Ukraine week 11:No coat.... Really cold‏

First thankyou mom for all the work you are doing for me on the recipes so yeah we have some good stuff here just nothing like soup or cake mixes so yeah just that stuff oh and brown sugar so yeah no cookies or peanut butter so none of that. 

Oh and kyle so i really need your account passward for your apple accout so i can update the apps that i got from you 

Ok well this week has been a fun one. We have not really done much but work with our one investigator who is going to be baptized at the end of this week with his mom so yeah he has some problems but i think that he truly wants to repent and be baptized but we dont know if it will happen for him here he might go back to cherkasy but his mom will totally be getting baptized at the end of the week so that will be good.

Yeah so this week it started off warm and then one day it was rainy and really cold and apperently it doesnt end untill march or april of next year yeah and i still dont have a coat... So obviously i went shopping for a coat this week cause i have been cold cause we arent aloud to wear sweaters without a suit coat and i dont want to wreck my coat and so yeah it has been cold. We have lots of places to buy stuff here but one of our members here owns a coat store and so we went over to the renick that he works at and find out that he sells leather coats and big ones at that. All natural giant heavy coats and i liked them alot but as a missionary it was kind of outragious, i looked like a member of the mafia and it was cool actually very warm. So i didnt get it and so i looked around the rest of the renok and saw some good coats they all were about 1000 griven which is about 100$ so that wasnt bad prices even the real leather was 900 griven. Needless to say i dont have a coat yet im going to buy one today for sure cause its only going to get colder and i will probably die.

Well this week has been fun with some new investigators ones name is Hleb he speaks english we talked alot about traditions of the church and the members and our beliefs as members of the church and we have another lesson with him today and i really like him he is cool. Another one is named ivan and he works in this parking lot as a guard and he sees is walk by everyday and he wanted to have something to read and so we gave him some stuff and we invited him to be baptized and he always says i have been baptized and we explain it over and over again and he just doesnt get it but its ok we will work with him.

We also have this guy named mikola and he is cool he also stoped us on the street and wanted to get a book of mormon and he said could you come to my home so we said yes of coarse and it was cool we went over a while ago and they fed us and gave us really good tea( which by the way i love tea now) so yeah but all the questions he asked were Jehovah's witnesses questions and it turns out he isnt a Jahovahs witness but they have taught him before and believes all the things that he is told from them and yeah. This time he had some really funny questions off the internet, the title of which was The church of Joseph Smith today..... So yeah i think you know where that took us it was fun though they are really nice always feed us and are very hospitable and fun to be around, they just need to stop arguing and listen for 1 second cause when they do they will know so much more then the bible can teach.

Also at the beginning of this week i taught a family home evening at the church with the ward like some of the people who dont really have families. I did it on the book of mormon because as a branch we are reading it in 100 days and im already way ahead but its good for the branch to do that. I taught about the vision of lehi and how it is almost the same as the vision of joseph smith and that was a cool way for people to see it. I really have never thought about the vision like that as a pattern set by the lord to teach us how prophets are called and how they gain revilation from the lord.

We did lots of other things this week but i cant really remember them so they probably arent very important. so yeah Josie your teeth look really good and i really like the shirt too and i hope you are all doing good oh and erik your a bum thanks for writing me JK i still love you but seriously white me something about your mission everyone else gets your cool stories and i get left out and when i come home you wont remember the deatails and will only want me to tell you stories... I love you all and be good.

 Love Elder Naumann...

Ukraine Week 10:Zone Conference

Well this week sounds like it was a fun week for everyone and i also had a really good week full of ups and downs. Utimately it was a good week and it was eventful.

 

So first off this last monday was way fun but kind of lonley. Me and my companion found a place we could go to play racket ball or so we thought and so we invited all of our district to come and play with us and have a good time but everyone bailed and so elder Olsen and i went and found out that it was not racket ball but squash and so we decided to play it cause how hard could it be right its just like racket ball right.... WRONGO... so we got in the cort to start playing and we find out that the ball doesnt bounce it didnt bounce and we kind of freaked out and were just like man how do we play this game. We started playing thought the way that we thought the rules were and it was way fun i won one and he won the other and we loved it and will go back again soon.

