Sergey's getting baptized!

So you remember Sergey that (I'm pretty sure) I mentioned a couple weeks ago? He's the one that we met contacting on the street who came up to us and asked if we were Mormon missionaries. Well, he's getting baptized in two weeks! He's so wonderful! I got to see him at church yesterday, and it just made me so happy to see him - and to see how happy he was. The assistants to the president have been teaching him, and he's so ready for baptism. (In fact, after he gave a particularly good answer in Sunday school yesterday, the teacher asked him how many years ago he'd gotten baptized. And she was quite surprised when he said he hasn't yet.) That caused me to reflect on how many missionaries it takes to bring one person into the church. Granted, there are those investigators who meet the missionaries and within a few weeks are baptized, but it seems like most of the time, there are several sets of missionaries who work with people before they enter the waters of baptism. For Sergey, it was the missionaries who initially found him ten years ago, the two or three sets of elders that taught him, Sister Kochel and I who found him again, and the elders who are teaching him now. And that's just missionaries - I know there are at least a million other things that have been working in Sergey's life to bring him to the church and to prepare him to make this covenant with God. It's neat to get a glimpse of these small things that work together in God's plan to bring about great things.

I forgot to mention this last week, but last Friday I had the opportunity to teach institute. (It was kind of funny how it happened. Marina, a recently returned missionary and the institute teacher, was talking to me after church a few weeks ago. "Sister Nay, inasmuch as your father majored in geography in university, would you come teach institute and explain to us all the maps at the back of the scriptures? None of us know how to use them." It made me smile. And although I'm pretty sure geographical knowledge is not hereditary, I was excited for the opportunity.) It was a lot of fun to teach the young adults from the three Dnepr branches about all the maps at the back. I told them stories from church and Biblical history and showed them how to read and use the maps. I quite enjoyed the appreciative "ohhhhs" as they suddenly understood one thing or another. (And in case anybody was wondering, the final map with the cut-away picture of the elevation of the Holy Land is slightly difficult to explain in Russian. I may or may not have resorted to sound effects and hand motions to try to get the point across. Good times.) That was quite enjoyable.

As promised by our leaders at zone conference, making these changes in our missions has brought a lot of blessings and a lot of opposition. (Some of the opposition including friendly little mosquitoes, getting home at 10 at night, and occasionally getting drenched. And people not answering their phones . . . but it's all good. Blessings outweigh opposition.) We had an especially wonderful day on Tuesday. We met with Galina, who believes the Book of Mormon is true - but also basically believes everything religious is true. She thinks it would be a sin to be baptized again, and her son (who is a minister) confirmed this to her. After one of the most Spirit-filled lessons I've ever been on, we invited her to say the prayer and asked God if she can get baptized again. (I may have mentioned our experience a week or two ago where much the same thing happened - she's still working on getting an answer, so this was in large measure a repeat.) She offered one of the most sincere, powerful prayers I've ever heard. She told God how she had almost died as a baby, but that He saved her life and so her mom had her baptized. She explained that she needed to know if it was okay to be baptized again, and that if He told her to do it, SHE WILL GET BAPTIZED, but otherwise she will live and die Protoslavny. Throughout the whole prayer, I felt so close to God - I knew that He was listening to every word that His daughter was saying, and I knew that He wanted to answer her. The Spirit in the room was honestly tangible, and after she finished the prayer, the three of us sat in silence for a little while. Unfortunately, after a minute or two, Galina, in a disappointed voice, told us that she didn't feel anything. (Which was devastating to Sister Kochel and I, as we were feeling the Spirit so strongly.) We talked to her about how answers don't come all at once and we invited her to keep praying, which she agreed to do. Despite the disappointment of her not feeling the answer, that was a very sweet experience - I could feel the sincerity of her prayer, and I know that God listens and answers prayers. So I have faith that He will answer and that He will tell her she needs to be baptized. I only pray that she'll be able to feel that answer.

That evening we had a lesson with a less-active member name Yulia. She's about 25 and she has the cutest baby girl! Since she'd spent a lot of the day inside, she asked if we could walk and talk. (As we walked in the cool evening air, I came to understand why Ukrainian strollers are so intense - those strollers really take a beating as they traverse the rocky, pot-holed, dirt roads, and those shocks on the stroller wheels are pretty essential.) After we'd finished the lesson with her, we'd normally have headed home in order to get back to our apartment on the other side of Dnepr by 9. But since President has asked us to work later and not start heading home until 9, we started tracting a dome. We started on the 9th floor of this apartment building and worked our way down. Nobody really wanted to listen (and one man even informed us that it is against the Ukrainian constitution to come bother people at home) and by the time we had made it to the second floor, we were pretty tired. At the last door we knocked, however, a little boy opened the door. We talked for him for a few minutes until his mom got off the phone and came to talk to us. She talked to us like she knew us, and we were confused until it came out that she was an inactive member! And the interesting thing is, we hadn't known that this member existed until a week or two ago as we were going through the branch list. We'd wanted to be able to get a hold of her, and now we'd tracted into her! She let us in and we talked for a while. She told us that she would never come back to church, but she was very kind to us. We asked if we could pray with her, and she asked her little son (about 10 years old) to pray. I've heard few prayers in my life that have moved me more than that one. Evan thanked God that the missionaries had found them and that his mother had let them in. He then thanked God that, even though his mom said now that she didn't want to go back to church, that maybe someday she would. After the prayer, we asked him if he knows the church is true. I don't quite know how to explain how I felt as that serious little boy nodded his head. I pray that his mother's heart will be softened and that he'll be able to grow up in a gospel home. And that if that doesn't happen, I pray that he'll never lose his testimony and someday raise his own family in the church.

We've been doing a lot of work in a rural area lately, called Meerney. It's absolutely gorgeous out there! And we also ran into a group of kids playing four-square out there. My heart leaped with excitement when I saw those lines drawn in the dirt indicating the boundaries, and I remembered all the fun times every day in the MTC (which will forever be one of my all-time favorite places on the planet) when we played 4-square. I'm glad it's in Ukraine, too. Part of me really wanted to ask the kids if I could join . . . but we kept tracting. :)

Yesterday evening, while tracting (we found two women who invited us to come back! They were both really nice and invited us in and we taught them.) there was the most beautiful rainbow I'd ever seen. We were up on a hill, and from where we were standing the rainbow stretched over the Dnepr river, surrounded by those huge, puffy clouds that I love. It was one of those moments that take your breath away and just make you know that God is in His heaven and all is right in the world. It was basically just gorgeous. :)

Sister Merrill came back this week!! I don't remember if I mentioned this, but she had to go home about 9 weeks ago to get surgery, but she was finally able to come back to us this Tuesday. She's so excited to be back in Ukraine, and we're all really grateful to have her back. 

We had a zone training meeting this week in which we talked more about consecration. We watched a movie depicting the conversion and subsequent life of John Tanner. I don't know if you've seen that particular movie, but I'm sure most of you know who John Tanner is. I was deeply moved by his story of sacrifice and complete consecration to the Lord. I want to become a consecrated servant of the Lord as he was - he had such a perfect understanding that everything he had was not really his but the Lord's. I don't have millions of dollars to sacrifice to the Lord and His kingdom, but I have my time and my energy that I'm grateful I can give in the service of His children here in Ukraine.

-Sharisa