! We hope and pray for those kind of days and it came!
To answer your questions
1. Yes he speaks a little russian and can kind of understand. We went to school in Moscow a long time ago and that is where he learned. Our practices actually took place in english this time which is something different than what we did before. We found it was much more productive in finding mistakes and correcting them. I think the principle goes, if you cant say it right in your native language first, the odds are you probably wont in russian either. It helped alot and made for a much more comfortable environment for us to grow in.
2. We have 10 elders in our zone, soon to be 12 as soon as we open a new apartment.
3. We struggle with unity between members. Misunderstandings and past experiences with other missionaries from the past has given the members a kinda sour impression of the missionaries. Though greatly improving, their is still progress to be made. The missionaries are also working on showing their love and trust and devotion for the work and for all of our members and we recently had a fast for it mission wide, members and missionaries. We look forward to those relationships improving so we can so we can retain new converts better than in the past and also recieve new investigators.
4. All missions have thier own little problems and right now with ours it is our transition from one president to another. Their have been a few misunderstandings because of words that have been spoken that were not understood or explained very well. The mission right now is trying to get all of the missionaries and members looking in the right direction with the same vision in mind. That way we can focus on the Spirit of the law while still obeying the letter of the law. You can imagine how hard it is to get so many young men like us to a point where we all think the same way and come to agreances, positively including all opinions.
Well, thats all my time for today but i wish dad luck with Stake conference and i hope all goes well! I love you all and i hope all is going well for you!.
With love,.
Elder Ostler
How are the Koffords doing? In bulgaria we heard about a bunch of crazy riots going on in london. I hope all is alright!
oh, and Elder stradling from Mesa, Az who is sitting next to me said stake conference went well and that Dad did a great job or something (his mom said):) Keep up the good work!
