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

Ukraine Week 16: Winter....

Well Winter has hit us too here in Ukraine and its about as cold as you can imagine yeah its way cold but luckily my companion has like 3 extra pairs of gloves that i stole and now my hands are a warm as my body and yeah but the weather is very brisk and not much snow and also half way through the week daylight savings changed and we gained an hour and so we felt like we were sleeping in but it was good. Now the sun goes down at 6 and i hear that it goes down at 4 when winter really hits so I,m excited for that....

So we have been thinking about the sister missionaries coming out to the field soon and we asked the zone leaders and they said it was reported that there will be 20,000 new sister missionaries soon and all i was thinking is can we really handle that many sisters its crazy. We also were told by one of our sister missionaries here that her sister went to her bishop at BYU and started getting ready and the bishop said almost every sister that can go is going and they really don't know what they are getting themselves into but they will find out soon. 
So exciting stuff because we have 10 sister missionary companionship's here in Ukraine and we could use more but not really we have a few areas that aren't open that could be open if we had a few more companionship's but who knows what will happen, i think that a lot of sisters will serve state side cause the requirements are a lot easier so yeah cool stuff.

I'm glad to hear that Erik finally gave his homecoming talk and that it was good. I have been wondering that same question myself lately and reading my patriarchal blessing too and its hard cause it says that I'm out here for a reason and that there are people out here that i only can help and that a lot to think about that someone Else's salvation rests on the fact if you like Erik invite them to church or knock on their door or stop them on the street. It really makes you feel inadequate and i have a really hard time now especially since we have no investigators and my companion really doesn't like working with the ward (active members) he feels like its a waist of time and yeah i don't know what to do there.

We had exchanges this week with the zone leaders and so i went with Elder Dorious and i was in his area and we had literally nothing to do all day so we contacted for 8 hours and got 1 potential man was that a long and kind of disappointing day we talked to everyone literally everyone if they crossed out path we stooped them or at least tried to but it was hard cause some days are just like that and then some days we are out for 5 min and we get a new investigator and yeah its interesting the way the lord works but i do know that he knows his sheep and no one that day was ready to talk i guess.

Then yesterday we went to go visit the old woman who calls me savior to bring her the sacrament and she just talked the whole time about how she just found out she has Cancer and that was sad and so we read about the saviour and his love and how it applies in our lives and then we went over to this other less active to help her with her computer and teach her about charity and then we were on our way home and i had this impression that we should stop by this less active member we have been trying to work with and we showed up at his door and he was up the stair well chewing tobacco and he tried to hide it and he came down and talked to us for a sec. and then we left but who knows maybe us showing up will help him realize his addiction and yeah who knows i hope we did what we were supposed to.

Well dad your question about people here like coconuts yeah they are basically like that but i would describe them as like an orange not to hard of skin but hard enough that you have to dig alittle to get to the inside and once you get to the inside you never know if your going to have a sour one or a sweet one so yeah that is the way that i see Ukrainians they dont have many friends cause they don't just automatically call you a friend cause you said hi to them like we do in america but the friends they do have are as loyal as heck and they will go to the ends of the earth for you so yeah i really like when we make friends with someone.

Well that all for this week except im going to be an uncle but kyle already told me that and so yeah i dont know if he told you that a week ago but yeah my vote for the name is IGOR.

Love Elder Naumann

Ukraine week 15: Table of books

Wow i feel so honored to be on the ward news letter I dont even know what to say or how I will say how trully blessed my life has been from my mission but I will try.

This week has been rather good we have been trying to hit the streets more and more each day and it has been easy since we dont have any investigators so yeah we have spent lots of hours on the street and many of kilo meters walking around the city to try to find new investigators and people who are willing and ready to listen and be baptised.

