jakemcgrathmission: The Hands that Helped (Week сорок)

Well to be honest, this was a very nice week. Unlike most of my weeks over these past two+ transfers, we had no travel, exchanges, or conferences. So that mean't that we could fully focus on our own working area and really building that up to be the best that it truly can be. Overall, this week was really successful, we found new investigators, had some of our investigators come to church, and even had an opportunity to go out and do some service. Let's talk about that first. This week, along with many other branches in this part of the country, had something called helping hands (hence the title of the email.) We went out and helped paint some playgrounds at an orphanage and it was quite fun. We had all the missionaries, plus a few of the members that had time to come out and help us, go out and basically paint for a few hours, see some really cute orphans, and sing some american songs that different members of our branch requested haha. That day I found out that one of our members really likes Bon Jovi and no members, or even missionaries for that matter, like country music, so it was only me when it came time to singing and good old song. Anyway, after going out and painting the orphanage, we head out to the train station because one of the members in our branch invited us to go out to his house in the villages and help in his big garden that he has. So as we're going to to bus station, we're calling the member trying to figure out exactly how to get there, but he's not picking up! I had been there one, so I vaguely remember how to get there, but I didn't remember which bus we needed to take to get out there. Once we got to the train station, and after calling a good amount of times, we had to choose, do we take a bus or do we just not go and reschedule for another day? We chose the first one. After carefully examining each bus based on the times it left, and where it was headed, I chose one that I thought for sure could have been the one that we needed. We get on and start driving. And we keep driving. Finally, we're reaching the end of the bus ride and I realize...yeah this isn't the right bus. In short, our plans got wrecked and we took the same bus all the way back to the bus station and got to the church a short after that. Good lesson to learn haha, maybe think a bit more before making an impulsive decision. All in all, it was quite the experience both on the learning and having fun side.

The rest of the week went very well. We had a good amount of people at each of our activities, and had a really good church service. One member, who was giving a talk and teaching third hour, read the President Nelson talk about ministry during sacrament meeting and then we ended up watching the same talk during priesthood. I know that talk pretty well now haha pretty interesting. He does make a very good point though that serving others is very important as we can help not only others but ourselves as well. As we serve others, I know that we can receive so many blessings and we can for sure come closer to Christ. We also had a good zone skype call where Elder Shuley and I announced our zone goals for this upcoming transfer. We talked about how we can better improve as a zone and what we did well this past transfer. It went really well, now I just hope that everyone puts a focus on these goals over these next weeks. Finally, P-day this past week was very good. We ended up going to the Rivne zoo which was very fun, there are lots of interesting animals and just got to explore and cool park. All in all it was a great week and excited for the next one. Have a great week everyone and talk to you soon!

Старійшина McGrath

Mosiah 2:17 Read and ponder these words. Basically, the topic of this email is service, always be serving others!