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| HAPPY MOUNTAIN |
How do you like that title, eh? When i used to make fun of my mother for listening to her books, that are deeper than the big blue sea, on tape when she got ready in the morning, here i am grunting and sweating and shaking and heavy breathing to do my 2nd pushup while listening to gospel talks. Ok mom, i gotta hand it to ya, they're pretty great.
A fast and cold week this week! One of the members of the branch came over to our house this week with nothing but her rock solid baby holding arms and a rolling pin. Seriously whoever made the WE CAN DO IT posters have obviously nevers seen a Ukrainian woman with a rolling pin before, or he would have made a different choice. In Ukraine a rolling pin is all you need to slam and bang your windows shut against the cold. I thought i feared my mother when she brought out the wooden spoon, but after seeing what those windows got....i would never make a Ukrainian woman mad in the middle of her pastry rolling if you know what i mean.So now that our windows are nice and disiplined our apartment is....well, a bit warmer, and where i lack i make up by keeping myself warmed up on the inside by the means of laughter. Every day when walking to the church we pass by, what i have now called HAPPY MOUNTAIN because i have yet to walk past and not have a huge grin on my face as i was people zoom down and crash into animate and inanimate objects.
When i don't have such a such a way of amusement however i am not so happy. As a lover of the heat i am a hater of the cold. So if you're ever in Ukraine and see a big, frumpy, frizzy, frosted, sweaty, muttering to the cold wind sister missionary with a nametag....yup, that's probably me. Every day is a day of a face half frozen with frosted hair, eyelashes, and yes even nose hairs, and half a face nuzzled in a scarf that has accumulated a weeks worth of different breath scents growing the best sweat beard this world has ever seen. The other day i sweat i was smelling the egg pickle pizza i ate a week ago with the pelmini i hate for lunch yesterday. Yeah, i might have to go on a breath mint diet for the next week or so...
I do have to give the cold some credit though because i can finally check off "Hold one of my own frozen tears" off my bucket list. The cold is also great for making up great awkward conversations! While running into our neighbor the other day we engaged in friendly conversation and i thought he asked me if i like ice cream. Well anybody who know's anything about me knows i like ice cream and i dont' want to leave him in the dark so i just take the subject and run, "Oh yeah! I could eat it everyday! My favorite flavors are.....". Only later do i find out that he had not asked me if i liked, "мороженое" (ice cream) but had actually asked me if i was, "мороженый" (frozen). Whoops, and i thought that confused look was just because he didn't know what hot fudge was...
This week we warmed ourselves up with some blinchiki making at our Branch Presidents house! And let me tell you his mother really know's what she's doing...
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| Sophia, she just got a tooth pulled and she is carressing a big bowl of sweet cheese and raisin filling...oh the irony. |
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| Flipping blinchiki |
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| The....smoulder? Oh you ain't getting nutt'n from me |
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| The look that his mothers chest gets way too often |
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| чай и блинчики = Tea and blinchiki |
I got Dear Janed this week...i must tell you i was very shocked myself. Everytime i go into the bathroom i can always count on him being there for me. That is....until the day i found....his note.
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| *gasp!* |
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| "Wha....?" |
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| *sniff sniff* "Mr. Paook?" |
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| "MR. PAOOOOOOK!!! Nooooo!" |
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| <3 Mr. Paook |
Yes, Mr. Paook has moved on. He may have left a cold empty corner in the bathroom, but he will always have a place for me in my heart.
We may not have any investigators in Brovary at the moment but we have some amazing potential! Every friday we have a game night where anybody and everybody is welcome to come and suck M&M's up with a straw, blow a pingpong around on a table or play the "Killer Wink" game that is really just as simple as it sounds. 1 Killing Winker. 12 victims.You get winked at. You're as good as dead. Right now we are really working on Uri, the man in the far right corner, who speaks English better than i do and who we caught doing donuts with his car in the parking lot with his son. I thought to myself, "the church can use a man like that."
