Wowzers, this was quite the week, a lot of things happened and I'll try to cover everything. First of all, to explain the title, we received transfer calls and it was not what I expected. Sadly, Elder Troxymenko is leaving Chernivtsi and now we're going to be a trio in Chernivtsi. Elder Taran is now part of our companionship with Elder Tuttle and I, and guess what, he's a greenie too. So, this next transfer I'll be training two people, that should be quite interesting. A few things to introduce my next companion. Elder Taran is actually native to Ukraine, so he'll be teaching us Ukrainian instead of me teaching him. He was baptized around three years ago and has a strong desire to serve the Lord. He's also really tall, so it's weird to be the shortest person in the trio, two of my three greenies are taller than me, I don't like that. Finally, one more interesting fact, he's twenty-two and already is engaged. He got engaged before his mission and now his fiance is also serving a mission out in the Baltics. Should be a good transfer with the three of them.
Anyhow, this week was super busy and the biggest thing that probably happened was our branch activity on Saturday. We ended up doing a Mexican night, and it turned out to be super successful. We had around 30 people show up, a mix of members and non-members which was awesome to see. Since I'm the district leader here, and this was my idea to do, I took lead of this entire activity. It started out as a branch activity and then kind of ended up being more of a missionary prepared activity for the wonderful people here in Chernivtsi. Elder Tuttle and I ended up cooking all the food, since no one else here knows what Mexican food is, and the other elders built a few pinatas which was cool, they even made an angry bird one. Miraculously, the food ended up turning out good, (Thanks to taco seasoning) and after showing everyone how to make a burrito, even got some and got the real Mexican food made in Ukrainian experience. So in short the part consisted of eating food, hitting a pinata, and doing some just dance. People really got into just dance and we did a few good Latin and Mexican dances that turned out to be super hard, it didn't help that I can't dance to save my life haha. Finally, I also had the opportunity at the beginning to give a spiritual thought. I showed the video "Because of Him" and then we talked about the role of Jesus Christ in our life. People seemed to enjoy that, and I was able to get the number of a non-member, so hopefully we can meet with him sometime this next week. All in all, a great and tasty Mexican branch party!
Other than that, we ended up having two exchanges this past week as well. My first exchange was with Elder Swasey. If you remember, I served with Elder Swasey in the MTC, so it was kind of cool to serve with him for another day and see all the growth within all aspects of our lives. We can actually speak Ukrainian now and so many other parts of our lives have improved. On our exchange, we also had a super interesting lesson with one of the members here. One member here wants to go to the temple for the first time and receive her endowment, so we went along and taught the first temple prep lesson to her. The lesson went really well and she has a good knowledge of the gospel, but she also LOVES music. So at least a few times during the lesson, she started talking about hymns and how much she loves them, and I think that this was the first lesson that someone sung a few hymns for us. haha But she's awesome and I'm glad to have her in the branch. My other exchange was with Elder Troxymenko again. We had a good exchange and worked hard. On both of our exchanges we did a finding activity where we wrote a question on a board and then went out to center and stopped people and honestly, we had super good finding those days. Many people came up to the board and answered the questions, "what brings you happiness?" and "What is wisdom?" From those questions, we connected it to the gospel and people were interested. Hopefully we can start meeting with some of those people this next week. All in all, some really good exchanges this past week.
This past week, even though I've been serving for over 17 months, I still had a few firsts. This past week was the first week that I've ever played scrabble in Ukrainian, and that was HARDD haha. Also, this was the first week that I've held a baseball bat on my mission. When we were hitting the pinatas, we used a baseball bat and that felt super good. Finally, this was the first week that I had a conversation with someone that openly told me that he had cancer and told me that he is angry at God and wants him to cure him. Honestly, I was kind of caught off guard at that, I didn't know what to tell him or how I could help him. I ended up going in the direction of why we have trials. To help us grow. Many verses in the Book of Mormon help us understand this. I thought of three verses, and most of you probably know them. Ether 12:27, God shows us our weakness so we humble ourselves and then through God, weak things become strong. 2 Nephi 2:24, Everything that we do is in the wisdom of God. 1 Nephi 3:7, the Lord doesn't give us a trial that we can't overcome. We have trials so we can fulfill our purpose here on earth and become more like our Heavenly Father. Trials may seem hard, but with God, we can do all things. I tried to explain this to this man outside, but the conversation didn't go in the direction that I wanted. But it really hit me and I learned a lot from that experience. Remember God in all your trials!! Have a great day everyone and talk to you next week!!
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