Week 53- APRIL-Good Things to Come

So we'll see how long this tradition of Mormon Messages continue but with the recent change of events i found one that got the tears a jerking, here ya go! GOOD THINGS TO COME
What is this recent turn of events? Well last Saturday night, with 15 minutes till lights out we got...the call. TRANSFO. Guys, this is a big deal.
And so after 5 months, the 5 hardest months of my life, the Lord is finally calling me away from Brovary. And if you were to have told me during my first weeks in Brovary that i would be balling my eyes out about leaving i would have doused you with tears of laughter. And yet, here i am, balling my eyes out, dousing you with imaginary tears of saddness. For you i guess it's a lose lose situation. It's usually not until you are leaving that you realize that even through the war of all spiritual wars and trials (seriously, this has been a bloody spiritual battle) you somehow still managed to make some of the best friendships and are torn about leaving them! But I'm sure there are more to be made in Perchairsky, which is nothing more than Center Kiev. If it helps you at all with the geography let's just you can't get much closer to Maidan.
So this week has had a lot of lasts, including one last train ride to the cello's for a trip to the Clarks. In a couple days my rustic greenery and "cock a doodle doo's" will be replaced with golden domes and architecture and so i didn't hesitate to take it all in.

"Popcorn popping on the apricot trees" After all these years of singing it, i finally get it!

OK, so I'm still working on the jumping shots, but you got give me credit for getting some wicked air off those jumps

It was an indoor day at the Clarks this week and if you were to have climbed up the stairs you would have found me amid the midst of clouds of steam and piled clothing ironing over baby hats and overalls. The hottest and steamiest 2 hours of my mission. Everything was cooled down with a flash thunder rain storm as we walked to the train station. And you know what they say, there's nothing better than a photo shoot than while waiting for a train...

The "hey there cutie, ready to be baptized?"

The "cow lick seducer"

The "babushka"

So this boy came out of nowhere and as you can clearly see it caught us all off guard
Sister Anderston- the "The grin and bear"
Sister Roe-  the"Ohhhhh myyyy goshhhhh"
Sister Winsor- the "As long as he's not touching me...im good"

AWESOME

• Ukraine in the spring. Seriously there is nothing more beautiful. I can somewhat see why Putin wants it. Let me tell you, Ukrainians love their strolls in the park. The park is filled with Frisbee throwing, kite flying, outdoor ping pong tournaments, javelin throwing, bike riding, jogging, row boating, peddle boating, and meat kabob roasting
• Finding a new potential investigator! The only thing i can compare it to is the feeling you get when you buy new clothes
• At long last finding bobby pins! In a...display case? Awesome.
• Ukrainian ring tones. They are the most intense thing in the world. It's the best thing in the world to be sitting on a marshrutka and all of a sudden having your ear drums blasted out of your head and onto the the window as the babushka sitting next reaches for her techo pulsing cell phone
• When a complete stranger opens their heart to you. It's a cool thing for a missionary. Also interesting that just an hour before i was crying over thee same exact thing she was and then here i was testifying against it
• An African pigeon English birthday party!
• Service with my Ukrainian uncle Sasha! Im still suffering my permanent paint marks, but from this day on i will always have a connection with their bathroom door
• A backstreet boy music video
• Getting an invitation to someones home by a potential investigator! The first time in 5 months! This family is amazing! The mother sells Mary Kay, the father is a police man, and they have 3 sons, 1 daughter, 2 dogs, 1 cat, 2 birds, 3 turtles, and a mouse. I was in animal heaven.

AWKWARD

• Going through three pairs of shoes in a day
• Half way through a plate of rice being told tha the piece of meat you have been knawing on for the past five minutes is cow intestine...
• When a clown is half naked and asking the crowd if he should take off his last piece of clothing and the entire crowd is screaming, "DAH!"
• When a drunk man tries stealing a picture of your brother..

 The circus came to town this week and settled itself right across the street from our church! We took advantage of such an event and decided to see what the a Ukrainian circus has to offer with a family from our English class. They are by far one of the nicest families i have ever met. The mother really reminds me so much of my oldest sister with her sweetest and playfulness with her two adorable daughters. And we really enjoyed watching the Lady of the pidgeons (what every babushka im sure strives to be), balancing acts and strip shows with a girl who i swear was using the benifits of almost no clothing to "clench" onto the tight line if ya know what i mean. Even the clown was supportive and was half naken at the end of his act. Only in Ukraine, right? Walking into the quiet, clean, peaceful church with the familiar pictures of Christ on the wall was a good refreshment. So much world at one time can be tough on a Sister missionary!

