Trains out the Wazoo (Week П'ятдесят)

Well, this week was full of crazy adventures and a whole lot of traveling. I left Rivne on Tuesday morning and didn't get back home until Saturday afternoon, super fun, but also super tiring. Anyway, lets jump into it. First of all, this week, we went off to Kiev for yet another MLC. MLC, like always, ended up being pretty successful. We had originally around 20 things to discuss on MLC, but we only got through about half of them in the end. Most of the topics were actually bigger than we thought, with many different ideas and thoughts about the issue, but in the end, listening to the spirit, we came to a conclusion that will best help our mission be the best mission that it could possibly be. One great thing about Kiev, is that we got to see the temple again. Sadly, we weren't able to go inside and do a session, but our meeting was in the Church that is on the temple grounds, so it was just nice to walk on the temple grounds and just feel the power of the temple. All in all, I can say it was a successful trip to Kiev. Having KFC and Domino's didn't hurt too. 

Anyway, after our wonderful trip to Kiev, we headed off to L'viv, spent the night there. There we did some studies, ate at a super good breakfast buffet, and then took another train off to Khmelnitskiy (try pronouncing this haha) where we had exchanges with the district leader and his companion there. I had the opportunity to serve with Elder Stott for a day and he's a super good Elder. He has been serving for just over a year now and is killing it. We ended up having a slow day, we contacted outside for around five hours since we couldn't get any lessons. K-town is an interesting city, my first time there and it's super soviet. Practically every building is concrete and there are concrete jungles everywhere there. But we did contact next to a really cool lake and took a picture or two. Near the end of the day though, we did get transfersss!!! That was crazy. I found out that I'm staying for a fifth transfer in Rivne and this next transfer, I'll be serving with Elder Cook. Elder Shuley will also be with us, but he finishes his mission one week into the transfer, so there was no point in transferring him to another city. Anyways, I'm excited to serve with Elder Cook and we'll have a great transfer or two!

Finally, though, after a ton of trains and buses, we made it back home to Rivne and have had a good past few days. On Sunday, we had a wonderful Church service where we had a good amount of people show up, including a few of our investigators. And then after church, we had another lesson with Mikola, annndddd he still hasn't smoked!!!! He's amazing and 100% on track to get baptized this coming Saturday. I'm praying every day and if all stays to plan, Rivne will have a new member that will help the branch grow!! Anyhow, that was pretty much the week, we ate out so very much this week and I'm ready to have a normal week since we don't have any travels planned. Have a great week all, talk to you later.

Старійшина McGrath

Jacob 4:7 Read and ponder these words, we sent this to Mikola this week and I love this verse!

Basketball with an Investigator, Gregory 

Khmelnitskiy 

The Kiev Temple

Sunset on a train

The Breakfast buffet in L'viv

Khmelnitskiy

With Elder Stott on Exchanges

A Few Firsts (Week Сорок дев'ять)

Well, this week was somewhat normal, not a ton of crazy stuff happened, but let's jump into it. First of all, we had quite the interesting game night this past week. As you know, in our mission, we have English Practice and game night each, once a week. Our goal of these practices is to serve other people and teach them some English, and more importantly, find some new investigators. Game night, usually, we like to do different things each week to make it more interesting and have people keep coming to our activities. This week, we did an activity that other cities have done and had a lot of success, so we wanted to try it out and have a "surprise talent show." Basically, as people show up, we had them pick their talent that they were going to show off out of a hat that we had prepared. We had talents like singing, dancing, playing the piano, beat boxing, drawing, miming, rapping, and even an air guitar one. Then, one by one, they'd present their wonderful talents to us, and we even had the missionaries be the judges, so we were able to pick different characters and judge them based on how they did. It turned out to be a really fun activity, most people really got into it and went above and beyond with their activity, making sure that they were in contention to win. Sadly though, I had to participate as well and I ended up getting the worst ones that I could have ended up with. If any of you know me, I do not have a singing voice, when I start singing, I swear babies want to start crying haha, and it hasn't gotten any better on my mission. For game night, I ended up having to sing. So, I stood up and "sang" a wonderful country song for a few minutes and I can easily say to you guys, I didn't win the talent show. I didn't even get a participation ribbon. But all in all, it turned out really good and hopefully we have even more people next week!

