ЩАСЛИВОГО РІЗДВА (Merry Christmas (Week вісімнадцять))

Wowzers, what a day and what a week. Full of Christmas and full of fun. I hope that all of you guys have a wonderful Christmas and receive all that you asked for. Christmas time is for one of the best times and I'm so grateful that I get to experience a couple of them on my mission even though I am away from my family. This week was quite the week so let's get started on it. First of all, the L'viv district had their other exchange this week so that means that I served with Elder Abraham for a day. He's a great Elder and is a great example of what I want to be like one day. He knows the language very well and really helped me out. One thing that I like to do with Elder Baxter and on all my exchanges is ask them about how the lesson or contact went. I'll ask them usually what I can do better next time and any grammar mistakes that I made during the activity. Every time, they answer and correct my grammar and I'm super grateful for that because all they're doing is helping me. The only way I can learn this crazy language is getting correction on my mistakes so that's why I try to ask all the time for help and correction. Anyway, Elder Abraham and I stayed pretty busy during the exchange, we had a few lessons, did some street contacting, and had some wonderful studies. Really, the best days on the mission are when you have a balance like I did on the exchange, that's when the day just flies by because you're always busy doing something. Quite the day if I may say so myself.

Now, I want to talk about other ways that we celebrated Christmas throughout the week. On Friday night, for our game night, we actually watched a movie!! Crazy right?! We watched the movie 'It's a Wonderful Life' and honestly it was a pretty good movie. Not as good as Elf in my humble opinion but it was pretty good. We got quite the amount of people to show up as well, the whole room was filled and most people quite enjoyed the movie. We put on some Russian subtitles so people that couldn't speak English could enjoy the movie as well. That was all in all a really successful activity and we were able to have some good conversations afterwards. Anyhow, another fun thing we did was for our finding activity in Center. We decided to go out near the opera house right next to the massive Christmas tree and sing some Christmas Carols. That was pretty successful too if I may say, usually we'd have five or six of us singing and then the rest of us talking to people that stopped to listen to us. Most people were super happy to hear us sing, especially when we started to sing songs in English, that's when most people stopped. All in all, it was a pretty grand week, stayed quite busy and can't believe that Christmas is already upon us. 

Now onto what I did today for Christmas. So last night we slept over at the AP's house so all the Elder's were together for Christmas morning. Then Christmas morning, everyone opened their packages and had a jolly old time. We then ate some good cinnamon rolls before heading out to the Church to meet the sisters. At the Church, we had a fun white elephant. I bought a pig pillow pet as the white elephant present and ended up with a cool L'viv mug plus some candy.  I thought that it was a decent exchange and I was for sure happy. After we had finished our white elephant, we went out for a great Christmas lunch. We ended up going to VAPIANOS!! One of my favorite restaurants in the world and had a really good pizza. Not the traditional Christmas lunch but hey, pretty dang good in my opinion haha. So yeah, that has pretty much been my Christmas so far, and I hope you all had a fantastic one as well!! До наступного тижня

Старійшина McGrath 

Luke 2 Read the chapter!! It's the Nativity scene and I'm sure that it will brighten up your Christmas day!!

Massive snowstorm!! Crazy!! haha

On exchanges with Elder Abraham 

The Christmas markets on Christmas Eve!!

Our amazing Christmas tree!!

Repping a D-Backs shirt on Christmas

My White Elephant gift haha

Good view in the city

We Lit the World (Week сімнадцять)

