New Family

Dear Family, 

Well you know whats funny none of you have said anything about whats going on in kiev, apparently there is this revolution going on where there are now 2 million students resisting/ fighting the cops in kiev so that they can join the eu. Well i guess its not that big of a thing but here it is thats all the people here are talking about and its funny cause most of the investigators in our district are students and they are at the revolution in kiev and crazy things are going on. No mom yzhorod is not effected cause we are on the other side of the mountains so all is safe and all is good we just have some small rallys going on once and a while. 

Well enough about politics and the crazy revolution, now on to the good news, we have a new family that we are teaching, one of our members brought them to be taught and they want to be baptized this month so we are super stoked and they are so elect they have 2 kids one is 8 and the wife is prego and will be giving birth next month so we got to get her in the water quick before we have a problem with infant baptism. 

We also had a fun activity this week with the young men's, We are preping for a Christmas party which will have music a play and gifts and Santa and also well just lots of great stuff so we are working towards that and we are having the boys sing silent night for everyone so that's great and we practiced and the boys were fun they are really hard to teach music but its fun stuff. 

Im glad the singing stuff went well this week im always sad when i hear about stuff like that and how im not there but yeah its not that big a deal i be there soon enough well i would say too soon but i dont intend on missing another one. 

Macey I want you to know that I'm actually enjoying listing to Christmas music this year. I think its cause i forbade my companion and all others with the help of a sister, from singing Christmas songs until this week. and this next week we are planning to have a Christmas tree up soon enough at the church so all will be ready for Santa. 

It sorta got snowy here too we are having a problem it comes down at night and sticks and then in the day it turns to slush and then again at night it freezes and well lets just say you fall hard sometimes, i mean not me but others. 

Well i will pray for you grandma and well everyone else and you all got to pray for the family sorry we cant give names but pray for the family in uzhorod that they will come to our meetings and church to get baptized. 

2 baptisms.

Dear Family, 

Well first things first macey congradulations on getting into suu that is so great for you im glad that despite the examples of your brothers you managed to overcome the school wall and get a great scholorship that is way great. 

So this week has been one of the best/ busiest of my life as a missionary well also as a person and it was great. So this week we had 2 baptisms on Saturday which went so well i never thought that a baptism could go so well. 

We had the whole branch of 8 come and the missionaries and a few visitors. The water was also warm which has never happened ever in my time serving as a missionary it is always ice cold. They both went under easily and well i could name everything that happened but it would take too long. Lets just say that i really am grateful to the lord for alouing us to participate in helping others come to Christ. 

Its funny to look at missionaries and to see that no matter how hard we work we really dont have the power to change peoples minds no matter how smart or talented we cant truly convert people. Thank goodness that god had provided a way for everyone of his children to feel and to know truth. The holy ghost has the most work to do out of all the missionaries in the world. He is always awake he is the most effective and he knows every language. Im grateful that god gave us him as a companion because without him we really would not succeed. 

This week we got to also have a stake conference of sorts where we had to download it and then watched it on Sunday and it was good we thought something would happen bur nothing happened except the preaching of the Gospel. 

Oh sorry that i forgot we got transfers this week and im staying in uzhorod and im going to be with my future roommate his name is elder Austin and im really excited to be serving with him. Its funny that the people you want to serve with changed throughout you mission. At the beginning of my mission i really would have never wanted to serve with this elder but now there isnt a person i would want to serve with more. Unfortunately i have to move apt. but all the apt. here are really great so all is well. 

Oh we also went bowling this week as a branch, we had a bunch of investigators there. We rented a bus last min we walked up to the bus driver and asked him if he could drive us and he said yes. We had a really fun activity. 

Sad thing with transfers elder callister is going home and mom he has some stuff to give you so make sure to get in contact with him maybe go to his homecoming or something. Its sad to see him go home its funny thought cause i remember when he left from pg and now i was at his Ukraine farewell it was good and sad. 

Well have a great week this week and macey good job again im really proud of you. 

Love Elder Naumann 

What A Week

So in short the miracle of the week is that on this Saturday there will be 2 people getting baptized here in little uzhorod which brings our numbers up to 10. It really has been a miracle with them both being ready at the same time. I wont tell you much detail but one woman has 4 member children and the other woman is a friend of a member who we started teaching and she started our first meeting with what can i do to get baptized next week so we told here and its just been a miracle. 

