Kyiv and Transfer Calls (Week Вісімдесят)

Wow, this past week was pretty grand. So many different things happened, and I hope I can cover all of it. First of all, let's jump into the biggest thing from this past week. I had the opportunity to go to Kyiv for one day and it was such a great experience. First of all, I had the chance to go to the temple and do an endowment session, which is awesome as always. I came into the session with some questions, and I left having better ideas and receiving some answers, which is why I love the temple so much. Anyway, the main reason we went to the temple was to see my ward! I know, most of you might think that this is crazy, but my ward from Saudi Arabia came to Kyiv for their yearly temple trip, and with the permission of my wonderful mission president, I had the opportunity to go there and give them a short fireside and catch up with them for a few minutes. I ended up giving a fireside on how we can build our foundation on Jesus Christ and it seemed like people enjoyed it, at least people didn't fall asleep during the fireside. It was nice to share some mission experiences and then answer some questions that they had about missionary work. Honestly, it was kind of weird to see so many people that I know and love, also people didn't call me Elder McGrath, they just said Jake, or Elder Jake and that was really weird. I haven't heard my first name in sooooo long and everyone just called me that haha. But it was 100% worth the two 12 hour train rides to and from Chernivtsi. All in all, such a great trip out to Kyiv. 

Ok, now on to the other big news. We received transfer calls and it looks like I'll be leaving Chernivtsi next week. I found out that I'm going to Lutsk and I'll be the District Leader there and serve with Elder Holden. If you remember, when I served in Rivne, I had the chance to visit Lutsk a few times because Lutsk is only an hour and a half away from Rivne. So I'm going back up to the northern part of Ukraine and I'm super pumed!! Lutsk is such a nice city and the branch there is just awesome. It's known for having the most youth in Western Ukraine and I'm excited to get to know all of them. I don't know much about Elder Holden, he started his mission when Elder Tuttle did, so he just finished his training and it should be good service with him, I get to be his greenie-buster. Elder Taran and Tuttle will be staying here and guess who will take my spot, Elder Matua. So all three of my sons (trainees) are going to be serving together right here in Chernivtsi. Oh how interesting that will be. 

Anyhow, the rest of my week was good too. We had some really good lessons, did some finding, and had a good church service on Sunday. I had the chance to bear my testimony for my last week in Chernivtsi, and it was pretty sad. Even though I was only here for two transfers, I have really grown to love the members and people here in general. But that's how missionary work is, I'm excited for the future and it should be good. One other cool experience really quick. We have an investigator named Andriy and this week, we taught him the third lesson, The Gospel of Jesus Christ and it went awesome! At the end, I actually invited him to be baptized on April 6th and he said yes!! Super good, we set a baptismal date with him and now we just gotta keep working and helping him come closer to Christ and keep all the commandments. Such a good week and so much happened. Anyway, next week will be from a new city. Have a great week all and talk to you later.

Старійшина McGrath

Helaman 5:12 read and ponder these words, how can you build your foundation on Jesus Christ

Cool view in Chern

Cool church in Chernivtsi

Ukrainian treats after my fireside

Youth group at the temple!!!

 President and Sister Serafim

Super good family here in Chernivtsi 

Ice skating today for P-day

With the youth groupppp

Teaching the Firesideee

Knocking on the Window (Week Сімдесят дев'ять)

Well, another solid week in the books, pretty crazy how fast time flies when you're a missionary. It was a pretty normal missionary week if I may say as well. The biggest thing that happened was exchanges with the elders from K-town. I had the chance to serve with Elder Swasey for a day and it was very, very interesting. It didn't really turn out how we had planned it, we had set up a few lessons, but every single lesson that we had set up, dogged us so that was a bit hard. So that meant that Elder Swasey and I were out hitting the streets contacting in the cold weather. At one point, some guy was staring at our name-tags and usually people don't like to talk when they see our name tags, but I went up to him and we actually had a super good conversation and I wrote down his number and he was interested in meeting later, so that was a nice tender mercy. 

