Averagely Great Week (Week Вісімдесят три)

Well, honestly, this week was pretty average, nothing too big or grand really happened, but nonetheless, it was good, as a missionary, you really can't have a bad week. Sometimes days can be long or difficult, but at the end of the week, you can look back and realize that you gave it your all, but people have their agency. This week, we met with most of our investigators and we ended up tracting a lot, which I haven't done a ton on my mission. We set a district goal to track three buildings every week, just to get a bit more creative with our finding so we're not just street contacting always, and we saw a bit of success. Basically, sometimes if we have time, we'll find and stop by a less-active, and sadly since most of the time they don't answer, we'll tract their apartment building, which consists of around 35 more apartments that we can knock on and hopefully have some good conversations. Anyhow, the first two buildings that we tracted this week were not very successful, we had a few conversations, but everyone wasn't interested at that moment. Then, we go to the third building, and the same thing, we go through every door, most people won't even open the door for us and we weren't seeing really any success. Finally, we get to the bottom floor and we have four more doors, we knock on the first three, nothing, no one answers. Finally, right before we knock on the last door, I told Elder Holden that he's gonna be interested. Lo and behold, (however you really say that) the man opens the door and we're able to talk and have a good conversation for a few minutes. He's actually an Orthodox Priest, but he looked and read a bit from the Book of Mormon, and we were able to exchange numbers to meet later!! Wowzers, really big testimony builder to me. Super good experience and helped me further understand the important principle of enduring to the end and then you'll receive a ton of blessings. All in all, tracting was successful this week!

Anyway, the rest of the week was good. In the Lutsk branch, I'm pretty sure we have one of the best members in Western Ukraine. She literally helps the sisters just about everyday and she's super willing to do just about anything. Right now, she's actually preparing to serve a mission herself, so she wants all the experience that she can get. This past week, the sisters had an exchange with the STL's so that meant that they were out of town. So on Wednesday, Larisa called us up after she finished her classes that day and asked us where we were. She met us and we contacted with her for a bit, she's already a really good contacter. Then she was able to help us out on a lesson that evening. We actually met with a new investigator that evening that I had contacted earlier that week. We taught a full restoration lesson to him and he seemed to take it very well. He told us in the lesson that he feels that our contact outside wasn't a coincidence and he wants to investigate the church more. Super good potential and this week, we should meet and teach him the plan of salvation which should help him a lot, especially since he's got a family himself. 

All in all, the rest of the week was good. Sunday we had a good amout of people at church and after church, we went out and did a finding activity in center. We asked people what Charity meant to them and we were able to have some good conversations from that and got a few numbers. Things are looking good here in Lutsk and excited to keep working here. Especially since the weather is warming up too! Have a great week everyone and talk to you all later!

Старійшина McGrath

Psalm 24:4 read and ponder these words. The Lord hears all of our cries!!

Roller skating on P-day!!

Buildings here in Lutsk

Tracting with Holden

 Personal study haha

Study room selfie

Bowling on Pday

Stories in Lutsk (Week Вісімдесят дві)

Well, this was a pretty good week here in Lutsk, got a few stories to share from this past week. But nothing too big happened, we didn't have any exchanges, it was just a normal week in the mission field, some of my favorite weeks. This past week, we were able to meet with all of our investigators, and they seem to be progressing well. One of them is named Serhi, and yesterday we were able to have a great lesson with him. He's been an investigator for a few months now and has been taught all the missionary lessons, so we've just been reading with him and helping him the importance of the Book of Mormon. This past week, I had the idea to reteach prophets and the great apostasy to help him understand that a restoration would not have been necessary if there had not been an apostasy. The lesson went really really good!! We shared stories, used analogies, and he asked some good understanding questions. I felt the spirit so much during that lesson and I know that he did too, hopefully that'll help him to read the Book of Mormon more in his life. All in all, that was a super good lesson, and hopefully all of our investigators continue to progress over this next week.

Now, I want to share two stories from this past week, one funny one and one experience that really taught me a lot and hit me hard. Let's start with the funny one. So, when I first got to Lutsk, I found out about a crazy guy that comes to all of our English Practices and our Game Nights, so I was excited to meet him. This past week, after English Practice, he came up to me and said that he wanted to have a serious convestation with me. He went on to tell me that he doesn't think that he's the Messiah, in fact, he 100% sure that he's the Messiah. He wanted to sit down with me for 30 minutes and tell me three reasons, three experiences that he's had to prove to me that he's truly the Messiah. Honestly, I didn't really know what to say to that, I wanted to laugh, but this was a serious moment and laughing wouldn't help the situation. So what I ended up doing, I grabbed the restoration pamphlet that I had right next to me, and pointed to the picture of Jesus Christ, and I said, "This is my Messiah, Jesus Christ." He looked at the picture of Jesus Christ, then glanced back up at me, and turned around and said, "Ok, I understand, good night." So that was the interesting conversation of the week, just made me glad to know that we do have a savior and that I know him personally. Through him, I can pray and speak directly to my Heavenly Father and through him, I can receive forgiveness of all sins thanks to him atonement.

