Sergey and Victor

Sergey's Baptism!

Sergey was baptized on Saturday! It was incredible to see such a wonderfully prepared son of God enter the waters of baptism. He was so excited and smiley the whole time (more so than usual, which is saying a lot, because he laughs and smiles more than almost anyone else I know), and it was a wonderfully spiritual experience. Two of our investigators, Tatiana and Lyosha (mother and son), were able to come, and they had a good experience. Lyosha tentatively accepted a baptismal date for 29 September, so I'm really excited about that! (Although he is slightly concerned about the water being cold and having to be completely immersed, but I think we can work with him on that.) I hope that he'll be prepared by then and that his mother will also desire to be baptized. An investigator I worked with on Left Bank, Victoria, was also at the baptism, and it was so good to see her again! She's also one of the happiest, most positive people I've ever met, and she's going to be baptized in a couple weeks. So exciting! :)

Yesterday evening was one of the highlights of my week. Sister Kochel and I were contacting up in a park in Center. I saw this young Asian man walking and knew that I had to go talk to him. We began talking, and he is one of the nicest people in the world! His name is Victor (actually, it's something that I can't pronounce in Chinese that sounds really cool, but he goes by his Russian name here) and he's from China. He studied Russian, Armenian, and English at an Armenian university for four years and then his company transferred him to Ukraine to work. (Side note - talking to other non-native Russian speakers is one of my favorite things! They don't talk quite as fast as natives and they understand your struggles to learn this difficult language. And their vocabulary is about as simple as yours, so you can basically understand everything. Super fun!) He is Buddhist by culture, but not really a believing person. (That phrase makes more sense in Russian than English, but that's okay.) He was really interested in the Book of Mormon and accepted the copy I gave him right away. (We're also going to find him a Chinese copy so he can read it more easily.) After talking for maybe 20 minutes in the park, we walked with him to the branch and gave him a tour of the building, explaining temples, church, and the Sacrament along the way. He is so open and kind, and I have no doubt that God brought our paths together last night. In fact, I've never been so sure of that before on my mission - I know without a doubt that we were supposed to find that man. I don't know exactly what will happen with him, but I feel that somewhere down the road [hopefully in a few weeks, right?] he will be baptized.

The weather is cooling down here, which is incredibly fantastic! The leaves are gorgeous, and there's that delightful, crisp, biting feeling in the air of approaching fall. Makes me happy.

School started today! It's apparently a huge holiday in Ukraine. The first of September is the Day of Knowledge, so there were a bunch of parties going on that day. (From what I can gather, school generally starts on 1 September, but since it fell on a Saturday this year it was more of a party and classes didn't actually start until today.) It was kind of fun to listen to the music and celebration at the school next to our apartment during our studies. There's a tradition here where the children dress up in black and white - suits, skirts, huge hair ribbons for the girls - for the start of school, and it's been super cute to see all these little kids dressed up so nice around the city. I also really liked seeing the university students in their blue suits and hats (and I'm glad we don't have to wear them back home, as cool as they look). It's a little weird to not be starting school as well, but also surprisingly normal. I've thought a few times about that comment Elder Holland made at the dedication of the Provo library 11 years ago - about how good it was to be in Provo in September. It's really weird to not be in Provo in September this year, but September in Ukraine is also fabulous, and I'm grateful for this opportunity to be a missionary.

We've really been seeing the Lord bless us in this work. We've been finding a lot more people recently, (in fact, since zone conference, the number of new investigators in our whole mission has gone up 50%! cool stuff) and our investigators are doing well. It truly is a testimony to me that this is the Lord's work, and His hand is in everything we are doing. It's so exciting to be here right now!

-Sharisa