 

Also this week was zone conferance where the mission pres. comes down and teaches us and helps us in our work as missionaries so that was way good he taught about the plan of salvation and went into crazy detail and our minds were scrambled but we all loved it, it was very insightfull but he told us to not tell our families anything about it cause it could make him sound crazy, so lets just say it was good and at the age of 48 ( 1 year exsactly younger than dad same birthday and everything) we all think that he has high potential to be a general authority and yeah good stuff there. In the middle of zone conferance we had lunch and we talked to the tex mex owner to see if he would cator us and he did and everyone freaked out cause it was real american food and even pres. loved it and told us for next time to get the same place to cator. We also then talked alot about our purpose and it was way interesting the things he wants us to do so yeah we are excited to use them and glad to get the insperation from our mission pres.

 

Also that day of zone conference we had a baptism from the other elders and this guy is so cool and so elect its crazy. So he is in the army in ukraine, he has already writen a book, he form that book got married to an american woman, he also is applying to byu idaho and we think for sure he will get in, he speaks better english than any ukrainian i know and yeah he is just super cool and we all love him he is 24 and is so intelegent and fun to be around we have already gone and hung out with him twice and we love it. Maybe when i get home and he is still in byu idaho i can go visit him and hang out and speak ukrainian.

 

This week cause of zone conferance we did exchanges with the zone leaders and the assistance and that was way fun im really good friends with all of them and we just plowed the city ok not really but it was still fun and on the last day we went to this book fair and i bought some really cool big books, dictionaries and they are so cool and i will send you a picture of them today and man i love them. I also sending a package home soon so be expecting that. Also there are some thing that i want if you are going to send me a package ever, 1. i want one of those soda makers we have but one of the small ones i have seen them before but yeah if its to expencive dont send it but if its not to expencive send me it with only rootbeer packeges we have like everything else here but rootbeer. oh and if you cant just send rootbeer extract 2. there is no such thing as brown sugar here so i want some of that 3. peanut butter that doesnt exsist here either 4. also vanila and maple surup extrace if you could. 5. mac and cheese packets not the actual noodles but just the cheese packets cause we have noodles but the cheese is just not the same( i remember kyle asking for this stuff too ) yeah thats it i mean for now that i can remember if i can remember anything i will tell you dont wory.

 

Also yesterday i went to sister rogers referal family and that was way fun we went there and gave her the letter again cause aperantly her youngest riped up the last one and that was sad but we went there and their oldest daughter was there with here friends 2 guys and 1 girl so it was fun they are all our age and it was wierd to be with people our age and not only talking about the gosple and all their english was amazing but we only spoke in ukrainian so it was still good they also made cheese cake and that was weird here in ukraine but yeah we invited them to english and they said they would come so yeah but it was a fun night and hopefuly we will go back again and see them.

 

Well sad that byu lost and yeah good that you all had fun at the river house thank you mom for the food stuff and yeah hope to see pictures of erik and maybe a video soon :)

Ukraine Week: 8 The End of the Begining‏

So this week is the last one of Erik before he comes home man its making me home sick a little. My companion had the same thing happen to him when he came into Ukraine, but his was only 1 transfer in and mine is one and a little bit but he said when his brother came home his family took and sent lots of pictures and even sent him a video of them waiting in the airport and he said it made him sad but he would have been much more sad if they hadn't so if that were a possibility that would be awesome.( so they just put it on YouTube and put a link to the video so maybe that would work)

Alright on to my week, this week has been fun and kind of hectic. First we have had the most lessons and new investigators i have ever had on my mission 6 new investigators and 15 lessons. Man thats alot of lessons and it was a little overwhelming but i loved it.