Our last district photo before Elder Fisher (the one flying) fly's home to America. If you haven't noticed this is the day that shoes were just not my friend.

Soccer Morning

My trophy shot for this week

I was able to do what not very many missionaries are able to feat! A 6-some companionship!  At our Stake Conference on Sunday i was able to round up ALL my companions since my mission (expect for Sister Griffiths who had to leave for home early) From left to right: Sister Anderson, Sister Winsor, Sister Wallace, Me, Sister Parish, Sister Prach, and Sister Lambereaux

Well that's my time for this week, here we go on another transfer. But first things first...I still have my suitcases mocking me with empty mouths...have a great week! Say your prayers, read your scriptures, go to church, read Preach My Gospel, and don't eat cow intestines.
XOXOXOX
-Сестра Ро

Week 52- APRIL-Христос Воскрес!

 Well hey there P-day! Another week gone...has it really been a week since we fed our new converts Alex and Kingsly our our special Salt Mayonnaise Peppered Banana Bread? It was pretty brilliant if you ask me. We were trying to prove our point that a life without following a recipe will not have good results. Plus we had the benefit of seeing their faces when they took the first bite. Poor Kingsly, bless his heart, downed a whole piece, then asking to excuse himself for some water only to then hear disgusted spewing and sputtering from the kitchen. They got the point. Life is just better when we have a recipe, but then Alex brought up a good point. "But i have had lots of delicious food without following a recipe." But what about this? Would you mix mayonnaise with bananas? Would you add a half cup of salt to just a couple teaspoons of sugar? It's all about balance and what you mix with what? In order for something to taste good the ingredients must compliment each other, and too much of one certain ingredient can spoil an entire batch! Do you see the message here? Or do i need to send you a special batch of banana bread?

So this week he had a special mission conference with not only the 3 zones of the Kiev mission, but the additional 96 missionaries from Donetsk! The Donetsk mission has officially been adopted into the Kiev mission, making our missionary force double to over 200 missionaries. Some missionaries living with up 6 to an apartment! Sometimes when you are off and away in your little area tucked away in the upper north corner of Ukraine you can feel very similar to a speck. Yes, a speck. But then when all of the Lord's servants come together united in purpose it's like we become this mass spiritual blob!

There's the big man himself....wow, i just realized how that this is bordering stalker status...

It was our first time seeing President Klebingat since seeing him on the big screen, and the man even gave us a personal tour of his process of being called to the 1st Quorum of the Seventy, with a the aid of snuck pictures. He would. Couldn't help but laugh as i see that sister missionaries are still managing to rock some sense of style as i still work the flipped backwards necklace, crotch sag tights, and realizing that the new "perfume" that i had been wearing was in face spray deodorant. It now explains all the strange looks we got as Sister Anderson and I sprayed the variety of, what we now know to be deodorant, on our necks and wrists to test the scents. Now i don't know if i smell good or if i just smell like an armpit.

All thoughts of smelling like a tropical armpit flew from my mind as i was reunited with Sister P! I've never been of those who needs a million friends, and it's interesting how one can feel a tad bit lonely in a mass of 200, but being reunited with her...well, i think the 5 minutes Ive been stuck here thinking of how to describe it explains how indescribable it is. Wow, did this become some sappy love story or what?

