Ukraine week 20:Turkey.... anyone

Well this week was a fun one with thanksgiving and well thats honestly it. this week we did alot with getting ready for thanksgiving and then of course eating the food and feeling sick afterwards and having to clean up. 

So the beginning of this week was fun especially p-day so we had the regular stuff like shopping, Internet and eating out. Then in the evening we had a family night with a really cool family here, They wanted to go out bowling and they invited us and so we went and didnt really have a spiritual thought but it was a way fun time. The family has two really little boys about 5 and 3 years old and they got into playing and watching their parents. But unfortunately we all we awful but we were all bad together and yeah when we all suck its a fun time. 

Then Tuesday we had exchanges with the zone leaders and thats not really that exciting because they are in our district so we know them eat out with them all the time know all their investigators but its always fun. I went out with Elder Hanson he is a cool army kid from Texas and he is super at just doing alot of stuff and still keeping a cool head. He was a zone leader at his year mark on his mission and thats rather impressive. We had fun with fire too.....

 I know you told us that you would be having a meal with your district and I hope that was good? Well to answer your question yes it, it was really good we had alot of food and alot of prep time we spent 2 hours the night before making cornbread and brownie cookies and making phone calls to investigators.

 Do they sell turkeys there? Yeah they do but we had already bought a chicken so we made both and ate both. 

 Who was in charge of cooking? We all pitched in we had our own things to cook and have ready and then we brought them all over to the church and ate them in a big fancy dinner well with plastic utensils so Ukrainian Fancy Dinner.

So the morning of Thanksgiving we had a service project with this inactive sister who is sort of an extremist. So the project was to get her and her husband firewood and no we didnt just go cut down a nice big tree, we climed up to the top of the building and there was an atic there with a home made lader to get up there and then half of us had to climb up there and grab huge logs well not logs, suport beams they were big but the only way to lower them down was to ust a 200 year old rope and it was only about 4 feet long and it was a 15 ft. drop so we started with the rope on the log and me at the bottom ready to grab it and then the rope broke and then i broke my face... Not true I caught it and it was scary. We did that with 4 other big logs but wait thats not the end. We then set the logs infront of a cafe and grabed a cupple saws and started cutting. Imagine it 4 missionaries cutting wood infront of a nice little cafe so that was funny so then we cut the wood with an ax and then carried it to their basement so all in all a funny and good service project. 

So cool spirtual experience of the week. We have been teaching this guy named volodia for about 3 months now, we havent actualy taught him since the first month but he showed up to church out of nowhere and turns out that he is childhood best friends with one of our really strong members and they saw each other and he told him he was reading the book of mormon and this man gave his testimony and said that this was the best day of his life and that the lord truly does prepair people. I know he does and if he wanted to he could do anything with the work here. 

I love you all im glad you had a fun time in st. george have a great week.

Love Elder Naumann

Ukraine Week 18: Snow Really?

Wow I love that picture of our back yard with snow in it I would play in that all day long. ( not as a missionary) but yeah it looks like fun. 

So this week has been a fun one we have really decided to work with members more. I think its because my companion who has been out for a year like 2 days aggo is really sick of contacting for 8 hours in a day so we have really tried to find new ways to find referrals and reactivate those who have been lost from the fold because in the zone conference we had this week our mission president told us that we really needed to focus on the sheep we have rather then finding new ones just to loose them in 12 weeks or abandoning them after they reject you.

Our relationship with some really cool members has really grown this week we have had an opportunity to work on the ward list and really figure out where people are and what standing they have with the church so we have been working with brat roman and doing alot of work with the less actives and its funny he takes us out like almost every day and we try to refuse but he insists and says that the missionaries in America get fed every night and is said they also have cars and members drive them around when then run out of miles they can travel and so yeah he then told us he had a car and that the next day he would bring it but we didn't let him do that but today is his birthday so we have some really good stuff planned for him so hopefully our efforts will show results soon.

We also had a really good zone conference this week with our mission president in which he told us that our zone was splitting and we were all like why but we still dont know but maybe soon we will find out but the next couple of transfers will be interesting because our mission is estimated to receive 50 more missionaries and like 40 of them will be sisters so yeah crazy stuff he said he hopes to have a sister companionship in every branch so that will be a change and really exciting and it will be cool to see how that also effects the rest of the world too.

We also got transfer information on Saturday and basically our whole zone is staying where it is and thats so boring but its ok because im going another transfer here in l'viv and I love it here i have been here for almost 5 months now and the time is going faster and faster and next transfer will be a mystery cause we will hopefully be opening a new city and who knows I may be training and staying here in l'viv and that would make it 6 months in one city and that will be crazy but who knows what will happen. I wonder if this happens in American missions if missionaries want to serve in specific cities of if its all the same to them.

So how are things going with your companion? Everything is going ok i still love him and he still loves me I just found out what he is, he is a 40 year old man in a 20 year olds body but im over it he is great and we do just fine.