One other interesting, funny story happened that night. Elder Swasey and I stopped by a members house and they didn't open up, so we thought, ok, why are we here? Why did God lead us here? So we said a quick prayer and we both felt like we needed to tract a building not from from the stop-by. So we went up to a building and we see through a window a younger guy sitting there doing some homework, and in his apartment were a few pictures of Jesus, so we thought, ok, this is a perfect apartment building to tract. So we started from the top and worked our way down to the last apartment where the young guy was at. We knocked, and guess what, he didn't answer. So we started to leave and we passed by his window again and Elder Swasey said, "hey, we should just knock on his window." After a quick prayer to see whether or not that was a good idea, we knocked, and he quickly left and turned off the lights in the room. We turned around to leave, but as we did, he came outside and apparently he was open to talking for a bit. So we had a good conversation and even though he wasn't interested, it was still a good contact. As for now though, Elder Swasey and I planted a very big seed for future missionaries by knocking on his window to talk about our message and Jesus Christ. All in all, a great exchange and learned a lot from Elder Swasey.

Our pool of investigators is growing week by week, and now we had double digit investigators which is awesome! This past week we found three new people to work with and one of them is really cool. A couple of weeks ago, I was going through our area book calling some former investigators up, and I come across a guy named Ivan. He was originally taught by missionaries eleven years ago, and so I decided, why not give him a call to see if he'd still be interested in meeting. Guess what, after trying to set up a lesson a few times, we finally met this past week. He's really nice, we met in his apartment, and he even gave us some sweets. He talked about the missionaries that he met with the first time and all I could say was that I was 10 years old when that happened haha. But we ended up teaching him a restoration lesson to help refresh his memory and he has a desire to read the Book of Mormon, so that's a really good sign. 

Another investigator we're teaching now is named Andriy lifts, because he's a body builder and his biceps are bigger than my head. This past week, we had a really good Plan of Salvation lesson with him and he really enjoyed it. He said that he might bring his wife onto the next lesson, which would be great because we know that the gospel is centered on families! In short, got some good investigators and I love having the opportunity to teach and meet with them weekly.

The rest of the week was good. The weather was all over the place and it was hard to choose what coat I wanted to wear for that day. We did a lot of contacting, teaching, and all the other normal missionary things that people do. Such a great week and today for P-day, we took a tour of the Chernivtsi National University, which looks like Hogwarts. Super cool and I'll attach some pics! What a great week and I'm excited for the next one!

Старійшина McGrath

Alma 20:4 read and ponder these words, anything is possible with the Lord

View from our church building

With Swasey on exchanges 

English Practice speed dating haha

 Finding activity picture (What is Charity?) 

University picc

Lighting a candle, for the experience

University Pic

Time flies when You're having Fun (Сімдесят вісім)

Well, this week was a grand week. Nothing too big happened, just one of those normal missionary weeks, but I did hit 18 months on my mission this past week. I can't believe it, I feel like it was just a few weeks ago that I celebrated my year mark on the mission, and now I have less than six months left. Soooo, to celebrate this wonderful experience, we went out and ate some really good Georgian Food, and then that night, I took one of my slacks that has a hole in it, and I don't like, and we burned it!! haha Finally I did one of those traditions with burning clothes and it was super cool, sad to see my pants go, but it was worth it. Now I just gotta look to the future and focus on my mission and finishing out as best I can. 

Anyhow, on my 18 month mark day, we also did something that I've always wanted to do on my mission. In the morning, we had the chance to go out to a little village right outside of Chernivtsi and give a blessing to a sick member, and instead of just heading back towards the city, we decided to tract the village for a little bit. I've never done that on my mission and I feel like it could be very successful. So for a little over an hour, we just went from house to house, talking to people as they were working, or knocked on their door, just really tried to talk to as many people as we could. We brought a bunch of different materials out with us and we put a big focus on families during our contacting and we ended up having a lot of meaningful conversations and handed out a good amount of family proclamations. Really effective use of our time and something that I'd for sure want to try out again.

Other things, it was Valentine's day this past week as most of you know. Didn't really celebrate that but it was a harder day for one of my comps since he's got a fiance and really misses her. But we made it through it and made good use of our time. Sadly though, that night we had English Practice, and literally only three people showed up to it, soooo we basically just talked to them for a while in English, answered their questions, and really got to know them. Now, I want to share kind of a miracle that came about from that night. One of the three people that was at English Practice actually came to Church on Sunday!! We invite everyone to church services and usually people don't come, but Andriy actually came, really enjoyed the service, and we had a good lesson with him afterwards where he asked to have a Book of Mormon so that he could read it. He has a great desire and I really hope that he reads and we can continue to meet with him over the next few days and weeks. He told us during our lesson that he feels different here and that's why he came to church, he just loves being in this building, and we explained to him that that's the Holy Ghost and he wants to feel that more!! Super awesome guy!!

