Yo Yo Yo Waz Good, Yall?!?!?
Things got p-retty crazy this last two weeks!! Hence my absence. So yall, guess what happened!??! Out of NOWHERE, our mission president called Elder Hansen and me and explained that Elder Hansen would be leaving to go home the next day!! They found a flight for him out of Ukraine to London! And from London... well, they hadn't made plans for what would happen when they got to London, so I still honestly don't know if he is home at this point lol. They were just trying to get all the Senior Couples, along with Elders and Sisters who only had two transfers left, out of Ukraine due to the borders closing. So pretty crazy stuff!! I enjoyed my time with Elder Hansen SOOOO much!! He was seriously such an amazing teacher who knew both the gospel and the Russian language like the back of his hand. He was amazing. His love for the gospel literally shined so bright, it was so apparent.
Moving forward... what happened to me after Elder Hansen left you might ask?? Well I'll tell you (and this will explain why I got so busy all of a sudden that it took me a while to answer all your emails when I said I would be better about that lol)! So I got put in a trio with the two other Elders in my district!!
When we did this, we combined our teaching and member pools. We got busy, FAST! The first day we were together, we had about 10-15 calls set up that day. It was a grind, to say the least lol. These two Elders were named Elder Glass (who has been with me since day one in Ukraine. I love him SO flippin much! He's the best and makes the best pizza lol) and then Elder Richards! Elder Richards was new to our area as of this transfer. He came to us from Odessa, just having been Zone Leader. He truly showed us what good work was. One night when we were falling asleep, I asked him about physics (He's been studying physics and is going to do more in college after this at like Stanford or something). Anyways, lemme tell you guys, my mind has never been more confused or bobbling than after that conversation lol. I was SHOOK. I loved my time with Elder Hansen and Elder Glass so much, but it QUICKLY came to an end. Why? Well, because we learned we would all be getting sent home... we packed our bags and... JK got y'all, we still here ;). Instead, I got a call from my mission president telling me that I would be transferred up to Sumy in the following few days!! So BOOM! I got packing and was out of there on Monday of last week.
SUMY!! Sumy is the farthest zone north in the whole mission!! It was a 3-hour-drive from my last area, so we had one of our nice church members drive us up! It was so fun to talk to him the whole way and definitely good Russian practice. We got some good laughs in on the way up haha. From my understanding, Sumy is one of the areas with the most Ukrainian-preferred speaking people, along with sergic (which is when the people decide to intermix Russian and Ukrainian. They pretty much use words from both language and then conjugate/case them with each others' grammatical casing and conjugations lol. Should be pretty fun to experience when I get on the streets after this quarantine!! If I didn't completely understand this language before, I sure am not going to now 😂. Everything is gonna be awesome I love it haha).
I came to this area with my new companion, Elder Olsen!! Elder Olsen and I were in the MTC together, which is super cool! He was also Elder Glass's companion in the MTC! So Elder Olsen and I have been here in Ukraine for the same amount of time!
Nether Elder Olsen nor I cooked much with our last companions (just because they loved to cook), so now we have been growing in that category haha. I've always wanted to get into cooking, so I'm happy about that!!
Our district consists of us, and then two sister missionaries!! --one of whom is finishing her second transfer of training!! They are super awesome! Right when we got in on Monday, we gave them the Sacrament, since there were no Elders to give it to them for the last two Sundays! Lucky for us, they met us at the church so we could give it to them cuz we had to travel so far to get to Sumy that day. However, this Sunday, we brought the sacrament to them! Since we can't use public transportation right now, we made the walk. Let me tell you... it was not a short walk. An hour there and an hour back, apartment to apartment. Every step of the way was worth it. It really just puts a whole other outlook on the Sacrament. My appreciation grows so much from this opportunity we have to bring it to them.
We got to their place, prayed, sang a hymn, blessed the Sacrament, shared testimonies, sung another hymn, prayed, mingled a little bit, and then made the trek back home haha. It was awesome. It was also super cool because I got to see a ton of the area on the way there and back!! Don't get much of that in quarantine!! It was also pretty funny, on the way back we got stopped and talked to like four times--one of which was so random, but we got a laugh about it. Two drunk guys were sitting by the lake we were walking by, and they just look over and say... "AY... AY" I respond... "Yes, hello??" And then the man just says... "Corona Virus," and laughs lol. I simply responded, "Haha, that was funny. Thank you." 😂😂.
