jakemcgrathmission: Exchanges and Datess!! (Week Вісімдесят шість)

Well, this was a pretty great week if I may say so myself. We had a few good things going on and it's always good to be a missionary. One bigger thing that we had this week was exchanges with the zone leaders. We had the great chance to head to L'viv and serve with the zone leaders for a day. They're pretty great missionaries and I had the chance to serve with Elder Cluff for another day. We had a pretty good and normal day full of teaching, finding, and studies. We had two lessons, one with a member and the other with one of their investigators. We actually stopped by the members work and talked to him there. There we had a really good discussion about church. We planned on reading some from Moroni six, and when we opened up to that chapter, he told us that he literally had read that chapter just a few days ago. So instead of us just teaching him about the chapter, we had a great discussion where we discussed the importance of church and why we need to partake of the sacrament every single week. He's got such a strong testimony and it ended up being such a good lesson with him. Other than that, Elder Cluff hit the pavement a lot that day and street contacted for a while, and I was able to have some good conversations with people. It's always super fun serving with Elder Cluff and a I learned a lot from him.

Anyway, we had a really cool experience as well before we headed off to L'viv. We met with one of our investigators named Oleksandr, and we had a super good Gospel of Jesus Christ lesson with him. In this lesson, we talk about the first principles and ordinances of the gospel, you know like faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the holy ghost, and enduring to the end. Well, up to this point, we hadn't talked a ton about baptism with him, but this lesson Elder Holden and I decided to bring it up and even try to set a date with him. Guess what?! He accepted it, which is pretty awesome, so right now we have a baptismal date with him for May 25th. Now we just got to help him be ready for that date and help him get that firm testimony of the Book of Mormon. But the lesson was super great and I really felt the Holy Ghost during that lesson. I love being a missionary during these times!!

Anyhow, on Friday transfer calls came and nothing changed in our district. I'll still be with Elder Holden for another transfer and the sisters are still gonna be together as well. I'm pretty excited about that, the district is pretty grand and I see some great potential here in Lutsk, things are looking up! This weekend was General Conference week here in Ukraine. So we gathered together on Saturday and Sunday and watched General Conference together in Ukrainian. It was kind of sad because on Saturday we only had one member show up, but on Sunday thankfully we had a lot more people show up. But it was nice to sit there and listen to our prophets and apostles. It was also nice to see how much my Ukrainian has improved, because if I listened I could understand most of what they were talking about which is pretty great. Even last conference it was still super hard for me to understand at times. But I really liked all the talks and grateful for the fact that today we had Prophets and Apostles that can literally receive revelation from our Heavenly Father. All in all, not a bad week at all. Other than what I've talked about, we had some other lessons with other investigators. We found another new investigator named George. His favorite sport is speed-walking, so it was pretty interesting to hear about that haha. We had some good contacting sessions and the weather is getting better. Have a great week all and talk to you guys later!

Старійшина McGrath

Moroni 6:5-6 Read and ponder these words, why do we go to Church?