We also had president lattin over this weekend and he is so great he helped us with the whole branch thing and how he is our leader so that was great we also just had studies with him which are always fun and really interesting. 

We also had a really fun Halloween party where we trick or treated. In Ukrainian they translate it to candy or death thats what they said when they came to the door we had. We also played bobbing for apples and the apples that we had were so small so what i did was i just sucked up the apple into my mouth and everyone was wondering where the apple was and then i opened my mouth and the apple fell it was funny. We played a few other games and they really loved it. 

Sorry this is so short i have to go to a lesson. That was basically my week and yeah so have a great one everyone. 

Love Elder Naumann

Random miracles

Dear Family,

This week sounds like it has been busy and full of lots of things, Well that's the same for me too, when i look back at the time that i have spent here in uzhorod it feels weird and i dont think that i like how fast time is going. Its also weird cause I have been working on school applications and it was weirder to have elder callister tell me that he is signing up for classes. Man real life comes way to quick and sometimes people think, If only i can make it to the end of my mission, or the end of school or this or that it will all be better and easier. That is not the case we have to let ourselves to be happy now because god intended us to be happy now and for us to see the beauty now.

This week we had a few visitors including the zone leaders for exchanges and elder tribett for de-registration. The zone leaders were sort of fun because we had elder terry back and all the members wanted to see him which is always fun to be with those missionaries and hope that the members would do the same thing for me if i ever come back.

We had some really cool miracles this week one of them including one of our members bringing one of their friends back to the church. She had already been taught most of the lessons but then fell off the map but now she wants to be baptized so we know how to provide that service. Its really cool cause she just dropped out of nowhere so we are going to do all we can to get her in the water.

We also had our first mutual activity with the 2 young men in our group where we had them invite their friends to come play soccer with a few Americans and we played them and its a good thing that elder callister can play soccer or else it would have been really embracing. well not really its not to hard to beet a few 12 year olds. Ok yeah it is they were really good.

Something happened this week that was sad and well at the same time unexpected and the same time very expected. So this week we were told that the mission pres. 1st councilor was coming down to talk and to teach us but we called him on Saturday and he told us that he wasn't coming so yeah i had the wonderful opportunity to prepare a 20 min talk man was it hard and i hear my talk was a bit long but i made it.

Well thats about it family there were some great miracles this week but no time will tell you next week.

Love Elder Naumann

Weeks of Firsts

Dear Family, 

Well this week has been fun we have really had some good success with investigators and alot of them area coming out of english and they are really interested. We have been having some phone problems this week well honestly since elder vernon got here just like in brovary everything goes wrong, This week we had the sisters lock their phone and the other elders get their phone lost and us having to go buy one, and the sisters multiply times have left their phone at home so yeah we are having fun. 

This week we also had exchanges and it was great being with Elder callister and elder johansen we had some interesting experiences together. On tuesday me and elder callister got together and worked on Wednesday and it was great elder callister congratulate you kim on the mission call he is super excited for you and hopes to see you at his home coming. I was also on a service project with elder johansen out at a members house but this time we built him a cabinet and it was funny because he wouldn't listen to us so we just did our best and learned patients and we spent about 4 hours with him, afterwords we talked with each other and we thought wow we could have done that in an hour and a half but thanks to the half crazy half blind member we got to have fun for 4 hours. 

We also visited a member who is in the hospital and has Cancer which is really sad and we just found out today that she herself doesn't know that she has Cancer, our doctor friend told us and it is sad she is 69 years old and really frail and its sad to see her but she is a trooper and is doing her best in with what she has and her daughter was there so we met her too. 

English was really good this week we have decided to change really everything cause we haven't really been finding investigators from English so we changed that and we found 4 investigators this week just from English and its great. 

This week was my first regular week to conduct sacrament and it was all set up with a member of the mission pres. coming down to speak but 2 days before he called and canceled. So we had to do some quick prep for some talks but they were fine. And this week I taught G.P. and the subject was eternal marriage and i got to say i dont like talking about stuff i have never done. 