 During this time of intense trials and growth, and i still testify to the fact that i will be coming how as just one big stretch mark, the Lord blesses us with times of being able to "see" more clearly. The best way i can explain it is having your vision being blurred by veil upon veil and having one of those veils being pulled up to allow you to see just a little more clearly. Like one morning i was studying for a lesson we had with a recent convert, and i was worried he was overwhelmed by the expectations of a new member of the church and the inadequacies that punk Satan likes to emphasis in our heads. So i pulled out a talk by President Klebingat himself called, "Be Ye Therefore Perfect...Happily." And reading how wonderfully realistic Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ's expectations of you really are. He says ,"My heart goes out to conscientious Saints who because of their shortcomings, allow feelings of depression rob them of happiness in life...You will be depressed and your faith weak if you expect of yourself eternal perfection, like God is in His sphere, when mortal perfection is what you should strive for in your sphere."  So don't beat yourself up for feelings of the natural man. They're called the natural man because that's what they are...NATURAL. They're normal, necessary, and part of God's plan. They are not evil and do not make you bad, it's what you choose to do with them that counts. How will you feed them? How will you act? Go with the flow or swim against the current? I've sometimes thought, "What's wrong with me?" or, "If I didn't feel this way I would be stronger, it's my weakness that brings this upon me." Not. True.
"Each of you can indeed be perfect now and today by doing as well as YOU know how." Don't. Compare. "Constantly wallowing in your own shortcomings is prideful and reflects a lack of understanding of the Atonement of Jesus Christ...I wonder everyday if what i am doing and how i am doing it is really my best, but i don't beat myself up over it...Heavenly Father has planted within each of s seeds of divine discontent to prevent us from becoming stagnant and comfortable." It's times like these that i realize why President was called to the 70.
One of my sisters also helped me this week as she suggested a talk that i should read which told a story of how a gardener went out to prune a current bush that over time had grown but also bore no fruit, and the gardener, knowing what needed to be done to get the bush to bear fruit pruned it down to nothing but a stump. Then seeing this stump, and as us Mormons are really good at finding life learning lessons in inanimate objects, this is what happened next...
Gardener- "What's the matter current bush? What are you crying about?
Current Bush- "How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth. I was almost as large as the fruit tree and the shade tree, and now you have cut me down. And all in the garden will look upon me with contempt and pity. How could you do it? I thought you were the gardener here."
Gardener- "Look, little current bush, I am the gardener here, and I know what i want you to be. If I let you go the way  you want to go, you will never amount to anything. But someday, when you are laden with fruit, you are gong to think back and say, "Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me." 
To make this easier you can just watch the Mormon Message: THE WILL OF GOD
This transfer is soon coming to an end and i don't think i could find a better life learning lesson from an inanimate object to describe this past transfer if not the past 5 months i have spent in Brovary. You can defiantly say i felt i was "stump" status, but over this time i have felt growth. The speaker goes on to say, "Whatever undertakings may demand of you and your attention...you can not make a better resolution than this: I am going to understand Him better, and understanding Him, I will understand myself and will try to put my life into harmony with His."

Easter morning was just about the most beautiful morning I had ever seen, and the walk to church was like a slice of peaceful heaven. Not a soul could be seen for a while and all you could hear were birds chirping, but then the further into the park we got we could hear the faint sounds of angelic singing, but not any kind of angelic of singing, it was the kind of angelic singing like you would hear if you were to find the holy grail. It got louder and louder and we soon began to see that there were people all walking towards the golden domed cathedral with their wicker baskets filled with their паска bread to go and be blessed before eating. I can't stress how much i love the Ukrainian culture here

ПАСКА

 I love church on an Easter morning. Us Sisters performed a musical number in Ukrainian for all our dear branch members, including the Clark family who came for the first time in over two months! I have never been so happy to see a family come to church! Not only that but we had a baptism for the son of my dear Ukrainian uncle! With the addition of the Donesk missionaries our transfer info has been postponed, so i don't know yet what will happen, but with Stake Conference next Sunday i shouldn't be surprised if this was my last Sunday with my Brovary branch...

OK, here are some moments for ya:
AWESOME

• Being told you texted at just the right time
• Finally getting our sink fixed! We at long last said farewell to the bucket! For the past two weeks, and after a failed attempt of our landlady sticking literal sticks she pulled off the tree outside to unclog our sink, we have had a bucket under the drain that the water goes strait into, and every time the bucket gets full we just dump it in the toilet.
• Learning how to make potato vereniki. Prepare yourselves family, your taste buds are going to explode.
• Reading the Book of Mormon in English with one of your English students and him pronouncing "Yea" as "YEAH-YUH"
• This may be strange but those moments when you're tracting and you get ignored, rejected, get shut down through a closed door, get a slammed door after a, "hello" it's just one of those moments when you like, "Cool, I'm a missionary!"
• Getting asked out on a park date by your potential investigator babushka and chit chatting on a bench over a meal of homemade hot and steamy mystery meat blinchiki
• Popcorn trees and Spring, whoever does not like Spring is either blind or a fool
• When it's Easter here in Ukraine you can be walking and say "Христос Воскрес!" (Christ is risen!) to a random stranger and getting an equally vibrant "Воистину Воскрес!"(It's true! He's risen!) in return
• Big hair photo shoots

AWKWARD

• Smelling like an armpit
• Getting hit on my 3 different drunk men all within 30 minutes
• Drunk men with greasy comb overs saying, "Come to me." Ew, icky
• When you are dreaming...about sleeping. Yeah, im that tired
• Not understanding that the congregation was only singing the first and second verse of the hymn and as a result giving a very individualized loud one note of the third verse
• Playing with a stray pack of pups and giving them as much patting, and petting, and nuzzling, and baby talk you can muster and then watch them cheerfully run their way back to.......eating a half rotted dead pigeon.....

By the way, how is your Preach My Gospel reading going? Pray for missionary opportunities people! Thank you for all of you who shared what you thought my spiritual gifts are! You get a big fat A+

XOXOXOXO
-Сестра Ро