Anyhow, the rest of the week went well. The weather outside right now, is actually super awesome!! All the snow is melting and it's starting to warm up. These past few days, I've worn my lighter coat and that's kept me warm, maybe that's a sign that we'll have an early spring this year. We did some good contacting this week, taught some good lessons and on Sunday had the chance to visit a few older ladies and give them the sacrament. I love doing things like that because they just are so happy when we can serve them like that. Not only are their spirits lifted, but ours are as well, because when we're serving others, we're only serving God. All in all, a super week. Have a good one everyone and talk to you later!

Старійшина McGrath

Mosiah 2:17 read and ponder these words, Find a way to serve someone this week!!!

Bowling on a pday with a member 

Valentine's Day

Pancakes on the 18 month mark 

Selfie in the trio

Cool view here in Chernivtsi

Burning my pants haha

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.

 Making doughnuts with Ihor and Elder Eller

Street in L'viv

City Hall in L'viv 

Studiesss

District conference

Last full MTC picture... 

Picture with Nadia after her baptism

More Foggy than Fog (Week Сімдесят шість)

Well, this week was pretty grand. Not a super different week, a good missionary week, but it was awesome. First of all, to kind of explain the tittle, this past week was super foggy!! I kind of felt like I was back in Saudi, but instead of a massive sand storm, it was cold and it was a bunch of fog haha. I think the sand is better, just because it's warmer. But that didn't stop us from doing missionary work, we still went out and did a bunch of contacting and even did a few finding activities. On one of our finding activities, we asked people what their favorite books were and then we tried to lead that into a conversation about The Book of Mormon. It wasn't the hardest connection to make and people really seemed to enjoy it. One other cool thing that we did this week was spend some quality time with a less-active named Andriy. He really likes this city and actually knows a lot about Chernivtsi, so on Monday night, we took a city tour with him. That was super good, we not only learned a lot about this very pretty city, but we also were able to build relationships with him and become good friends with him. After the city tour, we went to New York Street Pizza and had a good lesson about the importance of commandments. Hopefully, we can continue to build relationships and help him come back to Church.

Another cool thing that happened this past week is exchanges! If you remember, this past summer, Elder Shuley and I took a trip out to a city called Khmelnitskiy (easy to say, right?) and had an exchange there. Well. Khmelnitskiy is actually part of my district, so this past week, we had the good opportunity to head out to Khmelnitskiy and have an exchange. How can I describe this city, soviet. Another Elder calls it the soviet shoebox haha, it's pretty much just full of tall concrete buildings. But it's got a nice walking street and the people there are really friendly, just not the most pretty city. I had the chance to serve with Elder Howard for a day and we did some good missionary work. We had a finding activity in the morning, where we were all able to talk to a bunch of people and we all ended up getting some numbers. We also met with an investigators of theirs who is progressing pretty well. We decided to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ and actually invite him to be baptized. In the end though, when we had the lesson and invited him, he said that he didn't feel like he was ready. We tried to help him to understand that he is ready, but we couldn't force him to accept it. Sooo, they'll continue working with him and hopefully he'll keep reading the Book of Mormon and praying about it. All in all, it was a great exchange and even though we had a one in the morning train back to Chernivtsi, it was worth it.

Anyhow, the rest of the week was solid as well. We met with a few investigators and has some good lessons. If you remember from last week, we're teaching an eight year old the lessons and she is getting baptized next week during district conference, so that's pretty cool. I actually really enjoyed teaching her, whenever she didn't understand something, she would make sounds effects to help us understand that she doesn't know what we're talking about. That was very helpful, because then we could go back and reexplain it in simpler terms. I kind of wish all of our investigators did that so we could always help them fully understand. Also, Sunday was a good day. We had a good amount of people at church of Sunday and I actually had the chance to share my testimony. Just because it was Super Bowl Sunday, I tried to explain that to everyone and then told them the story about when I prayed about the Cardinals during church and asked God to help them win and sadly it didn't happen. I even told them that I started crying pretty hard after that happened, people thought it was funny. I went on to explain that God answers prayers, just not always in the way we want or need. Anyway, it was a good week!! Talk to you all later!

