Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Bitter-sweet in just one week!

This week has been quite the week.

It was on the up for the whole first part!

We did 3 hours of service in a village
We played soccer and I rolled my ankle.  It's already better! :)
I ate so much good food.  So much.

We had exchanges with our wonderful Zone Leaders, Elder Rubliuk and Coumbs (both former companions), and we found a total of 3 new investigators from our efforts together.  That's actually phenomenal as far as numbers go in our mission, even though it might seem small.  It was awesome!
One of them is a man from Holland named Bartman.  Interesting, huh? He's married to a Ukrainian woman named Svitlana, and they even invited us into their home to talk with them.  Svitlana didn't stay long, but Bartman had a whole slew of questions that were wonderfully answered by the beautiful plan of salvation.  What happens to the millions of babies who die without baptism?  What made Jesus Christ the "only way to salvation"?  How can God be fair with all of the suffering that happens in this world?
It was an incredible lesson, with lots of testimonies and impressive thoughts.  All in all, it ended with this; "Ah... so Christianity is like... good.  And Mormonism is like, the best and purist form of Christianity!"  He's a good man, but he has a long way to go.  Luckily, we've got a lot of patience and are excited to be working with him 
Then, my companion had a lesson with a guy named Oleksi, but I haven't met him yet.  Apparently, he's kind of got a lot of fun ideas about reincarnation and prophets and such... but again, we've got lots of patience.
The last one is a man named Volodymyr who has been investigating the church for a long time, and just got back from the war front.  He has a baptismal date for the 19 of May.
And all of that just hopped onto us in the space of 3 days.  What??  Nuts...

And then... we all got a bit sucker punched on Sunday.
Because of problems with his wife's health, President Lattin is going home.  He will be released this weekend, and we'll have a part time president (President Steinagle) for the next transfer... and then they'll call a new one.  It was a huge shock, and I felt like I got punched in the gut.  I love President Lattin like a father, and I respect him a lot.  His wife has acted like a mother for me this past year and a half-ish, and I'm honestly just at a loss knowing that they're leaving... It was devastating for me to learn that they'll be leaving, but I have the determination to be obedient, happy, and work hard no matter what.  It's just a bit sad.
And one of my favorite members of the Church from Lutsk passed away.  It's good and bad... because he was going to go to the temple in the 2nd week of May, but I guess that now he can have the ordinances all done for him.

So, it was kind of hard at the end, but I'm also still excited about all of the work that we have ahead of us to do!

Yup! So lots of stuff has been happening... and we're just trying to figure it all out how to cope with all of it.  Lets get moving I guess!

I love you all very much!
Take care of yourselves!

Love you all!

Elder LeBaron



Pictures:
I got a 2 hour Hair-cut.... it didn't really seem all that different than the 15 minute one I got last time.
The Chernivtsi District
Elderidge knot I wore on sunday.  



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