At the end of the night on monday we were making our way home from I think a family home evening and we had like a half an hour to get home so we were like im kind of hungry we could just go home be we decided we could last and we could find someone that would want to know more about our church so we walked around center and tried talking to everyone and it is hard to want to talk to everyone when it is dark and you look like 2 weird guys from america in black coats. But we persisted and found this guy who is 19 named roma and he was way cool we told him where we were from and he was amazed that we were speaking Ukrainian because no one from america learned ukrainina and thats why im really glad im learning it. We talked with him for a while but he wanted to go get some coffee but we were like no thanks could we meet tomorrow though at our church so we can talk and meet he agreed and we met him the next day and we were there right at the time when this other guy was tuning our piano and its funny how deaf this guy was who was fixing the piano but yeah we called roma and he didnt answer so we were sad but then he called and we met and turns out that this 19 year old roma guy is a concert pianist and he was incredible and we were blown away about how good he was and we met and talked and at the end the tuner guy left and we told roma to see how good the piano is and it was already a little out of tune and I could hear it but that was a good get to know you meeting with him so hopefully we will be getting a new piano player in the branch.

This week we have been doing this thing that we call table of books where we stand at a busy part of town and give out pamphlets and books of mormon and family proclamations and it has been really successful we have found 4 new people who we can meet with and we have already met with 2 of them and it has been way fun to be out there doing something where people dont want to run away cause they come to us and i really am glad for all the prayers to help us do the work out here that is just the biggest blessing. 

We have also been working with this man here who is a less active and his name is yurie yahoriv and he is such a cool man he knows english perfictly he playes the piano and he is really funny but he has a problem with the branch he doesnt think anyone loves him and they dont really need him but we always get comments from other people telling us that they miss him and want him back but he also has a word of wisdom problem and that doesnt really help but we will be working with him more but pray for him please he needs it.

So this was the week that we were suposed to get our sr. couple back from america but sister moores heath is still bad and if they come back they wont be back for about a month so that has been a real challenge for us here cause no one can make decisions for the branch and the money or anything so we have been working around lots of stuff but we are praying for them so they can return here and continue doing the work they started.

This part of the letter is to the sisters of the ward who are almost 19 or who are.

Dear Future Sister Missionaries 

Do it Follow the prophet and do it all the sisters here were just like wow i really wish that i could have had this oportunity to do this when i was 19. Most of the sisters here waited cause they thought they should and they tell me that we should advise the girls at home to go on missions.

So yeah i know that my mission where im at would be so blessed with more sister missionaries they really help out here in lviv and if we had them all over the mission the mission would explode with baptisms so if you dont listen to anything else listen to the prophet do it.

Well i love you all.

Elder Naumann 

Ukraine week 14: Not in Ukrainian‏

Well this week has been a fun week like i said last week i have a new companion and he really wants to change alot of things about this area and about really everything including our apt. We have been working really hard this week but for some reason we havent had very good numbers but numbers arent everything and we are surviving.

Not much to talk about this week except general conferance and how amazing it was. I dont think i have ever got so much out of general conferance as i did this time. (probably because i was awake the whole time) Well yeah so like you asked last week if we invited investigators well yeah we did but none showed up so we went down stairs and watched it on our computer in english with my companion and i was really glad cause none of the other missionaries got anything but the sprit out of conferance and now this week i have alot to think about other than waiting for the next leahona to come out and for us to read the talks so that was good. Our mission pres droped a bomb on us that morning, he said that because of conferance we wernt going to do study and that we needed to do something else for 3 hours in the morning when no one is out on the street. That was kind of frustrating but me and my comp. worked on the map we have been making to go visit people that are less or inactive members.

We didnt really do much other than making that map and contacting like crazy and i am sort of glad that elder olsen is gone not because i dont like him but because he was too good at the language and he just would really do everything for me and i would always think that i didnt understand the language and that i wasnt able to do much but be his companion but my new companion is only 7 months old mission wise and he doesnt really know the language all that well so i really have to step up my game and it has helped me to really understand what i can and cant do and what the heck i need to work on.
Like just yesterday i gave a blessing to an old lady in our branch who is always sick and i did ok it was hard but i did it and everything worked out and i am glad for that chance i had to give that blessing.

We for some reason have lost all 10 of our progressing investigators and my companion thinks its him and his curse. His curse is that every time he goes into a new area they never get meetings and they loose all the former investigators and its really sad for me cause i really liked some of the people we were meeting with i really thought i could help them i didnt believe it at first but now that it has been 2 weeks since any of our old investigators has answered the phone im starting to believe it.