Another big thing that happened this past week was our exchanges with the other Elders here in Rivne. I had the opportunity to serve with Elder Cook, who's been out on his mission for about a year and a half now. He's a great Elder that knows how to teach and helped me out a lot with the language and teaching in general. We ended up having a few lessons on our exchange and a finding activity that we had never done before. We attached a bunch of different pictures of temples to a board, (including the Mesa, Salt Lake City, and Kiev) and asked if people had ever seen these buildings before. Sadly though, not a ton of people stopped to talk to us, and most people that did actually haven't ever seen those buildings. So we did have a few good conversations, but most people said that they didn't have a ton of time to stop and talk to us outside. It was an interesting activity, we might do it again, but it would probably be at a different time of the day, when more people have time to talk to us and find out about our temples and how through our amazing temples, they can actually live with their families forever. Such a great blessing.

Finally, the last thing that I want to talk about it is one of our investigators. His name is Mikola and is AMAZING! Mikola started investigating the church around eight months ago when he met his future wife, who was a less-active member of the church. They decided to come to church together and they've been coming to Church ever since. His less active wife, Olena, is now active and recently received her endowment, and Mikola has a strong testimony. Now you must be thinking, why hasn't he been baptized yet? Sadly, he has a pretty big smoking addiction. Like so many people here in Ukraine, he started smoking as a teenager and has been for the last 25+ years. We've been working with him for a while now trying to help him stop. We've been doing the 12 steps program, teaching him all the gospel principles and he's been making some serious strides lately. He's gone just about three weeks now without lighting up, (the longest he's ever gone before) and we set a date for baptism not to long ago with him. If he doesn't smoke until the 11th of August, he'll enter into the waters of baptism. Mikola is a wonderful man who has already overcome a drinking addiction and now is beating smoking, I know that only with God could he have done that. He has told us many times that this church is true and that without God, he 100% could not have overcome his addictions. I pray every day he continues to stay strong and can get baptized real soon. Love him lots. Well, that's pretty much the week, hope you all have a solid day and week!

Старійшина McGrath

Moroni 7:47 read and ponder these words, charity is the pure love of Christ

A street in Rivne 

English finding activity here, we did Jeopardy, pretty fun!

Another cool street here 

Why not graffiti

Store here in Rivne

Cats and Zebras (Week Сорок вісім)

Well, this was a pretty grand week. A lot of interesting stuff happened and I've got a great story to tell. So let's jump into some of the highlights. First of all, probably the biggest thing, was that we had the opportunity to have a shortened exchange with the AP's this past week. Unlike most times, when you travel to the AP's area, they actually came down to our area here in Rivne to check out the city and get to know more missionaries throughout the mission. We ended up having a wonderful exchange where we taught a new investigator, ate some delicious food, had a solid finding activity in center about the Book of Mormon, and then finished the day off with a great English practice, where we had over 40 people show up, a new record!! If you're wondering why my email title is just a couple of animals, I'll tell you the reason for one of them now. In our mission, there is a chance to have something called a "zebra" companionship, where you have 2 different languages spoken in just one companionship and I had the chance to kind of test it out this past week. I served with Elder Roberts, who is a great Elder, but he only knows Russian so it was quite the experience. SYL'ing is quite difficult when you don't fully understand one another. Teaching lessons might even be the most confusing for the person that we're teaching to since the two missionaries are speaking two different languages and they don't know what language to respond to us in, Russian or Ukrainian. But, all in all, I didn't mind zebra companionships and I wouldn't mind serving with a Russian companion and my Russian would improve a ton! haha

Anyways, now I've got a great story about cats that'll tie the whole email title together. So, one day this week during the start of a personal study, the doorbell at our church goes off and we head to the door. An older lady is standing there and begins to tell us that her cat had fallen off our balcony and landed on top of our church building. So, since we're good missionaries, we grabbed a ladder and went out to help her.  We set up the ladder and climbed on top of our church building, which was a ways up. If I had looked down, I don't know if I would have kept going since I'm pretty afraid of heights. But the top of our Church building here in Rivne is actually pretty nice, super quiet, and gives a nice view of the street. Eventually, we did find the cat, and after 20 minutes of trying to get it from inside of like a vent that we couldn't reach into, the cat came out and it made it safely down from our building. Not the most typical missionary activity, but hey, the person we served had the biggest smile on her face and it was totally worth the experience haha. Sometimes service appears out of nowhere, and we should always be trying to take advantage of it, and serve as much as we can. That's what our loving Savior did. 