Moving along... The apartment here is way nice!! It's so much bigger than my last one and actually has working appliances lol. I don't feel nearly as confined lol. However, sometimes when you're using the hot water, it'll start to get all read/orange from the coppery pipes lol. So, that's pretty interesting, especially when showering lol. Another fun fact, Elder Molnar, who I served with in my last area, served here during his training!! Way cool!!
I have absolutely loved my time here thus far in Sumy. I have loved calling the members and getting to know them more. I can already tell there are so many great people here. One member who has been insanely fun to talk to is ольга. She is honestly REMARKABLE. She's a BOB... the CUTEST bob. The first day I call her and introduce myself, she's all energetic and happy. I ask her what she's been up to in quarantine, and she legit like lists off the member list to Elder Olsen and I, explaining she's been calling everybody every day asking them how they are doing and everything!! I was literally in awe!! She then continues to tell us who we should call because she thinks they could be lonely, etc. I quickly told her... "Sister Olga, you are literally the best church member!! You should be the branch president or something!!" She started laughing so hard and replied... "No no no, I'm too old, that's only for young people." I laughed and replied, "No, no." She continued to talk about her missionary efforts and then I couldn't hold it back. I said... "Fine, maybe not Branch President, but you should definitely be the Tsar of Ukraine." Again, she broke out laughing haha.
I asked Sister Olga what brought her to Sumy and just a little about her life. She shared the COOLEST story with me. She explained that she felt like she had to be here, like there were people here in which she needed to help. She came to Sumy and when she was here she had this dream. In the dream, she was in a garden. She saw her parents and family all dressed in white asking her to help them. She replied, "Yes! I will!" She looked around and she saw more and more people, those of which she had never met before!! They were calling out to her, also all dressed in white, asking her to save them!! She told them she promised she would. She is now in charge of the family history of our branch and works tirelessly on working with family history, preparing people for saving ordinances. She explained to me how bad she wants to go to the temple to do all this. She also explained to me how badly she wants to fly to Salt lake City to attend General Conference. It's her dream. This whole time on the call, I was absolutely just struck with what she was saying. Her faith and sincerity of heart were so clear. I already love her with all my heart, but yet to have met her. I told her I cannot wait to see her walk through those branch doors and meet here when this quarantine is over. She agreed and insisted we come over for borscht first thing when quarantine is over. I'm totally taking up that offer. Rumor has it that her borscht is out of this world lol.
There was another lady we started to talk to recently!! She explained to us that she was an inactive member. We asked if we could still continue to call her and share spiritual thoughts with her throughout the week! She said yes!! One of the thoughts we shared with her was about scripture study! We shared with her, and then I extended an invitation! I asked her if she would try to read the Book of Mormon at least three times a week, for only at least 10 minutes! I got an honest rejection out of that one, as she explained she didn't think she could do that. She felt she had been inactive too long and could not go back to that. I explained to her that no matter what her Heavenly Father loves her. I explained to her that our Heavenly Father has all these blessings stored up for us, and that he wants to provide us with those blessings so bad, which of course he always does, but so many more can be received when we read the scriptures, showing him our love. I reduced the invitation, trying to convince her and find a common ground on which we could meet. I said, "Okay... how about this. Sunday is the day that we give to our Lord and God correct?" She agreed that that was true. So then I continued and said... "Okay, then how about every Sunday I find one chapter in the Book of Mormon and send that chapter to you to read. It will only take a couple minutes. You can read it, and then when we call you during the week, we can talk about it!" She agreed! It was so very awesome!! We intend on following up on that invitation this week!!))
It's strange to say, I have only been here for a few days, and haven't seen much of this great city, but it truly feels like home. I know it's where i'm supposed to be. I have been able to speak with the members and people, more than ever before on my mission. My desire to serve has grown. I am so thankful for this opportunity to serve in this city of the Lord's vineyard. The work continues everyone!! I promise you that. I invite you all to choose to be a part of that work, just as Sister Ольга (Olga) is choosing to be a part of it, diligently, every single day.
Thank you for all of your emails and support!!
Love you all tons,
старейшина Вайлд
P.S. - We started a 1000-piece-puzzle and it is lit lol.
