Ukraine week 23: The Final Countdown

What a week it seems to have been for all of you. Its been something else for me too.

So wow im going to be an uncle to a boy thats so exciting and thats a funny way you all found out, good work kyle and katie!!

Mom I was also right on my guess so we are both always right :) 

uhh im so jealous that you all got to see the hobbit im sad i missed out. I see advertisements for it all over and macey you got to tell me about it.

Im glad winter has come for all of you it has been here for about 2 weeks and it has been interesting, here in ukraine the roads dont get plowed they get shoveled by 60 year old women with shovels made of a piece of wood on the end of a stick. So everything is snowy except the places where they shovel dirt on the road and that only makes it worse cause then everything is muddy. 

So this week is the last weeks of our lives and man am i going to Party it up In KIEV, BROVERY yeah I am geting transfered a week befor christmas........ So the who knowing where im going to skype and if i will have to have you call me is something i will have to figue out cause Im white washing and...... Im the SR. COMP. yeah elder vernon has no idea what he is getting himself into. 

So Im leaving beautiful west ukraine and going east twoards kiev. I hear brovery is an awesome little urban are of kiev with lots of families and stuff like that, the branch is part of the stake they have about 60 members and there is only me and elder vernon for the whole branch so that will be nice and also scary because we have no idea what to do and no idea where to go (or even where the church building is) Im scared and excited. 

Now is the time in my mission where im freaking out because im getting to the part where im a sr comp. someone in my group is a district leader and sr. companion and the crazier part is that this last group that left only had 2 elders in it and the next group coming in has 8 and my comp. now is training and this group was in the mtc during conferance so that is before the huge wave of sisters and some extra elders. ( the next group of sisters goes home in may and the group of sisters coming to replace them is 13 strong so that stuff is crazy) Oh and that area near lviv is opening up called uzerod and that is way exciting cause it hasnt been open for like 7 years and the members will be crazy excited. 

So yeah thats whats happening to me but what i dont know is how we are going to call each other cause here in lviv i had everything all planned but now im going to where I have no idea what they have or what we are doing for Christmas so yeah and you also didnt give me any times you were available so i will just tell you what we can plan. So first our p-day is now on Tuesday Christmas and so we will not get another chance to talk about it so here is what you can do. 

So back back to other topics. so this week has been a fun one full of enjoyment and freaking out because on friday we got a call from president telling elder tribett he is training here and out of that i knew i was leaving but i wasnt expecting what happened to have happened. 

Erik im finaly glad to hear about your mistery girlfriend and yeah the picture you sent me was an interesting one but yeah my companion was glad to get the whole info about the mistery girlfriend before i left and the picture and name made it all the better for him. 

So im glad all of you are excited about mormon.org cause there has been a real push on it on my mission about mormon.org cause the church really wants it to be good they made all of us make a profile in english and ukrainian and so yeah my comp wasnt happy about that because he hates putting info on the internet but he did it so if you all want to see my companion his profial is taylor and his picture he has a face mask on for skuba diving so yeah you can see all the missionaries here have one if you look in the ukrainian section. 

Well not much else happened this week but i will talk to you next week but email me first sometime this week for times send me like 2 or 3 times you could talk and kyle too and make sure the time zones are right too. 

I love you talk to you soon 

Elder Naumann

Ukraine Week 22: Mission Conferance + Temple = Snow‏

Hi Family,

Well this week has been a fun one filled with lots of snow. We also spent a lot of time with Roman this week and it came together in one big church meeting at the end of the week with Pres. Klebingat speaking here in lviv.

So this week was us spending full days with roman and doing computer work. So Monday we first had a meeting with this one really less active man named Brother yahoriv and we met him at his home first on Sunday and then again on Monday but at his work and we talked and we are really trying to just be able to get meetings with him because his testimony is awesome and he really knows the church is true but he has problems with the word of wisdom so mom if you could put his name on the prayer role at the temple that would be awesome (yuri yahoriv). So we met him and then had to run over to this families house who brother roman dogged and so we filled in for him and they were awesome.

Then on Tuesday we didn't have very much happen except we felt that roman would dog us for Wednesday so we kept up with him but then on Wednesday roman wouldn't answer his phone so we ran over to the church and found him there moping after he came from work and we just made sure he was doing ok and then he threw a ball at us telling us that the people who were called to do the family history work were not able to do it any more so we needed to do it with him. Good thing we didn't plan anything that day but being with roman. The whole day was spent in the computer room with roman and he was a bit bitter about transfers because that is his life, well at least that's what he tells us is his life so yeah the assistant Elder brathwate who served here in lviv couldn't tell him so he was really mad at him soooooo yeah he just needed to get over his little problem.

Then we got on a train Wednesday night and headed off to kiev and it was a good night but then we got in to kiev and it was snowing... hard like really hard like a foot of snow and no snow plows and no sidewalks were shoveled so its a good thing i have high top shoes. We got in to kiev with the knowledge of who was speaking at this conference and it was funny because the last time Pres. Bennit spoke to our mission he chastised us and said I love you at the end of every sentence so thats what we were expecting but he had talked with our pres. and thats not what happened it was nothing about contacting or about obedience it was all about how we need to have charity and that is the only way our mission can go up in numbers. It was a really good meeting but really long like 8 or 9 hours but at least it was warm. Then we as a district in lviv had asked pres. if we could go to the temple because we didnt have to get on a train until 10:35 at night so we went to a temple session at 7 at night and we were rushing because we also met vlad up there in kiev and yeah he was doing really good he is about to take the test to get him into BYU Provo yeah i told you before that he would be in idaho but now he is coming to utah so I gave him your email mom and our home phone number so maybe some time soon he will give you a call saying he is hungry.... Just a warning. But we had an awesome time in there, having it im ukrainian and understanding it was awesome too. but the real fun part is getting a taxi to the temple and get us to the train station with all of us safe and all of the christmas packages safe too. 