Wowzers, what a great week!! Stayed super busy and had our most successful activity yet! First off, our mission is going very big for light the world this year. We've gotten the video on tv as commercials, we've put it on big screens throughout the cities, and every city has done multiple activities to find people and talk about light the world and our church in general. Our mission president has stressed the importance of this and the mission has not disappointed! This week, it was our turn, the L'viv district, to go big and have a massive activity. We decided that we wanted to project the video in a busy area so lots of people will see it and we ended up choosing the opera house because that is where the Christmas Markets are and a lot of people like to walk around there and shop. We found a bunch of service opportunities such as a clothes drive or visiting an orphanage, and then made sign up sheets for people that wanted to help us with this service. We made a bunch of hot chocolate, and some cookies to give out to people to make them happier and maybe stay and have some conversations with us. Now, the only thing was that the activity was planned for the 16th, a saturday. The 16th ended up being a terrible day where it snowed the entire day and we had to push our activity back to the 17th. Luckily, the weather let up and we were able to have our activity then. I'm going to say this though, the snow was a massive, gigantic miracle. The 16th would have been a great day to have the activity, but it turned out that the 17th was one of the biggest days of the year because that was when they were lighting the big Christmas tree near the opera house. Literally thousands of people were there, thousands of people saw the light the world video, and many people talked to us. The activity was amazing and people signed up for service. Many people talked to us. Many people were interested and gave us their number. Such a good night, and such a good activity.

Anyway, that was probably the biggest part of week as we spent days trying to prepare for it, making sure everything worked fine and we had everything. But one thing that the elders did on Friday was go on exchanges. I for sure love exchanges because it's always nice to spend time with other missionaries and see how they work. I went on an exchange with Elder Christensen, an assistant to the President and as you'd expect, he's an awesome missionary. One thing that really stood out to me about him is his work ethic. He's an extremely hard worker and its no wonder he's AP. Anyhow, there was one cool experience that happened with him though. For every exchange, we make goals as to what we want to do and learn from this experience, and one of my goals was to have a five minute lesson. It's pretty self-explanatory, but basically while you're contacting, you teach one of the lessons in five minutes, and exchange contact information. I had never really done one before because most of the time, I just ask questions while I'm contacting and bear testimony and see if they're interested. But I wanted to do one really bad and I felt like an exchange was a good place to try and do it. We had game night that night where we made gingerbread houses, that was pretty fun, but right before that, Elder Christensen and I were contacting and literally the last person I talked to before we reached the church I had a five minute lesson about the Plan of Salvation. Such a good feeling, he listened, I taught quickly, and he was interested to find out more about the church. Hopefully we meet again soon. Such a good night and exchange. 

All in all, it was a very good week and I learned a lot. Cut some more logs for service, taught some English, and made a really average gingerbread house haha. Can't wait for a new week and I can't believe that it's only a week until Christmas. I hope you all have a great week and stay warm, it's getting kind of cold here! 

Старійшина McGrath

Alma 32:21 Have faith that it will happen and it will. Faith can sometimes be hard, but through our hope and our works, we can and will have faith!!

Elder Christensen and I on exchanges

Our activity night!!

My totally average gingerbread house

A cool picture of snow falling 

Elder Baxter and I on a balcony during our stop bys

The super big Christmas tree right after it got lit up!

The opera house at night

Our district right after our successful activity!

Lovin' the L'viv Life (week шістнадцять)

Oh, wow, what a great week. It actually flew by if I say so myself, got a lot done and stayed quite busy. This week was also a lot different than most other weeks as well, we had a young man who lives in Uzhorod (a city in southwestern Ukraine) come and serve with us for a few days on a very short "mini-mission." That was such a good experience for all of us, and I know I learned a lot. He also doesn't know english at all, so it was straight SYL (Speak Your Language) the entire time. Actually understood more than I thought and learned lots of words haha. Anyway, because Vanya was serving with us, Elder Baxter and I wanted to show him all the aspects of the missionary life; so we did some contacting, door approaches, stop-bys to less actives, taught some lessons, and did some area book work. Honestly one of my favorite weeks so far, being able to balance your activities and not doing the same exact thing every day makes the missionary life a lot more fun, exciting, and spiritual. Banya was super awesome as well, we pushed him to do things that aren't the easiest to do and he stood up to all the tasks. He's going to make a great missionary one day, I hope he gets to serve pretty soon. 