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| I think Elder Fisher (the Elder in the white shirt of course) forgot the concept of "blow" |
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| My Maidan collection |
Satan really likes to work hard on your when you are on the brinks of taken a big leap forward to becoming more like Christ. I know this is true because i can feel it! I never thought i would find myself feeling spiritually starved for spiritual teaching and spiritual experiences on the mission. But i actually reached a point where i felt disconnected from my spiritual roots (eh! the title? eh? eh?). I have never felt so close to breaking free and yet never felt so weighed down with all of Satan's schemes and techniques. He will get in your head and make you feel every down, inadequate, depressed thoughts of yourself possible. I myself have been feeling this way for a while and finally it just clicked, "Wait a minute! I should not feel this way. The Lord would never want me to feel this way. This is Satan! That punk!" It is so true that, "Thus Satan thinketh to overpower your testimony in this generation, that the work may not come forth in this generation." He just ever so slightly knudged into my mind and I found my mind so filled up with "stuff" and "TO DO" lists, with every single bit of my mind filled with something or other that when i came to have a moment to listen or simply just enjoy the peace and quite of the Spirit, i had completely numbed myself. I then found the scripture from Mosiah 4 :27, "And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength. And again, it is expedient that he should be diligent, that thereby he might win the prize; therefore, all things must be done in order." I didn't realize then that this scripture was not only relating to physically but also spiritually! A mind so cluttered with thoughts of "DO DO DO DO" can completely remove the Spirit from your life. How can the Spirit dwell in such a cluttered mind? How can the Spirit dwell in a place that never sits still? When the Lord want's our minds and spirits to be at peace this is exactly the type of thing that Satan does to keep you from reaching that goal. So with the help of two companions and an emotional companionship inventory i have been challenged to read The Character of Christ by Elder Bednar and to replace every down on yourself self centered thought with a positive outward thought of others.
It's always in the down times that the Lord's tender mercies are the most appreciated. It was cold, i was not happy (need i explain myself again?), and we were out contacting others who also did not enjoy being in the cold. Satan managed to get his food into this little wedge of opportunity and started filling my mind with the thoughts of, "nobody want's this", "your efforts are pointless", "you just dont have what it takes to reach out as a messenger of the Lord." Let me tell you these thoughts are not fun, and i was in the middle of this losing battle when i got a phone call from a random number i had never seen before,so i put on my big girl Russian missionary voice and say......"ello?" to hear a. "Sister Roe?! Ahhhhhhh! It's Katya!" Now i don't know if you remember my mentioning of Katya but she one of my best friends i have made of my mission. The sweetest, most golden and amazing kind hearted 15 year old i have ever been blessed to meet. So when i heard her voice i can't even deny that there were a few frozen tears shed. She had just called to say hello, and despite that she misses me that she also knows that i am there for a reason. Oh, and let's not forget that she has now STARTED TO READ THE BOOK OF MORMON!!! Seeds planted? I think YES! Have faith in the Lord! Everything will happen in His time if we just wait in faith.
Now seeing that next transfer is starting next week im sure you are wondering....what is with YOU next transfer Sister Roe? Well......I'm staying in Brovary, im getting a new companion, her name is Sister Anderson, she is going into her 2nd transfer, and she is from.....New Zealand! I didn't know if i should cry out of fear that i was now offically TRAINING the only sister missionary that came in last transfer and the only one for the next 6 months until more missonaries arrive, or cry because i will be blessed with the music of a New Zealand accent for the next 6 weeks. A little bit of both i guess. I will miss Sister Wallace and Winsor despite it being the hardest transfer of my mission so far. Whoever sang, "One is the lonliest number that you ever knew" obviously had never been in a threesome companionship before.
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| Nastya, one of our young women, joined us for a weekend of missioanary splits! And i promise Sister Winsor (pink undertop) was not electricuted in this picture, though ironically she was infact electricuted pulled her hairdryer out of the socket just the other day. |
Interesting Ukrainian Tradition: On the anniversary of the death of a close family member or friend you go around and give out candy, but here's the catch. They have to be given and eaten in even numbers.
Amazing Tip: For those of you who recieve disgusting candy, for instance chocolate covered poppy seed cement paste balls, put them into the bottom of your purse and save them for times of famine. Pop one of those suckers into your mouth and your will go from the brinks of death to cloud nine.
XOXOXOXO
-Сестра Ро
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