 Are there just the 2 of you in your apartment, or are there more?Yeah there are only 2 of us and its a old apt. it is 130 years old but its a good one.

 Who does the cooking? Do you cook for yourselves, or together? Well yeah me and elder tribett buy our food separately and we cook separately and it actually has been awesome cause I dont have to eat anything I dont want, but as a result of my trying to lose weight I eat basically the same 4 things every 4 days but I love it its so simple and I get everything I want. 

 Have you received your package yet? No i didnt but i have a feeling it is in the mission office but i think it would have just arrived and so they cant get it out to us until the next time we are in kiev and since none of us got transferred or are going to kiev for any reason until the 6 of December i think thats when i will get it. 

Do you know if we will be able to Skye or face time? Just wondering...:) I think yes we will be able to but our transfers are going to be 2 days before Christmas and everything will be different if i get transferred but there are plenty of computer clubs and all i need is wifi and all the churches have their own wifi so all will be well.

Alexis going to Houston Texas East she will have so much fun and wow what a prediction from that one shirt she has and the guy who said that first. Also I want to know who her mission president is going to be because we were all in the MTC when all the mission precedents came and i want to know if I meet them and if one of the missionaries on the mission right now knows them personally... Alexis you are in for a world of  well if i said fun I would be lying but you are about to enter into a time where you will have the best memories of your life. I have been talking with my companion Elder Tribett from las Vegas and we decided why missions feel so short and at the same time can drag on at times, its because of the activities you fill your time. I doubt you will be doing much street contacting or tracking my companion said while he was in Virginia he only tracked twice and the most he did on the mission were car stop by's to less active members and eating out every night at members houses and really doing alot of good stuff but I dont know really anything about your mission but i do know it will be different from anything you have ever done in your entire life so live it up.(Alexis Texas) 

So love you all and am jealous that you all heard form elder Bednar but I hope it was awesome.

Elder Naumann

Ukraine Week 17: How many Book of Mormons?

Well this week has been fun and alot of the time was spent on the street doing a table of books. So on monday we got a shipment of ukrainian books of mormon and we got 8 boxes with 22 books in each box so yeah we thought we would be set for a while but man were we wrong. So our new thing instead of handing out english cards is we hand out books of mormon like they are candy and people eat them up. The funny thing about ukraine is that nothing is free absoulutly nothing so when we try to hand out books of mormon people try to pay us and we tell them that its free its free just take it and i think like 5 people have flat out just refused to take the book thinking that its a book and books cost money so that is always fun. So we have handed out about 50 books of mormon and man it has been such a high we dont even know what to do with ourselves we have already gone through almost 3 boxes and we just got them and we only did table of books 3 times this week well 4 times but the last time we did it on a saturday night in center and lets just say that we had to leave early cause people called the police on us Woopes. Well yeah doing table of books is like one of my favorite things to do i love it to death. 

This week was halloween and what did we do...... absolutely nothing i was kind of sad but i hope all of your halloweens were awesome but yeah. but the end of the night we ended up in a hanted house. So here is the story we have this one man in our ward who is less active and was recently baptized so we were trying to set up with him but like i have told you many times everyone here has the same name and his name was oleg and there are like 5 olegs in our ward and one of them is crazy and walks with a limp and also tries really hard to speak english but kind of fails so yeah so we have been out with this crazy guy on a table of books and lets just say we call him the shark cause he literaly chases down groups of 15 year old girls trying to invite them to english and so yeah funny nothing better that a 50 somewhat year old man to get you over the top. So lets just say we set up with this guy and he was just super stoked but we tried to set up with another guy but its was funny so we went over to this guys house and its this big apt. building where for some reason all the windows were barred and there was this 15 foot high fence up and we got there and called the guy and he said he would come out to get us and after 20 min of sitting there he called us and told us he was haveing a problem getting out of the building and my companion and i were like oh no this is a mental hostpital like we had thought earlier so we wait and talked about who on earth would baptize a mentaly handycapt man but turns out he live in the back building and he is not in the crazy persons house but his house was rather crazy.

But this week was also good i took the lead in having us talk and meet with members more and because the zone leaders were out of town the whole week we spent alot of time with roman listney and he is just the best we spent days with him doing missionary work with less actives but its hard to get meeting here cause none of the members want or have time to meet so i wish i had brother lloyds problem but we dont we are out on the street weither we like it or not we have to fill our time with something productive and so yeah we visited alot of less actives this week and really tried to get our branch list cleaned up so we could really start doing work here with all the less actives so yeah.

But yeah i hear the ellections are about to happen so once you know you need to tell me but yeah also i tried sending you a voice recording but it was way too long and the computer wouldnt let me send it. 

Kim I did get your letter and i loved it it was everything i remember about you but yeah i did get it. 
Alexis so yeah im really excited for you to get your mission call i know you will do great out where ever you go and it will be all good cause i will get home and then like 2 months later you will get home so not even a bad deal. 

Love Elder Naumann