Another fun part of the week was all the service activities we got to do this week. I can honestly say that serving others and becoming more like Christ has made this Christmas season one of my favorites for sure. Light the World is amazing and I encourage all of you guys to look for opportunities to serve others because as you do, you will feel closer to God and receive more blessings than you can even imagine. Anyhow, one service opportunity we had was to go and chop some wood for this old lady. That was quite an experience for me, mostly because I had never chopped wood before, but it was super fun and I quite enjoyed the activity. The other big activity that our district did this week was go to the local orphanage and help them make christmas ornaments for their tree. That was amazinnggggg, we were with all the little kids and they were super happy, cute, and so grateful that we were there. That was honestly one of my favorite moments on my mission, we just sat down, talked to them, and had some good fun making ornaments out of paper. I mainly focused on making snowflakes because that's about all I can do, but some people were making snowmen and whatnot. Such a great activity.

Well, the rest of the week was great as well. English practice on Thursday went real well, we taught about greetings and had some very good role-plays with that haha. On friday, during our game night we played a super fun game of life size battleship. That was pretty wild, we set up some chairs and then put some blankets up so that you can't see the other side and then threw a ball over and tried to hit the other team. Really fun and with both activities we had a really good turn out. Many people showed up and had a good time. Anyway, I hope you all have a fantastic week and enjoy the good old Christmas season!!​​

Старійшина McGrath

Moroni 7:37 Read it and ponder it. Miracles have not ceased and they are everywhere. Be grateful for them and you will see MORE! 

Selfie at the Train Station

At the orphanage! 

Cool picture of a street with some snow

The Christmas Markets here in L'viv!!

More snow than I've ever seen in my life (Week п'ятнадцять) Inbox x

Wow, it really has been such a great week. A lot went on and I hope to share some of it with you. First of all, as you can see in the title, yes we've had a fair amount of snow fall over the past few days. A lot of snow at least for me. Over the past few days, we've gotten about four inches of snow, and even though it is super cold, it's also super pretty. I think I more fully understand what the term white Christmas means, because the whole city has snow and it's super gorgeous. Anyway, let's get started. First of all, on Friday we had a branch activity to kick off Light the World this year. It was a very successful activity and we actually watched the video, talked about it, and then members and missionaries hit the streets to hand out cards to people and talk about this wonderful program of serving others. If you guys haven't watched the video yet, I highly recommend it. It's probably one of my favorite videos ever, plus I get to watch it in Ukrainian which is super cool. Anyway, the activity was a huge success and I know that service is super important and when we serve others we will come closer to Christ. Plus, service doesn't have to be big, the video had many great examples but we can even do something as small as holding the door open for someone or taking out there trash. All is super helpful and someone will be grateful. So serve and you will be blessed!

Another very cool thing that we did this week was go to a soccer game. I know, I'm a missionary, but a member invited us and our mission president gave us permission, so we went out one night to go watch a quarterfinal soccer game. It was FC L'viv verses FC Nepro (a city in easter Ukraine.) It was a division two game so it wasn't like the FC L'viv team but it was still a super good game. We were able to spend some quality time with one the members and strengthen relationships through sports. It was super fun though, we actually had to leave early from the game because at the end of regulation, it was tied and going into overtime, but we didn't have time for that because we had to be back to our apartments before 9:30. Sadly, I found out the next day that FC L'viv lost, maybe next year. All in all, one of the coolest nights yet and probably a once in a mission lifetime opportunity so glad to have the opportunity to go and do that. 

Anyhow, the rest of the week was sensational, we taught some really good lessons and had some really cool experiences. One of them I'd like to share with you now. So Saturday night we went and did some stop-bys because our lesson with one of our investigators fell through. We ended up knocking on this young man's door and he doesn't answer. Super sad but that's life as a missionary, sometimes it doesn't work out. So we're walking down the stairs to go to our next stop-by and we meet a man who's walking up the stairs. We starting talking to him and at first he wasn't interested at all, but as we talked more, he became more and more interested, eventually, we exchanged numbers and hopefully we can meet with him this week and share the message of the restoration with him. Another cool thing that happened that night was as we were walking home, we decided to contact a little bit more. We ended up getting another number and had some very great conversations. Eventually, we reached a fork in the road, and one direction had a lot more people than the other. Elder Baxter thought we should in the direction with less people, I agreed even though it didn't seem to smart but literally the first person we talked to, we had a great conversation. He seems promising and we exchanged numbers, hopefully he becomes an investigator as well. Anyway, all in all finding is super important and I learned some great lessons about that this week. First of all, the Lord has prepared people for us to teach and help them along the path towards salvation. Second, the Spirit knows what is best for us and will lead us to make the right decisions if we listen to it. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to serve here! Can't wait for another awesome, busy week! Have a great week and a good start to the Christmas season! до наступного тижня

