Speak your Language (from Sept. 23)

Dear Family 

I will first answer moms questions and then tell about my week. 

How are you?  Im great. ok but really im doing good. 

How is your new area? It is just as good as the hipe from the other missionaries. The people here are few but they are really strong.

Did the baptism take place that you told us about a while ago? Well the 2 small boys got baptized but the mom hasnt got baptized yet.d

 How is it being in the leadership of the branch? its funny and harder and easier then i thought i dont know how that works but its great. 

 What is the weather like right now? It has been raining this last week alot and aparently the winter is going to be a fun one im not looking forward to it. 

Do you have a new favorite food other than borsch that we could try? well i really like vereniky with sour cream but you really shouldnt try anything new while im not there you will probably make it wrong. 

This week we had our first real zone conferance which was fun and funny the things that pres. lattin think are problems and what he wants us to change so i will tell you about that. 

So on monday we had exchanges and i was with elder tribett we met up at the end of the day and planned to spend tuesday and wednesday together so that the people in lviv would be happy with us and wouldnt have to fight over us. On tuesday after english practice we walked home thought and it was raining and the walk home takes about an hour but we hit a terentral rain storm which hit us so hard and we were soaked even with unbrellas so that was a fun experience especialy since we had to use the shoes we had for the next day and they were water loged but we found others to use so that was good. 

So some new things from zone conference is that we will now be SYL ing all day everyday so yeah it will be fun and we are now banned from spending any time other than missionary work time with sisters. its a social activaty if we do. so no more district unity building lunches on pday and no more haircuts from sisters which sucks cause one sister here really likes cutting our hair so yeah. And no more excersising together. I think he is worried that by the end of the year with 29 elders and 26 sisters we will just be dubble dating. 

So our 2 investigators are doing really well they are reading and this time they had their brother sit in and he was interested too hopefully they will take a baptismal date the next time we come. they love having us over and we love being over we are just woried that we will get stuck in the friend zone and we dont want that to happen we want them diving deep into the waters of baptism. 

Yesterday and the day before we had president lattin here to teach us and teach the members and we really had no idea what to do cause he is here for like 4 days and didnt tell us he wanted to be on lessons or any expectations so its really weird he really strugles to tell us concreet things he is nothing like president k but i like him, he just barly studied with us and it was good he is working really hard on ukrainian so he is great.

Love Elder Naumann

Here he comes again

Dear Family,

Well this week is the week we got transfer info, and well it was interesting. So first let me give you a backround in what a typical transfer of president K goes, you stay with a companion for 2 transfers and in totall 4 in an area about 6 months and i like thismethid but now having pres. lattin as our mission president everything has changed. He likes people to only be in an area 2 transfers and with companions for 1.

So my companion is getting transferred to become a zone leader and im staying to become the group leader and to again to serve with you guessed it elder vernon the man i spent 6 months with already in a small cold town called brovery and now we are back together, He is the district leader and all the surroundings that we had in brovary like a big branch, cold ugly apt. and no languageskils. now we have a really small group and the language is good and the apt. is great so yeah it will be fun. It leads me to believe that i will be leaving uzhorod in 6 weeks.

Also something cool is that elder callister is coming into our district and will end his mission here with me and that will be cool it was funny because we had a lunch with a member here who does our registration asked us if i was serving with callister or vernonand i was like well i guess elder callister because i already served with elder vernon but i guess that doesnt make a difference to the lord. but as a consolation prize for not winning elder callister i get him in our district.

So mom you ask me about what i want in my Christmas package, and well you already know about the brown sugar and the peanut butter and you ask about anything else and well to be honest with you, I have clothes for the next year i have 4 suits (2 were gifts from a rich friend) and now i have an extra coat like a big guy also from that rich guy so i really dont know what more i could need. My good friend elder johansen just made a funny comment, We dont live in a third world country. I wasnt going to say anything but any country without peanutbutter is a third world country.

Well this week was uzhorodes 1120 birthday so that was cool except for the extra dose of drunk guys on the street but whatever. So something cool this week we had 3 Americans come to church and they have been coming here for this like children's help program and they were here 15 years ago when the branch here had just opened and then closed. They told us why the missionaries were taken out 15 years ago, its because the mission pres. wanted the big cities to grow and so he let this city die. they said that they have been praying for 15 years for this place to open again and now it has.

Well thats about all this week im glad everything is good at home and tell grandma i love her.

Love Elder Naumann

Baptisms and unplanned conformations

Dear Family,

Well everyone this week has been an interesting one we had first off me getting sick, registration things a baptism fun englishclasses and me getting my first calling. Lets just say that this week was rather eventful and i had a planner so i remember it all well most of it. 

So first thanks for the pictures kyle and mom i sent you a few pictures with me in it but yeah nothing really exciting as those pictures go except a baptism in a rented hot tub that was cold. 

This whole week i have been a little sick and one day i got hit hard but im all better now and its sad when you get sick because you loose precious time that you dont get back its really hard sometimes to be sick and have no area book to call people so it was hard but im over it now. 

Also this week we had a fun experience with a miracle we started off with getting a phone call from the registration man namedlubamer and he told me that a bus with my documents would be in uzhorod at 8:45 so we showed up to the place it should be and waited and called him and waited and called him and every time he said just wait elders just wait so that was frustrating cause we have a curfew its 9 or 9:30 if you have a lesson and we were there waiting until 10 and it never came we waited there and while we were waiting there another kid named vania was there and we talked with him and he was cool and he was like hey could i maybe come to your church and we were like yeah you can so maybe he will come some day. we made it home and had a whole bunch of things the next 2 days and in the end i got it and im registered and all is well it was just an interesting experience.

We also had fun english classed this week i had some really fun conversations with this kid named albert he is 12 and knows 5 languages and is super smart and way funny. the english program here is really good we have about 30 people come and they love it. 

We also had 2 not 3 baptisms which is sad but it was still great the baptisms that happened the woman who didnt get baptised who should have was their mother so if you mom could put the heminets family in the temple that would be great. 

So the kids that got baptised are 11 and 14 they are way funny kids and the lord has really prepared their family to help uzhorodgrow. we did the baptisms at a cold hot tub and the kids are so small and they were so cold but it went well they were great.

Saturday and sunday we had the president from the lviv branch come down and we hung out with him he came down to get callings to uzhorod and it was good for the members they are ready for callings they just need to be taught. Im called as the missionary coordinating leader and i have a member as the assistant and the calling is really for him he is great and loves to help. for now no one but the missionaries have the Melchizedek priesthood so we have all those callings but soon roman the president in lviv thinks that they will be separate.

Well mom i answered most of your question except the last about the new pres. he is great very different from president klebingatso yeah i like him but i cant say which one is my favorite.

Well love you all family have fun in the fast lane.

Elder Naumann