jakemcgrathmission: Conference Week x2 (Week сімдесят сім)

Well, this was a week where you could say that the days were long, but the week was very short. All in all, it's just one of those weeks where you do so much that you that you don't even realize that it's P-day again. Most of this week, we spent in L'viv because we had a bunch of things going on, but we were in Chernivtsi for a few days. Before we left to L'viv, we were able to meet with a new investigator named Vladik, he's pretty cool. We planned on teaching the restoration lesson, but we realized way at the start that he likes to talk, and he needs the plan of salvation more, so we decided to focus more on that. Also, during that day, we had an extra hour since once of our lessons fell through, we decided to contact, but in a little bit of a different way. We took our hymn books with us, and we asked people if we could sing them a song really quick. That was a cool experience, we were only able to sing for a few people, but when we did, they all seemed to enjoy it. It's crazy how beautiful three terrible voices can sound when sung in harmony. I think the spirit must have changed the tone of our voices or something, because they all said that we sung like angels, and I can tell you, when we sing to open up companionship study, everything that's living starts running away haha. But that was a great experience and we were able to talk to them about music and how that helps us feel the spirit and it led to some really good conversations.

Anyhow, eventually we did make it back to L'viv and there first of all, we had exchanges with the zone leaders. This time I was serving with an elder named Elder Eller. He's awesome. We got along really well, and we ended up having one of the best exchanges on my mission. We ended up having a lesson with Ihor and his family. If you remember, this past summer, I had the opportunity baptize Ihor and this week was the first time I had visited him since that day. He's been having some hard times lately, so it was nice to go out and visit his family, cheer them up a little bit, and them bring some joy into their lives through a wonderful lesson. We were actually there for a good amount of time, because before we started the lesson, we ended up playing a few games and we made some super delicious doughnuts. Man, I haven't had a good doughnut in a very, very long time, so it was pretty cool to learn and actually make some very good doughnuts. Then after we made that food, we all piled into a tent that they have inside their apartment and had the lesson there. All in all, it was awesome to see Ihor again and spend a few hours with him.

Finally, to get to the title of this email, this past week, we had a zone conference (for the missionaries) and district conference (for all the members in Western Ukraine + missionaries). Both of which were awesome. Both were also a bit sad. This was the last zone conference with the sisters that I served in the MTC with. It's pretty crazy to think that they go home at the end of this transfer. This week I hit 18 months of the mission, and time really does flyyy. But that was kind of sad, it'll be weird to still be serving without them. Zone conference went well, I learned a lot about the relationship between Charity, Faith and Hope. Then district conference, that was off the charts!! It was amazing to see so many faithful, wonderful members, come in buses and trains to get to L'viv so we could have this conference. We had over 200 people show up and it was just so great to see everyone, especially the members from Rivne that I've missed so dearly. But this was kind of sad for me as well, since this will most likely be my last district conference on my mission. I've grown to love so many of the members here in Ukraine and I don't want to leave them. We sang "God be with til we meet again" as the closing hymn, and that just killed me, I got soooo sad there. But it's all good, I'll come back and visit everyone again. All in all a great week, Nadia, the eight year old that we were teaching, got baptized after district conference and she was so happy. Such a good week, talk to you all later!

Старійшина McGrath

Moroni 7 Read and ponder this chapter. Such a good one that teaches us all about Charity, faith, and hope.