A Real Grind of a Week

January 12, 2015

 

Occasionally, the wheel of fate rolls me a real grind of a week and one of those took place over the last seven days. Honestly, it really was not too bad, but all but two people with whom we planned to meet decided that it would be good timing to become sick or preoccupied with other activities. This left us with very little to do, such as walking the incredibly boring streets of Voskresensky, trying to share the good word with everyone. The first couple days were not bad, but toward the end we ran out of things about which to keep conversations going, and were left in silence.

 

Unfortunately, one of the results of a boring week is a boring email. There are a couple of things worth mentioning, though I cannot guarantee any great length in my discourse.

 

A huge step forward was made with our investigator with whom we have set a baptismal date for February. The big obstacle faced was the lack of marriage between her and her inactive member “husband”. He said that they needed to order all of his documents from a different city in order to process a marriage certificate in Kiev. This brought up a large red flag in my mind because my experience in trying to swim though Ukrainian paperwork in the past has been iffy. In despite of all of my doubts, the documents actually made it this last week. When they said that everything arrived without any problems, I asked them to rephrase what they had said to make sure that I understand the idea correctly. Now all we are waiting for is money to buy a ring and a trip to the government offices. I am rather optimistic at this point about the future with her now. If things go well, she will be joining the church rather soon.

 

I am honestly out of time right now need to close. I apologize for the short email. For those of you who are unsatisfied, I included my companion’s account of the events of the last week.

 

Best,

 

Elder Hancock

 

So, this was a fun week, with Ukrainian Christmas and all, but first, I’m going to say something very important. HAPPY BIRTHDAY KW!! I’ve been absolutely terrible about remembering birthdays on my mission, even the ones that fall directly on holidays, so technically her birthday is going to be on Monday of next week, so I should say this in the next one. But I’m probably going to forget. so Imma say it now.

 

This week we also had a lesson over Skype with I, which was cool. We saw his 5 month old baby, who actually already looks exactly like him, which is super funny. Anyway, this guy is really cool and really spiritual; we’re just not sure where to go with him. Right now he sees us like spiritual guides, or something, not really sure.

 

He knows that we’re The Lord’s servants, but he’s not really making the connection between us and the Church. We also both have this feeling that it’s a good idea to be super straightforward with him. So, we’re going to start teaching him exclusively out of the BoM, and Mormon internet resources, which should help him connect with the Church.

 

We also had Ukrainian Christmas this week, which was fun, there was your basic Christmas program that every ward in America has, except Saint Nick was actually Saint Nicholai, and has this sparkly red robe thing with a staff with a snowflake on the end of it, and he’s weird. It was fun, though; different kinds of Christmas cultures are interesting to me. 

 

After the activity, we went and sang to a bunch of old women. Sounds fun, right? It was actually cool, except for the part where one of the youth we were with stabbed me in the shoulder with a cactus needle. Why? I dunno. She felt really bad about it afterwards, though. It’s also where the conversation that includes the title of my letter takes place.

 

Sister F is one of the sister missionaries here in Voskresensky, and we were going to an old granny (the literal translation for babushka) who has a VERY hard time walking, and we went to apartment number 101, and knocked. Waited a few minutes, no answer. Rang doorbell, same thing. Basically, we went through this process for a few minutes before I asked the obvious question, and she gave the above answer. She then called the lady, and told her to come open the door because we were there and wanted to sing to her. We waited a few minutes, rang the doorbell some more.

 

Then, this horrible look of realization comes over sister F’s face, and she whipped out the ward list to check the number. There, in little black typeface was the number 93, 2 floors below us. The entire cohort with her busted up laughing as she, in a panic, ran out to the elevators (which were both occupied) and tried to get to the next floor for a minute before running down the stairs, yelling “oh Crap” (in Russian) the entire time. It was unfortunate, but also incredibly humorous.

 

President Packer Came to church on Sunday and talked about sharing the Gospel and not gossiping. It was cool. 

That’s about all for this week; I’m all out of finger typing strength stuff, so I’ll talk to you all next week. 

 

Bye!

Elder W