Старійшина McGrath

Moroni 9:26-27 Read and ponder those words. Came across them this week and they're such powerful words. I know that Christ is our redeemer!

Last week we went to a beautiful church on P-day and went up to the balcony that had an insane view

Another pic from on the balcony 

Last picture as a district before transfers

At the soccer game!

The church in the snow, super pretty

Tried to get a pic of the snow falling, looks super cool! 

Elder Baxter and me!

First snowman of the winter haha

Elder and Sister Cihak leave tomorrow and I had to get a goodbye picture. They were an amazing senior couple!

Wild Ukrainian Thanksgiving (Week чотирнадцять)

Hello family and friends, hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving this year, mine was quite interesting. I ended up really celebrating it on three different days. On thursday, the Ternopil Elders invited us to come and help them teach English we went and did that. Since thursday was actually thanksgiving, we went a few hours earlier than last time so we could eat a nice meal, look at the city, and hand out some english cards. That was quite fun, we ended up eating at a Georgian restaurant for dinner. That wasn't turkey and mashed potatoes, but it was very tasty. Not exactly sure what I got, Elder Baxter helped me pick out what to get, but I will say that I am a big fan of Georgian food now. Anyway, on friday, it was round two of thanksgiving and this time it was for our weekly game night. We played thanksgiving games, painted hand turkeys, (mine looked funny because of my messed up pinky) and then each companionship cooked a dessert and we all voted on the best one. And I bet none of you could guess which dessert won, OURS haha!! We ended up making a peach cobbler and it turned out super good, could go for another piece right now. Other companionships made pumpkin pie, cookies, and this apple dessert. Really good activity and we had a great turnout. Finally, the highlight of our thanksgiving was on saturday where the Elders in our district went out to eat at the ribs place that is quite delicious. We decided that we wanted to challenge ourselves and eat a loooooot of ribs. We ordered 12 racks of ribs, or 140 ribs. That was a ton of ribs, around 35 each and we at it all!! Felt so so full afterwards and it kind of hurt to walk haha but it was totally worth it for the food and the experience. All in all, it was an amazing thanksgiving that was nothing like any other one that I've had.

Anyhow, the rest of the week was quite great as well. As always, we stayed quite busy and taught some great lessons. On tuesday, we had the opportunity to watch the face to face as a district where Elders Oaks and Ballard answered questions that young adults sent in. That was quite amazing and am so very grateful for all the leaders that we have in the church, all the was from bishops to the prophet, Thomas S. Monson, they are receive revelation for us in these latter days so we can know how to face challenges that are very relevant today. Also, friday was transfer call day!! The fifth friday of every transfer, President Rizley calls up companionships that are changing and this transfer we didn't receive a call so it looks like I'll be staying in L'viv with Elder Baxter for another transfer. Super excited about that.

Finally, I want to share an miracle that occurred in our district this past week. So, last week I mentioned that we're skyping some French Elders because one of our investigators is from the Congo and his native tongue is French. Well, in order to set that up, one of the AP's had to call the mission office in Lyon and since one of the AP's, Elder Christensen, has a friend there, he decided to call. So Elder Christensen was able to talk to his friend about doing skype lessons and got that all figured out. But, throughout the call, Elder Christensen felt like something was off with his friend so he asked how he was doing. Apparently the French Elder's father had passed away the day before. Super super sad. Elder Christensen was able to talk to him friend to friend and give him some words of comfort. How crazy is that?! The very next day he was able to talk to one of his good friends and receive some words of comfort. The Lord works in mysterious ways and will always help us if we're trying our best. I know that this situation wasn't just a coincidence, this was a miracle and God's hand in our lives. So grateful for this experience and will never forget it. I hope you all have a great week!!