Thats about it im glad to hear that every thing is going great. keep it up. 

Love Elder Naumann

General Conference in Ukrainian

Dear Family, 

Well this week was really good we got to watch general conference in ukrainian, and this was my first time that i had watched it inukrainian and not for language study. We have been watching it for comp. study at home on our tv but we only got the first session so far but its great so far. Watching it in ukrainian is really hard, Its like listening to someone who speaks like they were reading a collage paper and not the conversational words that i know so it is hard but it was fun. 

We have also been meeting alot this week with one member who is a recent convert and has been struggling with his addictions and so to help him we have been listening to the 12 step program of recovery that the church has so it has really been helping him and its really a great program. 

This week we got to play base ball again and it was way fun these Ukrainians just dont know how to play they want us to train them but none of us really know how to play but thats ok we spent some time talking about the Gospel and there were some kids who were like yeah i will come so that was cool. This one kid we talked to said that he is Greek Catholic and that he tried going to another church but they kicked him out because he was Greek Catholic. so we of coarse invited him to our church because we are always happy to take people in. 

We also spent some time doing some service with a member, this guy had us help him move logs that he was cutting down with a new chainsaw and well to give you an idea of this man he only has one good eye and lets just say that he had no safety equipment (dad you wouldn't have liked that) and he may have fallen a couple of times with the chainsaw going so yeah it was fun. Dont worry family I have learned my lessons of safety and didnt do anything stupid. 

We met with some investigators this week and had a really cool experience with this new investigator. So this man has been coming toenglish club for like a month and then this week out of nowhere when we were leaving a store we see him and he tells us that he knows a man in lviv who is a member and he basically just asked how does one become a member. Miracle right!!!!!!

So update on the whole group leader thing and branch situation with finances and all that fun stuff. So i have been talking with pres. Lattinthis week alot and now we area not part of the lviv branch we are now part of the lviv ukraine mission branch and pres. lattin will be our branch pres. and i will be a councilor and we wont have really any money but at least it will be by the rules. 

Thats about it this week family love you. 

Elder Naumann

Becoming what the lord wants

Dear Family, 

This week has been sort of stressful and full of new things and old things and things that i wouldn't have wished upon myself but one thing that i learned this week was to trust in god and to know that whatever he does and whatever he asks you to do he prepares a way for you to do it. It wont be easy and it will take time and will take effort but he is always there. 

This week i got myself a new and an old companion. Im back with elder vernon and its funny to see how we have changed and how we have stayed the same. We have spent some time this week contacting and teaching people. We have both noticed that when we were in brovary we taught with the most unity and with the most power, That was interesting to me because we didn't know the language and we didnt know what we were doing but we trusted in the lord and knew thats where we should be. 

I am now the acting group leader here in uzhorod and its scary, i conducted the meeting this week and i had to make it all up for the paper that we use was gone and we still cant find it so will have to make a new one. 

On top of running the meetings i also have to deal with all the money. I received a call from the mission pres. and he told me that i wasn't doing it right, unfortunately i was just doing what my 4 fathers told me to do and what they have always done. In my knowledge they didn't just do it blindly they asked up and the answers built up into my knowledge of how to run the branch, unfortunately we have to now change that oh well it will be hard but whatever

Spent some time with elder johansen this week while we were waiting for our new companions and we made the fun fetty finally, it was his 1 year mark and it was close to my 18 month mark, which was weird cause my sisters from my mtc group went home they went home............ I wasnt ready for that, i remember like it was yesterday that we were all in the mtc speaking awful Ukrainian and now one of our sisters is in Israel and is translating for 6 ukrainian women who live in her group. 

That was weird to me to hear that there was nothing at conference cause last year was so big i guess theydidnt want to do something crazy and big so soon after last years announcement, The sisters in our district are both 19 and they have only been out for 6 weeks they are stressed but they are celebrating their 1 year from the announcement date they were rather excited. 

Well thats it family mom its getting a bit colder but who know what will happen on this side of the mountains, and im curious to see what will happen with transfers too because pres. lattin is a stickler for money and once he sees how much money he is spending he might change his mind. and mom the lord really does know your knees....... 

Love Elder Naumann