Старійшина McGrath

2 Nephi 32:9 read and ponder these words. Pray always for guidance. 

Stance stocking, super lit!!

Typical K-Town photo

District Selfie on Walking street

Church in K-town, can you find it?

Foggy lifeee

The movie theater here in Chern

Preach my gospel, 3 by 3, right? (Сімдесят п'ять)

Well, a solid week in the books. Not a ton of different things happened this past week, but enough to write a letter. This past week, transfers officially happened and Elder Taran officially joined our companionship. The last time I really had a trio was in the MTC, so I didn't really know what to expect. To be honest, a trio has many good things and also a few more complicated things to it. Some of the good things include having more conversations because there is one more person in the companionship, planning has actually been a bit easier since we have more brains trying to think about how we can help our investigators and so we've come up with some good plans and ideas for our investigators, and finally, contacting has been a bit easier since we got three people outside trying to stop as many people as we can, so we're getting more conversations through that. On the flip side, teaching has been quite the topic for us. This past week, we were able to teach many lessons to investigators, less-actives, and members and I've come to figure out that teaching is pretty complicated in a trio, especially ours. The goal would be to teach 33% of the lesson each, but most lessons, it hasn't been that way. Since we got a native, a greenie, and me, the level of our Ukrainian is all over the place and we've had to talk about how we can get each of us finding the balance of not talking enough and not talking too much. Hopefully with time and practice, it will get better and we'll start to see miracles from that. All in all, it should be a good transfer with Elder Tuttle and Elder Taran, they're both super fun guys.

Like I said, this past week we met with a few investigators and were able to find a few new ones. One new investigator that we found is named Emanuell. He's actually from Nigeria, but moved here a year and a half ago because he married a Ukrainian girl. The lesson went pretty well and he's a very religious guy. We taught him the restoration and he has a desire to read the Book of Mormon. Anyway, during the lesson, he shared some information that was pretty interesting to me. I actually think that he could he like a mob boss or something like that back in Nigeria haha. He told me that he's a very good "businessman" and that many people don't like him because of that. He went on to share that he actually left Nigeria because many people were searching for him and wanting to kill him and here in Ukraine he feels a lot safer. So he could be just hiding out or maybe he's not a mob boss, but who knows haha, hopefully, he starts to read the Book of Mormon and gets that witness that it's true by the power of the Holy Ghost. We're also teaching a members daughter that just turned eight years old. The parents want her to take all the missionary lessons before she gets baptized and now we've taught almost all of them. Teaching an eight-year-old has been a bit harder than I expected. If you talk for more than a minute straight she'll start to zone out or think about other things, so we've had to really think about how we can involve her and ask questions and simply the doctrine as simple as possible. But it's been super fun teaching her and I've learned a lot.Plus, Nadiya is really funny. This past Sunday, she ripped out a page of my Preach My Gospel in Ukrainian and started drawing a picture of me, that was nice. All in all, we got some good investigators in the woodworks and hopefully we start seeing some more miracles real soon!

All in all, this was a great week. The weather was absolutely terrible, but we pushed through it. Sooo much snow fell, but that's fine, January is almost over and the coldest month of the year is almost done. This past week, we decided to freeze our bodies off by doing another finding activity that was somewhat successful. We took copies of the Book of Mormon in English, and then read a verse or two with people outside. Kind of combined an English and a Gospel activity and people liked doing that. I was able to have a few good conversations about the gospel with some people. Anyhow, have a great week everyone and stay warm!!

Старійшина McGrath

1 John 3:22 read and ponder these words, we can receive anything that we ask for! 

We went to a jewish cemetery for P-day, super interesting

Selfie there

Another pic of it

Winter is here...

With Elder Taran contacting

A family pic of the trio

Baby #3 (Week Сімдесят чотири)

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!!

Старійшина McGrath

Read and ponder those three verses I just talked about!! Think about your trials in your life and what you can learn from them...

Finding activity with Elder Troxymenko

Cool street here in Chern

Food at the Mexican night

Church building here in Chern

The pinata hitting

Holding a baseball bat for the first time

Mexican Party crowd