Ok, now on to the really cool story from this past week. Most mornings, Elder Holden and I head out after personal study to go and street contact. I've contacted for around 18 months now, so most of the time it's nothing new and not the most exciting thing, but this past Thursday, I had a super good experience with it. After contacting for around half of an hour, I go up to this guy and start to talk to him and the first thing he asked me if I was a JW. Luckily, I said now and told him that I was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ. So he started talking to me more and he began to tell me his life story. He's had a drinking and drug addiction for most of his life and he's tried just about everything to quit. He has a great desire to change his life, he just really doesn't know how. He told me that that morning, he woke up and decided to just leave his apartment and planned on visiting a few churches because maybe they could help him, and guess what, right after he left, I stopped and talked to him. The Lord puts people in our path and has a plan for us and there is a reason to why we do everything as a missionary. Later that day, we were able to have a lesson and introduce the 12 steps program with him and also introduced the Book of Mormon and how it can help him overcome his addictions. He has really strong desire, he just needs help from a higher power. Sadly, since that point, we haven't met and he dogged our next meeting, but I can for sure say that we helped him in that moment and that experience really helped me understand that God really has a plan for each and every one of us. All in all, a super good experience and a really good week. Until next week, enjoy reading your scriptures this week!! 

Старійшина McGrath

Alma 32:16 read and ponder these words. Be humble and you'll be blessed beyond measure!! :)

Cool view here in Lutsk

Human fooseball for game night

Lutsk National University 

Walking Street in Lutsk

Sacrament room here in Lutsk

 Selfie in the Computer Room

Welcome to Lutsk (Week Вісімдесят одна)

Wowzers, another good week in the books. This week was pretty crazy and we stayed super busy the entire time. First of all, transfers officially happened and I'm now writing this email in Lutsk with my new companion Elder Holden. Elder Holden is from St. George, Utah, really likes music, did marching band in High School, and has been on his mission for 4 months now. Basically he just finished his training and now I get to serve with him here. He really likes to work hard and speak Ukrainian, so I think I've spoken more Ukrainian than English with him which is pretty cool, for a missionary in his third transfer, he already knows pretty good Ukrainian. But anyway, I already really like Lutsk. As many of you know, I served in Rivne for a suuppper long time, 10 months, and I consider that city to be my favorite and my "home". Lutsk is actually only 65 kilometers or so away from Rivne, so the two cities are very similar, so coming to Lutsk kind of felt like I was coming home. The city is actually prettier than Rivne, and it has a really nice center. Also, one other cool fact. There are only two church buildings in Western Ukraine, here and in L'viv. The rest of them we just rent and are parts of other buildings. So it's a really nice chapel here and it's nice to have lessons with investigators. Apparently, it used to be a old bread factory, but the church bought it and now it's a chapel. All in all, super excited and ready to serve here in Lutsk. It should be a great transfer with Elder Holden. 

Anyway, one cool thing that happened this past week was actually a world-wide holiday that Ukrainians really like to celebrate. In Ukrainian, they just call the holiday the 8th of March, but in English every says Women's day. Everyone gets work off here and they go out and celebrate women and how awesome they are. Soooo, as missionaries we decided to take advantage of this wonderful holiday. What we did is we took a white board and went out to walking street, where there a ton of people walking and visiting different shops. There we put the question "Why are women important to you?" Then, we stopped people, had a conversation with them and we tried to bring up the family proclamation with them and talk about the role of women and how amazing they are. We ended up getting some really good conversations and ended up handing out many different copies of the proclamation. Another cool thing we did for women's day was on Sunday after church. A few members bought some cake and soda and we just sat around eating cake together and had a good time. A few of the male adults had actually written poems and read them out loud for the women and it was just a super good chance for the branch to come together and build some unity.

Anyway, the rest of this week was good. Spent some good time getting used to the city, Elder Holden introduced me to all the people that we're working with and all the wonderful investigators and members that we have. Finally, Sunday came rolling around and it was a great day. I had heard all about this branch and how there are a lot of youth and how it's just a fun branch and they did not lie. There were like 9 youth there and it was just super nice to see so many and all of them were so happy and awesome. I also had the chance to go up and share my testimony and that went well, they all laughed at the dumb story I shared at the start, so that was good. Also, our district here is great. There's two sisters and two elders. One of the sisters actually just started her mission and guess where she's from??! Mesa, Arizona, the exact city that I'm from. She even knows some of the people that I know and it was just crazy to get to know her. All in all a super good week, and looking forward to another one. 

Старійшина McGrath

Mosiah 24:14 read and ponder these words, the Lord knows our trials, turn to him.

We tried to eat a 4.4 pound burger, didn't really work out 

With Elder Holden contacting

Cool building in Lutsk

Women's day activity 

Church building here in Lutsk

The castle here in Lutsk

The district + a member here in Lutsk

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