Anyways, the rest of the week went real good as well. We had some good finding activities, we did some service at a members house picking a bunch of delicious fruit, found some new investigators, and taught some great lessons. Also, yesterday we traveled to our neighboring city of Lutsk. Right now, Lutsk and Rivne are actually one district and with the permission of President, we traveled to Lutsk after church to do a finding activity with them in the park, which was super cool, and then spend P-day with them as one of the Elders there is leaving this next week. Our finding activity was a different one than we had ever done before. We took some wood, made some boards, and then made like an ocean looking scene on the three boards. After we had done that, we had kids use "fishing poles" and fish over the boards, where we would give them candy, a fish to draw on, and then a card from our church. Even to add to that, while the kids were doing that, we'd try to talk to the parents about the gospel and see if they were interested in that. Super fun activity and really helped build our district unity! Anyway, that was pretty much the week, talk to you all later! Have a super good week!

Старійшина McGrath

Mormon 5:23 Read and ponder these words, the Lord is always looking out for us!

The district here in Rivne!

At the iconic RIVNE sign after a morning run 

Service helping someone move, super interesting haha 

Service picking berries

With Elder Roberts on exchanges 

The finding activity in Lutsk

Super nice mall in Lutsk

Unusual Usual Week (Week Сорок сім)

Well, this was a greatly, normal week. The last three weeks, we have traveled out to L'viv and Kiev, which have made for some decent emails, but it means that we weren't in Rivne for a good chunk of the past few weeks. So, it felt pretty good to just be in Rivne and work 100% in our own area. So, my goal of this email is to make it at least a little bit interesting. So I got a few good stories for you. The first of which happened this past Wednesday. We were asked by a member to help them do some service, and it was quite the experience. Most people in Ukraine live in Apartments, and we were asked to go and meet someone at an apartment and as we were heading there we found out that we were going to be moving a few things from his apartment in the city, to his house out in the village about 20 minutes away by a car that we took there. The hardest part was for sure a couch that we had to take from his apartment. It literally fit through the door by less than an inch, and it was pretty dang heavy. Plus, this member lives on the NINTH floor of an apartment building, so there was no way that we were going to carry it down all those flights of the stairs. So we brought it to the elevator and pushed, pulled, carried, did everything you can do with your hands to put in the elevator and by the skin of my teeth it fit into the elevator. For sure one of the bigger tender mercies of the week, I don't think we could have carried it all the way. Anyhow, the rest of the service was good, we ate some apricots, took a car out to his house in the village, and set the couch up there. One cool thing that we did at the end, was go through his garden and look at all the plants that he has, super nice garden if I may say so. 

Anyway, the other story that I have happened on Sunday. Usually, every week a missionary will speak during Sacrament meeting because there aren't enough members for us to not speak so often, and this was my week to give a usual 20 minute talk. So, we're going though sacrament meeting and all is well. The other two speakers showed up and were prepared to give a talk. The first speaker goes up, after we all have the wonderful opportunity to take the sacrament, and gives a good, normal length talk and we were still on track. Sadly, the second speaker goes up and gives a five minute talk, which left extra time for me. As I walked up, both the branch president and the first councilor told me I had the rest of the time and to walk the clock. I ended up speaking for a solid 30 minutes, all in Ukrainian and it went decent. I probably testified about everything I knew at the end to make sure we finished at the right time, but I made it, sweat everywhere, and I basically said every Ukrainian word that I knew. All is well though, I love speaking and the opportunity that I have to share my testimony will all the members here in Rivne. 

The rest of my week was great as well. We did a lot of finding, stop-bys at less actives, and had some great lessons with investigators and members. We also had exchanges this past week with the other Elders here in Rivne and I had the chance to serve with Elder Wonson for a day, which was super good. We had some wonderful lessons and found a really solid new investigator. All in all, a super good week full of normal, awesome missionary work. There is nothing better than serving a full-time mission and helping others find more joy through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Have a great week all and talk to you later!