19 Alexis Wow i don't know what to say but wow you too Kacey it is so awesome and such an example to me that the young women of the church can act so immediately and with such obedience What has it been a week and i bet that in 4 months the missionary numbers will go from 50,000 ish to 70,000 ish and that just blows my mind well yeah i was really wondering who that would effect i asked myself who would serve that i knew and it is cool to hear about things like that because there definitely are a lack of sisters out here. 

Well i have been sending you things that i wanted for months now but i will tell you the things that i remember and want for real.
zebra f402 pen it is my favorite i want some ink for it and maybe a pen or 2 
those ice grippers for the bottom of shoes that kyle had
measuring cups that colaps and maybe some table spoon stuff too
peaneut butter
Brown sugar 
That soda maker thing i told you about 
maple extract 
Rootbeer extrace and that goes along with the soda maker only rootbeer
a video of eriks home coming if there is one 
and yeah i think the letters that i sent have goten there but yeah 
I think thats it and i love you all and hopefuly this next week will be more eventful..



Love Elder Naumann

Ukraine week 13: 21 -2 = 19 Crazy‏

So this week started out kind of crazy there were lots of meeting with members and investigators and other people elder olsen wanted to say goodbye to and it was fun but sad for elder olsen he is dissapointed cause he thinks that if he had one more transfer here he would feel compleet and the work he did here would be done but obviously the lord thinks otherwise so he sent elder Trebett to me here in lviv and im really well i dont know what to think yet i cant really tell you about his work ethic or anything like that cause i have only been with him 4 days but i know he wants to change the branch here and make the less actives active and do stuff like that so we will see what happens. My companion is from las vegas and went to byu the year before his mission and he is a stud and i like him alot but he doesnt like meat so i dont know what to do with that and he thinks that he will change me to not want meat but i dont think it will happen we will see.

So we had two family nights this week cause we wanted to say goodbye to 2 families so we had one with the beckers on monday and one on tuesday with the malonoses and that was good they both have really little kids who are really fun and just a hand full but those days were full of packing and man does elder olsen have alot of stuff it is crazy and i hope that i wont have that much stuff when i go to my very last area... Well we al know i will i will go crazy and buy lots of stuff and just really go crazy but you know who cares i will deal with that when i get to it.

On wednesday we went out after more packing to lunch with one companionship of sisters and this one hawiian lady who was just here for a couple of days and she wanted to take us out to lunch and she said i will take you out anywhere and at any cost so we didnt know where to go but elder olsen remembered that he wanted to try this one really classy looking place called valentines and it was so cool in there it blew my mind and i just didint know what to do the thing i ordered was veil and it cost 195 greven yeah thats alot i mean its really only about 20 dollers but for us who only get 1800 greven to last us the month it was alot but she was so cool about everything and we found out that she is going to serve a mission in japan and that was cool.
After the lunch we went right to the church cause we had a baptism and yes i know that a wednesday baptism is weird but he was leaving and we decided that that would be the best thing to do as far as he goes so we didnt hold the whole thing we just did the ordinance but it was dumb we didnt invite really anyone but like 15 people came. It made me kind of mad cause when we do invite people no one comes really dumb right i dont know what to do its crazy.

Thursday we were in kiev to change our companions and we didnt really get anything else done becides that cause we had to get on a train at 4 and so we were on the train all day and all night and it was just so worthless and it was scary getting to the train station cause we barly got there in time for the train to leave but we made it and everything was ok but im just glad we made it in time or else we would have spent the night in kiev and another 2000 greven and that would have been dumb.

So changes to my district are elder trebett and sisters irazary and moore and they are cool but kind of sad this week our other moores are back in america to get some stuff checked out with sister moore she is sick but we dont know what with probably sick of us. but pray for her and yeah.

 Who are you teaching right now? We are teaching alot of people but i really dont know cause we havent seen any of them this week and that is really sad but yeah we are working on it.