At the begining of the week we had another lesson with Mark the guy who aproched me and spoke english. Last time we invited him to read the book of mormon and pray about it and that was good and we also talked about what the great apostacy is and why it happened and he didnt really accept it but then we had another lesson with him on wednesday and we asked him if he read and prayed about the book of mormon and he said he read the whole thing and prayed alot about it and mine and elder olsens jaws droped and he proved to us that he had read the book all the way through. We talked alot about it and he asked us an interesting question about the bible and he said have you all prayed to see if the bible is true and i was like nope i never really thought i needed to. He proceded to say the feeling when he reads the bible and he perfictly described the feeling of the holy ghost and how it works and he said he didnt get that feeling when he read the book of mormon and we were like well we cant answer your question you really need to ask god over and over but he has a hard time understanding about modern prophets but he still wants to meet and we will meet him again this week and i look forward to that. 

We also go to this lady called boba tetiyana and she is really old and i think i told you all about her and that she gives nicknames. So she gives nicknames and i am lucky enough to have 6 nicknames so the first one is Tubby then post wagon then BTR thats my favorite then she called me blondy and then whitey and then because i have been giving her blessings and she has been feeling better she calls me спасител Which meens savior and this woman is kind of crazy and she really thinks i have this magic gift of blessing people with health and she looks at me with such i dont know but its funny and kind of bad she really doesnt have a testimony of the gospel and she just believes in the missionaries and so yeah we are trying to use my savior influance on her to help her get a testimony.

So this week we talked to alot of cool people and one of them happened to be this 85 year old man who looked like he was 60 and was from poland and if all of you remember your history you will remember that yes ww2 happened at that time and yes he was in concentration camps all his life and got liberated at age 16 by americans and then became an American citizen and spoke perfict english and was rather funny and kind of crazy but aperently he wrote books and made movies about his life i will send you some info so you can all see this guys life and stuff and tell me about it im really interested to know what his life was.

Also this week i know i have told you about the sign thing for the street and how we were working on it and so yeah we finaly got it done and printed out and it looks good we went out one night and saw peoples reactions to it and it was good and bad we saw what would work and what wouldnt so yeah its good but some fruits come out of it some people showed up to sacrament and said that when she saw us speaking ukrainian she was so impressed and so she came to church with her son and yeah it was cool 2 new investigators fun stuff the lord blesses you in ways that you dont see right away but its amazing if your obedient and do the things you should it always comes out right. 

Ok also this week i realized something. I want more music, i want like the sound track of mr. magoriums wonder implorium and disney and yes all of those things are aloud and kyle i need to get your passward to i tunes cause i cant update my scriptures and i movie and i have made some really funny stuff i will have to show you. Mom also i want some recipes from home i looked at all of my recipes and half of them are cut off and not from scrach and i need some that would not need like a cake mixture to make them all from scrach and also it would be better if you could get them for making them for 2 people that would be awesome like put them in an e mail and i can print them out oh and some other stuff we dont have peanut butter and brown sugar so if that is needed dont send the recipes and also anything that needs like canned soup... yeah we dont have any of those either so keep it super simple.

So to answer if i did go visit that referral family from the rogers, the answer is yes and they were great i really only met the mom and really no one else and she was way glad we came and i saw lots of the other family members and they were all really cool people funny and nice people and we talked for a while and she said to us right at the begining that she knows why we are here and that it would be really hard to convince her and yeah that was disapointing but we gave her the letter and before we left we asked if we could leave the book of mormon and she said she still had spencers from way back when and that was cool i asked if i could see it and she couldnt find it but that was cool. I didnt really get a chance to ask why the rogers were in ukraine so maybe sister rogers you can tell me in an e mail. Also sister rogers what is your skype address i think oksan already knows it but yeah just in case and also be ready for a skype call with her within the next 2 weeks. 

And i dont know if it would be against the rules for me to be there while it happens and accedentaly see my brother who is going to be home in 1 week but i dont even know if you will all be home so whatever so yeah......... and also some of these pictures are attempts at sister tylers rolls and mom i want the really recipe the one with lots of fat and butter.