jakemcgrathmission: Officially not a greenie anymore!! (Week двадцять один)

Well, my training has officially ended and I am not a greenie anymore. Now, I've got a new comp and I can just put 100% focus on the mission and helping people come unto Christ. Anyway, this week was quite the adventure. On Wednesday, transfers officially happened and Elder Hill moved into the apartment and became my comp. Elder Hill has been serving for 16 months now and is awesome. He's very good with the language and has been teaching me a lot. He likes to work hard and is a great example to me of a faithful servant of the Lord. I hope to learn a lot from him over these next few weeks. Another thing is that new missionaries came in on Wednesday and since I'm serving in L'viv right now, I was able to meet all three of them. They are awesome people and I know that they will be good missionaries as well.

Anyway, let's jump into the week. This week we taught a good amount of lessons, contacted for a little bit, and had this finding activity as a district in center. For this finding activity, we had cards, and on each side it had a picture of a prophet, one from the Bible and one from the Book of Mormon. And on the Bible prophet side, it said, Ви знаєте історію цього пророка? Which translates to, do you know the story of this prophet? So then we'd talk about the story of Paul or David and Goliath for a minute. Then, we'd turn the card over and showed a Book of Mormon prophet that had a similar story to one in the Bible, and ask them if they this prophet. Many people gave different answers and this was a great opportunity to introduce the Book of Mormon and talk about what it is and how prophets play a role in the Book of Mormon. It was a really good finding activity and it was very successful activity. I was able to bear testimony on prophets and the Book of Mormon multiple times, and I just want to say that the Book is true and prophets really do lead us today through modern day revelation. We can learn a lot from both of them and I encourage you to study the Book of Mormon and the teachings of the prophets.

Anyhow, for game night this week, we actually had one of the investigators here come and teach us how to do calligraphy. He's super cool and is such a good artist. We actually did calligraphy on rocks and wrote like one of our favorite scriptures or quotes. I ended up doing Jacob 6:12, my family scripture that is quite short and powerful. I'll attach a picture of it today, but let me tell you beforehand, I am not an artist. So this rock with the scripture in Ukrainian is my best effort haha, other people's calligraphy was a lot more cooler. But hey, effort is the most important part. Also, for English practice this week was super fun. Elder Hill and I taught together for the first time and we taught the intermediate class all about body parts. Then we played a fun game of simon says, they're not the best at it, but it was quite fun to do. All in all, we had a really fun week and had some successful activities.

Finally, I'd like to share a quick story with all of you about something that happened to me this week that was quite funny. So Elder Hill and I are walking to all lessons super far away and we're taking this dark, sketchy path. So we're walking and then all the sudden, Boom!! We fall through into this puddle and struggle to get out. Our shoes are wet and that was not good, so we finally end up getting to this apartment where the less-active family lives, and I look down and my pants are superrr dirty. Like the bottom third of my pants had a ton of dirt on it, so that was kind of awkward for that lesson. Had to explain that to them, but the lesson went well. That was a funny story, I hope at least one of you gets a kick out of it. I guess growing up in Saudi didn't prepare me to avoid puddles that are frozen over. Best part of the story though, the less active family went to church the next day! Anyhow, I hope you all have a great week and keep up the good work!! Always remember the Savior!

Старійшина McGrath

Mosiah 14 Read it and ponder it. Such a powerful chapter about the atonement!!