That brings me to another subject I got your package and I opened it and started eating some of it and I hope I wasnt suposed to wait until christmas soooo yeah, Im glad you got my package and yeah I know that i dont have a lot of pictures of myself but its ok those were just my pictures not my districts pictures which I have so dont worry. But how did you like your package? Did you try to contiek slam yet? did you get my recording? how do you like the play money? Just really how was everything?

So yeah that was the big news for the middle of the week but something that just happened yesterday was that pres. came and made roman the new branch pres. and that was awesome soo cool he was really happy when he got relesed but then he called him as pres. and well lets just say his big im free plans just went out the window so yeah funny but im glad he is doing awesome here and helping everyone here so just was not seeing it coming so soon because elder moore is coming back soon like in 3 weeks so that is weird and also he is waiting for his missionary to come home before he gets married so yeah thats another 4 months so we just weren't expecting it but it was a good surprise.

So sounds like everyone had a fun musicly filled week. Im so glad that i got to miss being in the messiah this its worst year. Even though I am really sad i missed it im glad it was on its worst year... Macey im glad to hear your dating and going to dances and also doing the crazy music thing that i remember during the christmas season. 

Ok but someone has seriously got to tell me where erik is going to school and who in the heck is he dating because he for sure is not going to tell me....... and she is from iowa where does that come form man someone tell me. 

So the telephone call and transfers so we have a small transfer period because pres wants people to get home before Christmas  This is all i know about transfers one of our zone leaders just got made 2nd councilor in the branch presidency and the other one was told he was leaving and that some other places and guys who have been in an area for 6 transfers ( 9 months) are going to be staying for another one so hopefully i will stay because I really want to stay for Christmas here its like the best town to serve in Christmas time because its the most beautiful but who knows. So here is the deal with the phone call/ Skype Every city here has a computer club with Skype and even if they don't the churches here all have a web cam and computer and i have an i touch that has facetime so it wont be that hard the only thing that i need to know is what time do you have available for me to call with everyone home and I will also be calling Kyle and maybe if you have Skype + we can all Skype together and talk together so yeah remember im 9 hours ahead so pick a time whenever on Christmas Well we might have a Christmas party for the church at 6 or 7 so maybe try to avoid that time but if we need to i can step away and got to our church's computer room.

Well Love you family and talk with you soon. 

Elder Naumann

Ukraine Week 21: Random Exchanges

Well this week has been a fun one filled with surprises and I have loved every min of it. So on monday we went to a family night with a less active family who is starting to be active again and they were cool they have a problem with their lifes that the husband doesn't want to go to the temple and get his endowment and then ultimately get marred, the wife is a return missionary who actually served extra long because she was so good. So we had brother Roman with us and is made the husband download priest videos of his old friend who just became a priest.( I think I have told you his story right?) well if not ask and i will be glad to tell you. 

So after that meeting my back had been hurting but not too bad because when my back hurts I put on the back brace I brought and feel much better. so on tuesday we  went over to this one less active lady in the branch who wanted to get rid of her sewing machine that is from the 50's and still has a crank petal and so we did that and my back still was hurting but I didnt worry  about that too much. 

So on Thursday we got a surprise visit from some of the other missionaries in the mission from a place up in kiev and they came down and one of them was a kid that was in Elder Tribetts group in the mtc but had to go home, But now he is here and we saw him for a second and then had to go. We had a lesson that day with volodia and that was awesome he has been reading the bom and knows its true and before he gets baptized he wants to finish it but as soon as we get ihor a member who was his childhood best friend on the lesson it will be game over get in the fount.

We then on friday convinced the zone leaders to get elder tribett on an exchange with Elder ward was his name and they had a blast they went out with roman and had a blast visiting some people in the branch and everyone loved elder ward soo much. So I was with his companion Elder jacox and he was a really cool kid and defiantly fun to hang out with, we contacted mostly the whole day except this meeting with a man we met on the street about 2 weeks ago on exchanges and his name is Yuri and so we had a good lesson with him he thinks that our church is true.... Along with all the other christian churches so that was fun but let me tell you about his story so me and elder Hansen ( zone leader ) were on exchanges 2 weeks ago and we contacted this man and he has one fake eye and is about 46 and we stooped him and he knew who we were and said yeah I have some friends like you from Israel and Utah and then he spit out the name Spencer Rogers..... Yes the Spencer Rogers we all know and love and call bishop.... So another random meeting with someone from the Rogers past. So he is a doctor and writing a play about moses and he speaks english and he told me the story of when Bishop Rogers was in France I think dancing with his dance group and then how he lived here. Right i know crazy and totally random so i will tell you how that goes. 

So something funny about Ukraine is that there is a holiday for every day of the year almost and there is a day for almost every named person in ukraine so Saturday was day of roman so that was a fun day with him.

Im so sad you didnt find the black ship I hope its not lost forever or else all the children in the world wont have presents.

So erik im interested to hear all about your interesting "friend" my companion thinks that she is black or not a member but i really dont have any idea what mom could be meaning by, I might need to be open to changes sooo email me something about it ok. Oh and where are you trying to go to school? 

Macey also you should tell me where you really want to go to school too?

And Josie Good luck on the tryouts im sure you will do great. 

shawn im glad you are doing better in school and that you are having fun with your new gun and dont shoot your eye out........

So i have a suggestion for all off you if you want to stay caught up with all things missionary in my life go to the mission web sitekyevukrainemission.com i think or something close to it. President writes us weekly news letters with really interesting things in it and this next week we have mission conference in Kiev and that will be a blast cause we are going to the temple afterwards and im really excited.

Love Elder Naumann