Старійшина McGrath

Mosiah 27:28-29 read, ponder and pray about these words and about the Book of Mormon in general. These are truly the words of God.

Loooots of  ribs!

 A nice pic of Ternopil, such a pretty city with a cool lake 

Good old Elder Swasey, always nice to see him

Classic city signs  

Crazy to wake up and there is snow on the ground

Selfie in the snowwww

Full month in the field!! (Week тринадцять)

Oh what a week it has been, full of great experiences that I hope to be able to share with you. So first of all, it keeps getting colder and colder here in L'viv. I think that some of you are getting jealous of the cold because Saudi Arabia and Arizona aren't too cold yet, but let me tell you, I'm kind of jealous of you guys. Even though you can wear many layers when it gets cold, I like the heat so much more haha, I think the only reason is that it's all I've known for the past 19 years of my life. Nevertheless, I wouldn't trade anything for the experiences I'm having here in the amazing country of Ukraine. Ok, the first thing that I want to talk about is when I went out to the села, which means villages in English. We have an investigator who lives out there so we decided that we should visit him to see what his living conditions are like. So on Friday with the AP's and another member we went to go visit this investigator. It was such a great experience for me because my whole time in L'viv I've been in the city and never really got to experience another part of the country. It was also pretty sad because most of the villages here are poor. But hopefully we can come back and do some service for him because I know that service is important and as a missionary it's part of my calling to help the members and investigators of my area. Anyway, another cool part of the trip out was we kind of did a barbecue. We took a massive slab of pork and cooked it up over some coals. It was so good, can never go wrong with a barbecued piece of meat. Really cool experience and I hope I have the opportunity to go out again and serve the people in the villages.

Another really cool part of the week was our game night this week. I've talked a little bit about our English practice that we have here once a week but another big thing that we do as a mission is game night once a week. These events are not just for fun though, even though they really are, but we do try to serve the people and we find a fair amount of investigators through these events. Also, it's just a great time to bond with the people of Ukraine and work on my Ukrainian. Anyway, the leaders of the mission just came up with a new idea on how we could approach game night to try to get more people involved and coming to it. They decided that we would have more of a "fill in the blank night" meaning that every week we need to come up with a theme for the night. Such as like, chili night or Saudi night haha, anything really works that could be done and would be fun. But this week we did a minute to win it night, where we played a bunch of different games and had one minute to complete it. It was such a fun activity and I'm pretty sure I got some good pictures to share of the night. But yeah, it was a success and more people showed up this week, we're hoping that the word spreads on how good it was and we'll get even more people. The more the better, right?

Finally, the last thing I want to share with you is with one of our investigators. He's actually not Ukrainian and is from the Congo and speaks some English. We taught him and few lessons and gave him a Book of Mormon in French for him to read, but the language barrier that we had was not the best. So we actually came up with the idea to try and skype some Elders from france who were fluent in the language so they could teach him in our investigators native tongue. We ended up finding some Elders who are serving in Lyon to skype with us and teach our investigator. And let me tell you, even though I didn't understand pretty much the whole conversation and lesson because it was in French, I still could feel the spirit. I know that my comp and the investigator could feel it as well. It was so present and the lesson went super well. This experience helped further teach me that you don't need to understand to feel the spirit. The spirit will be present if what you're teaching is correct principles and you're living worthy of the gospel. The spirit has been the biggest help on my mission and I know that this church is true and everything I'm doing now is going to help so many people over here in Ukraine. Not everyone listens, but we're giving them the opportunity to hear about the gospel, and that's what's most important. I love serving a mission and I know it's exactly where I need to be right now. Have a great week and Thanksgiving. Love ya all!!