Старійшина McGrath

2 Nephi 2: 1-2 Read and ponder these words. The Lord will always be with us in our afflictions. 

The view from the apartment where we did service 

An apartment building in Ukraine 

Playing pool on P-day

The district on P-day

Picture with Sasha, the greatest kid ever 

Letter from President Rizley

Dear Brother and Sister McGrath

One of our favorite experiences throughout this mission has been writing the release letters for our L’viv missionaries as they complete their service in western Ukraine. Sister Rizley and I have completed our own mission. We will not have the opportunity to write to you as your son is released, but I want you to know what makes Elder McGrath a successful missionary and a credit to you and your family.

Elder McGrath is a delightful elder. He has a can-do attitude and sunny disposition that have blessed every area and companionship he has served in. As you know, he was called to mission leadership after only a few months in-field. Elder McGrath stepped up, just as Sister Rizley and I knew he would. In my transition interview with President Kumferman, I told him he could trust Elder McGrath with any difficult assignments. I think that highly of him.

Marilyn and I have grown to love your son as he serves the Lord in this mission. The Prophet Joseph Smith said: At the first organization in heaven we were all present and saw the Savior chosen and appointed, and the plan of salvation made and we sanctioned it. 

We have not the slightest doubt that Elder McGrath serves faithfully and obediently in response to a responsibility he accepted before coming to this mortal life. Your son is wonderful, and we both look forward to following his upward trajectory as his life unfolds. Thank you for sending us such an outstanding young man.  We wish you and your family God’s greatest blessings.

President and Sister Rizley

First Time in the Water (Week Сорок шість)

Just your friendly reminder to not put my pictures or email on social media, thanks!

Wowzers, that was quite the crazy week. Honestly, this past week absolutely flew by and I can't believe that it's already Monday again. I'm going to recap the week starting from the beginning and hopefully I remember all the big highlights of it all. Anyway, the first big thing that happened was a graduation that we went to for one of the members here in Rivne. She is from Ghana and is studying here and we went to go support her in her great achievement of finishing college. To be quite honest though, it was the weirdest graduation that I went to in my life. First of all, as we were heading to the graduation, I saw like five former investigators that I had taught a lesson or two, so it nice to stop and talk to them for a second. Next, graduation, did not start on time, it started half an hour late, and most of the people that were graduating were not on time, some were even late to get their diploma, and they had to go and pick it up afterwards. Finally, the weirdest part was the 3 few minute breaks that we had. Two of them were filled with a girl that sang for us, she had a great voice but didn't know english and sang some english songs, including "Boyfriend" By Justin Bieber, so that was interesting. And to top it off, the last break was filled with a belly dancer, which everyone except the missionaries, got really into and quite enjoyed it haha. The only thing that we could say after the graduation, is wow...I guess it's all part of the experience, just gotta be grateful for it all.

The other big thing that happened this past week was our trip to L'viv, which I'll split into two different parts. On Thursday and Friday, we had interviews with President Kumferman and had our first zone conference as the newly formed Ukraine Kiev/Moldova Mission. Both of them went very, very well and I'm super grateful that President Kumferman is our mission president. He really was called of God to lead this mission and what he did in our interviews and during the conference really helped me confirm that. Basically during our interview we got to know one another, talked about leadership, the wonderful city of Rivne, and the future. All in all, this past conference was a major success and I learned a lot from it.

Finally, to help everyone understand the title of this somewhat long email, there was another baptism in L'viv this past weekend and Ihor asked me to baptize him. Ihor has been investigating the church for the past year now and has developed a strong testimony of the fullness of the gospel. He has been saying that he has wanted to get baptized since I started serving in L'viv, but one of the only things holding him back is that his wife wasn't fully supporting him in his decision. Luckily, lately, his wife has started reading the Book of Mormon and now supports his decision to get baptized. (maybe she'll get dunked soon as well!!) But, Ihor is a wonderful guy that I really got to know when I served in L'viv. He's always joking and makes every situation a better one. He's also a pretty tall and big guy, and add that to a shallow font, made it hard to get him fully immersed on the first time. Needless to say though, after a few tries, we got him fully under the water. I love Ihor so much and I know he'll continue to progress in the gospel and someday make it to the temple and get sealed as a family! Well, I hope you all have a super solid week and talk to you soon!

