Possibly Insightful Ramblings

The little English group Sacrament meeting has become one of my favorite things in the world. We are seeing an incredible amount of success as a result of this experiment. Within the next two weeks, at least four students from Africa will be baptized, joining the three African students who are currently members. And many more students are meeting with us and coming to church and reading the Book of Mormon. In addition, the Russian branch has gained enthusiasm as they've seen all these young people begin to come to English church. Yesterday, there were even more members at church in the Russian branch than I think I've ever seen there, and a few even stayed for the English Sacrament meeting. It's really exciting to see the miracles that are beginning to happen as a result of this English group.  One of the students we have met and are working with because of English church is named Victoria. She's from Namibia and is one of the sweetest girls in the world. We had...

Great news! We get to have the English Sacrament meeting every week now! It went really well yesterday. A lot of new people came, and everybody really liked it. (There was a 14:1 investigator:member ratio, which was kind of fun.) Sister Bates and I were especially excited that a boy we met a couple weeks ago named Albhi came. He's from Mexico and India and he knows several languages. He'd promised to come last week and we told him we'd give him a Book of Mormon then, but he didn't make it. So it was wonderful that he showed up yesterday! The branch members here are really excited about this English group. Apparently, the first mission president of the Dnepropetrovsk mission was down in Simferopol several years ago. While there, he made a promise that one day, Simferopol would have two branches - one in Russian, and one for native English-speakers. It's been really neat to see that prophecy begin to come to pass. There are three of those English-speaking in...

Sharisa has been on a mission for one year this week! Here is a photo we had taken last February. Things are going quite well in this lovely land of Simferopol. I quite love being a missionary - I'm not sure if I've mentioned that before. ;) Tuesday afternoon we received a phone call from our branch president telling us he had a special gift from the branch that he wanted us to give to Valery. So that evening we stopped by the branch to chat with him and pick up this adorable Ukrainian calendar from the Church based on Alma 32. We were really touched that President would care enough about our little investigator family to be thinking up ways to serve them. (He's the best, in case anybody was wondering.) The next night, Sister Bates and I were contacting our way home from a rather frustrating lesson. Right in the middle of our passionate conversation on how there is and can only be one way back to God, we felt like we needed to stop and make some phone calls....

As missionaries, we spend a great deal of time looking and praying for "elect" people. We have faith that there are people in our areas of service that are looking for God and searching for the truth. And as elitist as the term "elect" may sound, it really isn't, because election is a choice - anybody who wants to search for and accept truth can. And indeed, we wish that every single person with whom we talk would choose to be elect! That would be grand. In light of this concept of election, we had a funny experience the other day. We were contacting through a park on our way home from Sevastopol (well, after we got off the bus - don't worry - we didn't try to walk the whole way home) and we met a really nice young couple. We began talking with them and invited them to English practice. After a while of getting to know each other and laughing and having a good time, the girl asked, "Do you go around inviting everybody?" We repli...

We had an incredible first lesson this week with a woman named Lena. We met her contacting the previous week, and that in and of itself was kind of a neat story. (I don't remember if I already told this story, so I'm sorry if this is old news.) We were walking along a busy sidewalk and contacting. Quite frequently, when you try to contact in a busy area, you tend to somewhat aggravate the people who were behind you with your sudden stopping, so it is often not the best atmosphere for holding gospel conversations. But right after making the comment that this particular spot of the city was not going to be the most effective place for contacting, we stopped this older woman and began talking with her. She accepted a Book of Mormon and wanted to meet with us! So this week we met with her. She quite liked the Restoration and, although she said she needs to learn more before she will agree to be baptized, she promised to come to church as soon as her work schedule gives her a free...

There's a line in the call letter that every missionary receives which states that as we serve with all of our might, mind, and strength, the Lord will lead us to those who are prepared to be baptized. That's something that Sister Bates and I have thought and talked a lot about recently. There are not merely people in Simferopol who are prepared to listen to the Restoration, or prepared to read the Book of Mormon, or prepared to be nice to the missionary who accosts them on the streets, but people who have actually been prepared by the Lord for  baptism. There are people walking around here who are eager to enter into that covenant with the Lord. And that's something I've always believed as a missionary, but kind of in a far-off sort of way - yes, there are people somewhere who want to be baptized, but I don't know where or when we will see them, and until then we'll just work with the slowly progressing people we have. But this week we had an incredible expe...

We received some incredibly exciting news this week! The number of missionaries in the Dnepropetrovsk mission is going to almost double by the end of this year!!! We currently have about 50 missionaries, and by the end of December we are going to have 96. I'm super excited for all the implications of that increase - the work of the Lord is truly going to take off in this mission. And we also heard a rumor that with that increase, there are going to be sister missionaries in every branch of the mission, which thing would be quite joyous. This is truly an exciting time to be a part of the work of the Lord. We saw a lot of miracles this week. (And despite the fact that we see miracles every day as a missionary, it never gets old. I continually delight to see the hand of the Lord in our work and in our lives.) We had been doing some searching through our area book for former investigators that we could try to visit again, and we identified several that we wanted to try. S...