Старійшина McGrath

Proverbs 3: 5-6 I've been thinking a lot about this scripture and we all NEED to trust in the Lord and well will be guided. God wants to help us and when we trust in him, we will be led to salvation!

We found this awesome ribs place this week haha, sooo good!!

Out in the Villages having a barbecue

Me holding a nice piece of pork, who needs a plate when you got a fork? 

People playing a minute to win it game

Me playing one of the games where you have to put tights on your head with a
ball in the tights and have to try and knock down the water bottles. Super fun!

Another picture of beautiful L'viv

Snow has fallen (Week дванадцять)

Oh what a great week this was, full of great experiences that I'm so very grateful for. So let's jump into it. First of all, I want to talk about a different investigator that we met through english class. We taught him a few lessons and we taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the third lesson from Preach My Gospel. We had thought about it before hand and we decided that if the spirit was there and prompted us to, we would ask him to be baptized in December. So we're in the lesson, teaching him about baptism and the spirit is so very strong, he's listening so intently and me and my comp look at each other and we know that this is the right thing to do, so we ask if if we will follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized. He was a little bit unsure at first but he eventually accepted it!! So exciting, was able to set my first baptismal date. Sure hope that he continues to progress and prepare for that date. Such a good experience and so grateful for the spirit to lead and guide us.

Another great part of this week was that I got to leave L'viv for a day. On Thursday, we were asked to help teach english in Ternopil, a city a few hours away. So we hopped on a bus and got there and met up with Elders Hill and Swasey. Nice to see one of my former comps from the MTC. He's doing super well and we were able to catch up over dinner at the this really good Ukrainian restaurant. Teaching english there in Ternopil was so much fun, I taught the intermediate class by myself and there were so many people there. I can see why they need help every week. We played some fun games and learned about the parts of speech. The people of Ternopil are great and was grateful for the experience was to go there for a day. Plus, the city is so beautiful, that always helps haha.

As you can tell from my email title, it did snow. I woke up on Sunday morning, took a shower and then looked out the window. Holy smokes, snow was actually falling, I can't even remember the last time I actually saw snow falling from the sky. Saudi Arabia and Arizona did not prepare me for this cold weather. But I have bought a nice big jacket and that's keep me warm. I just hope that this is a mild winter and we don't get any big snow storms haha, don't know if that'll happen. Snow is inevitable here. 

Anyhow, I want to talk about our contacting activity for a quick second. On saturday's we usually will go out to the city center or park and pick a specific topic to talk to people about. This week we choose to focus on the Plan of Salvation. I also made a personal goal to get one IP (a number from a potential investigator) all by myself without the help of my great companion. So we head to center and start talking to people. Usually I'm standing right next to my comp because I don't know the language well enough to do this by myself. But today, I decided to contact on my own!! Crazy right? So I talk to a bunch of people and I don't know what they're saying, but I just keep bearing my testimony. That's whats key, bring in the spirit and that will do the converting. And guess what, I ended up getting THREE IP's!! And all three of them, I don't know most of what they said, but I bore testimony and asked for their number. The spirit works miracles if you do your part. I challenge all of you to share your testimony with one person this week, you will see miracles!!

Finally, today was such a great day. We were able to go to this super cool Ukrainian restaurant museum. I'll attach some pictures but I tried some kvas (this ukrainian drink) for the first time and went up to the roof after and got a great view of the city. Such a great week this week!! Thank you for all your support and prayers! Love all of you!!

Старійшина McGrath

Alma 16: 16-17 Read and feast upon the words, the Lord truly does prepare people to hear the gospel!

A cool building in Ternopil

With Elder Hill and Elder Swasey in Ternopil!!

Selfie in the Center after the finding activity!!

                      Picture with the Elders in the district 

(Me, Elders Abraham, Christensen, and then Baxter on the right)

Snowwwwww, holy smokesss!! 

Holding a gun inside the Ukrainian museum

Drinking the Ukrainian drink called Kvas 

On the rooftop of the museum on a machine gun!! So crazy

Beautiful rooftop view!! L'viv is so nice!!