My Dear Family,
Another week has passed by and we have all been saved by "baba leta"- grandma summer. The cold weather came rolling in like it was here to stay but luckily the predictions were right and the warm weather returned and with it rain. This week we had another chance to go to donetsk for some counseling among the Zone Leaders. IT was another great experience and we then went from there to Lugansk to share the newly acquired statistics and ideas with our elders there. We returned after two days of splits to gorlovka where we held another district meeting. We concluded that day with planning and taking some banana bread to a less active who lives in our flat. He is a return missionary who was sent home a little early. He had his feelings hurt and has since researched all sorts of anti-mormon literature and has had his foundation and testimony pretty well destroyed. It was so sad to hear him speak of what he once had and knew what he had was good, and then throw it away because of his taking offense. We plan on meeting with him soon again to help him piece together what he knows to be true and help dismiss some of his skewed views and doubts about God's reality. Prayers on his behalf would be greatly appreciated. It is a tender subject for him and it will not be easy to help him where he is at. We really need the Spirit to be with us every step of the way if we ever want him to be active again. His name is Sasha. Our investigator, Yana, had a chance to come to the General Relief Society Meeting after a day at the Reenok, the market. We began to watch it with four other sisters in the branch when the power splitter they had been using started to smoke and shut the power off. Because it had been cold in the room, the sisters had plugged in two large battery heaters, computer tower, and Projector all to the same power splitter which resulted in over heating. SO.. we then moved it to the geneology computer where we finished it with two other sisters and our investigator. She said she really enjoyed the talk by president Uchtdorf. She is a very hard one to read. She is a nice person but seems to enjoy our friendship more than what we are teaching her. We are planning on having a deciding lesson this week, whether we need to just give her some time without us meeting with her, or continue to try to push along at the snail like pace we have been going. Please pray for Yana. Please also include us in your prayers as we try to find some new investigators this week. It has been a struggle this transfer to find new investigators and this may be the only week we have free to really do some searching and finding.
I absolutly loved the sessions of conference this time around. My companion and i were talking about how it was hard for us to imagine missing the saturday session when so many do. It is such a great blessing and such a small sacrifice on our part to sit and watch and feel what God has in store. We just wanted to make copies of all conference and hand them out on the street!!:) I am so grateful for latter day prophets and apostles. I really liked Elder Christopherson's talk on the atonement. It helped me realize more of what i need to be doing to trully repent and really use the atonement in my life rather than seeing it as a list of points to be checked off. The Gospel just makes so much sense and i am so grateful for the simplicity of it all. The Lord loves us all so much. Just hearing about Kandi makes me soo happy that she is truly choosing to follow the Savior in being baptized by water. THis may seem like a sacrifice to her right now but the blessings and happiness that will come as a result of this righteous choice will far out weigh anything that may have seemed difficult or hard to leave in her life before baptism. I know that as we all take small steps of faith, the Lord will strengthen us and build our character and testimony to last through those hard times of trouble which will come to each of us. I hope all is going well at the DelBianco's and that you are all having such a great time together! Family is so great and is something i want to never take for granted again in my life!! :) Thankyou for all that you do for me. Have a great time at the Joe and Megan Ostler's home. I cant wait to see pictures!!!:)
WIth Love,
Elder Ostler