Старійшина McGrath

2 Nephi 31 Read and ponder this WHOLE chapter!! This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ!!!

A whole lot of pictures:

At Graduation with our wonderful Member 

One of the greatest restaurants ever!! 

Original MTC group Photo!!

With President and Sister Kumferman

Street in L'viv

Castle Hill in L'viv

With Ihor and His family at the baptism

at the Tunnel of Love

Part 2: The Ukraine KIEV Mission (Week сорок п'ять)

Wowzers, this week just absolutely flew by, can't believe that it's already P-day again. This past week was full of traveling, MLC, going around Kiev, and the TEMPLE. Let's talk about the highlight of my week that took up pretty much the entire week. We were outside of our area this past week more than we were inside so that was quite interesting, there were times where I didn't feel like I was serving a mission, but it was great. On Wednesday afternoon, we took a train to L'viv and stayed there the night with the other zone leaders and the AP's. The next morning, super early in morning I might add, (I probably got half of my sleep this week on trains haha) and headed to the to train station to meet the STL's and catch a train to Kiev. The train wasn't too bad, it was one of those fast trains that only made one stop, so we made it there in five hours. 

Now let me tell you, Kiev is pretty dang different than any city in western Ukraine. First of all, it's so much bigger and you can't just walk around the entire city, you need a car or public transportation, and it's so much more modern. It was pretty crazy to see how tall some of the buildings were in Kiev, we even saw some buildings that could be considered as skyscrapers. Honestly, L'viv is a lot prettier of a city, with all the European influence that it has and how it's not super soviet, but Kiev was pretty nice since it was really modern, felt really different. Well, once we got to Kiev, we hopped in a car and drove to the mission office, and can you guess where that is? Right next to the temple!!!! So we were driving down the highway, (they actually have those in the city of Kiev) and at one point, you can just see the temple, in all of its glory, right next to the road, that was a great sight to see. 

The rest of that day, we met some of the Kiev missionaries, heard them speak some Russian, and went to the temple!!! That night, we had the opportunity to go and do an endowment session in the Kiev temple and it was super duper nice experience. The temple is so pretty and I forgot how great it feels to be in the temple and just feel the Holy Ghost just so strong in the temple. Luckily, they had headsets that we could wear so that I didn't have to watch the session in Russian. That for sure, was one of my favorite nights on my mission so far. Anyhow, the next day was super interesting as well. President Kumferman, a wonderful mission president, led a MLC with 22 missionaries representing three different missions, Kiev, L'viv, and Moldova. We discussed many different things, including the new layout of the mission, reporting numbers, and some of the mission culture that we have as the newly formed Ukraine Kiev/Moldova Mission. That was a great experience and we really took ideas from all three missions and came up with ideas and action items that will really help the mission grow and become a better one. 

Some things that I learned from this trip out to Kiev:

1. They have some really, really good food there. We ate at Domino's and it was fantastic, the pizza here is good in Ukraine, but I've missed American pizza, so it was nice to have that.

2. We now have 110 missionaries in our mission, which basically triples our Ukraine L'viv mission where we were always hovering around 35.

3. I'm super proud to be a Ukrainian speaker. We had the chance to speak to many different people throughout our time in Kiev, including with members, and they were blown away that we knew Ukrainian. Missionaries haven't spoken Ukrainian in Kiev for six years and it was just a different experience for them to hear us speak Ukrainian. Pretty much everyone in Ukraine knows both Ukrainian and Russian, but most things are in Ukrainian now and a lot of people (especially younger people) prefer to speak Ukrainian. All street signs, and everything outside is in Ukrainian. In the Kiev stake, they sing in Ukrainian and the last stake conference was 100% in Ukrainian. So, I'm happy that I can speak Ukrainian and I hope to continue studying it even if I serve out east in Kiev. 

Well, that was pretty much the week in a very long weekly email. If you're still reading to this point, great job! Have a great week and talk to you soon. We have a zone conference this week so it should be another fun week full of traveling!! 

Старійшина McGrath

No Scripture this week, just go visit the temple ASAP!! I went this week and it was the best experience I've had in a long time. The veil is so thin at the temple and the spirit is so strong!

A street in L'viv before we went to Kiev

In the train station in Kiev, super big 

Highway in Kiev

Temple from the side

From the front!!

With the sign and temple

Domino's!!!

L'viv MLC group at the temple