 Is there anyone that you want me to put their name in the temple? Valodia and mark and kostia and nadia so yeah them please

so conferance 19 years old yeah that is so crazy when our sister found that out some were really sad that they waited and they could be done by now and it is just interesting to think that in less that a year we will have 18 year old guys out here and 19 year old girls and i wonder if like when they changed the time period to 18 months if this whole thing in a cupple of years will go away but who knows it will be interesting i dont know if there are alot of 19 year old girls who could handle a mission ( just kidding ) but really and 18 year old guys i dont even feel like i am mature enough to be out here but obviously the age group behind me are just wayyyyyyy more elect and ready to serve the lord.

Well thats it i look forward to seeing conferance at the end of the week and i will tell you all about how much i loved it next week.
Love elder Naumann

Ukraine Week 12:5 months... Baptism

So this week has been a week filled with ups and downs and lots of weird things like 1 baptism that should have been two and going to kiev and learning transfer information.....

First your question about conferance 

Do you ask investigators to come? Honestly i dont know what we do as far as investigaors

 I am guessing you won't have the translated version this week, but maybe in a few weeks?  We get the translated version a week after on a cd and we all watch it as a ward on either one day or two so yeah it is all fun stuff.

So at the begining of this week we really didnt do much we got doged alot and thats always a sad thing but we are working with  8 progressing investigators and thy are all doing really well some we will be droping soon and some we have already baptized.

Something that was fun to find was on monday we found a tennis cort and so we went and played with the sisters and man we all are soooo bad it is crazy. we then had our district meeting on tuesday and it was rather funny cause the zone leaders were gone and the moores were gone so we went to one of the sisters apt. and they took forever to open the door and we found out why it was cause they were all in boba out fits and that word meens old woman. Yeah it was so funny apparently they bought them the day before at the clothes renok where i bought my coat yeah.

So then thursday was crazy we did alot of area book work and thats always fun, the best times.  Especialy when its my turn on the phone and i have to call  and test out my ukrainian on the phone yeah not very effective. Then we went and had another meeting with one of our baptisimal candadates and he was doing  really good and he was way excited to be getting baptized. Then we had english conversation. its called that cause its illegal to call it english class cause we arent teachers sooooo. yeah usualy we have       4 to 7 people come but ever since we have had some good advertizing this week we had like 20 so it was just a crazy jump and people were interested in other stuff becides english we had some peoples numbers by the end. and then off to kiev to a leadership conferance and it was a long train.....

Friday was so awesome we got off the train and went to another elders apt. and  showered and got ready for the day and it was good  then i 3somed it up with a russian and another ukrainian and we contacted all day it was hard and crazy fun we got 10 potential lessons or in other words 10 people we prayed  with on the street and got their numbers and i had to solo it on a few of the contacting sessions and it was hard and  i struggled but people are human and they helped me  it was a good experience. We then got on another train at the of the day and took it all the way to loosk and  then took  a 4  hour bus ride home.

We got back on saturday the day of the 2 baptism we had and it started off really normal mcl then clean the building then a lesson with a member then it came time  for the investigators to come for their interview and they didnt come so we called and they said they would be late but they would be there and so they got  there and  everything was normal they both were ready, nervious but ready so they  both did the interviews  and passed and  then  they went to change and the son walked right into the font with regular clothes on so we were like oh no is he drunk so we tried to help him but he was acting like nothing i have  ever seen and it was weird and no one knew what to do because he wasnt drunk so we thought it was just nerves but it was something else ( we found out later that he had taked 4 of  his anti depresent pills when he needed only to take one) 

So then we asked his mom what was wrong and she had no idea and so we  didnt end up baptizing him but we did his mom and it was really good she was so ready her testimony was so strong and she really understands the effect of the atonement in her life and i love seeing that in her. But we had no clue what was wrong with the son but everything is ok now i think we will baptize him soon so he is still on track so good day. 

Oh and  then we also found out transfer information and turns out i dont have the same companion  i get a new one his name is elder trabet and he is way cool i already know him but my trainer is leaving and going off to ivano frankisk and  i will be staying but its all good i think im ready.

Well that about it i love all of you and  shawn you look like a boss and i love how your teeth look too.....  and erik at least sence i cant hear directly from you i can at least  hear about you and it  looks like your doing good so i love you all and have a great week.

Love elder Naumann