It's been a pretty wild week, but a good one, nonetheless. We were in Kiev for on Monday for p-day where we went curling, which turned out to be a lot of fun. Then I got to see some members in my last area and we had a great little family home evening with an awesome family there. On Tuesday we had some "specialized training" with President Klebingat. It was basically a slightly more casual zone conference because we're only supposed to have official ones once a quarter. He's such an inspiration to me. I look up to him a lot and he teaches us things we can apply our whole lives. We had the awesome opportunity to go to the temple that evening which is uplifting as always, then we came back to Chernigov on Wednesday morning.
On Wednesday night we went out to find a woman who just appeared on our branch list a few months ago. She was home. She's 22 and she was baptized in Canada! She's going to marry a Canadian member in June. She's doing her residency here now as a gynecologist. Another crazy thing is that I actually met her sister and bother-in-law last year on the street when I was here and they were visiting! She's busy with work and she says she likes the Church more in Canada, but she's never been to our branch, so we're getting her out. Haha. It was a pretty wild experience. I look forward to seeing her at Church and helping her prepare to be a great wife and mother in the Church.
We were then in Kiev again for the stake young men activity. It was a great one. First thing in the morning about 20 missionaries and 16 youth all gathered along with the stake young men's presidency. We had sort of a mini-zone conference where each member of the presidency, who all happen to be return missionaries, gave some instruction. Then the assistants taught a great little lesson about our purpose as missionaries and conducted some role plays. After that we were split up into companionship. Most young men were paired up with one elder and a couple were in trios. I was with an 18 year old. My companion was with a 14 year old. When the young man found out how new he was he said, "can we have another missionary with us? this guy's only been here for 4 weeks, he doesn't even know Russian." Everybody laughed and said, "you speak Russian, you'll be fine." I just sort of mused at that and was excited, knowing it would be a great learning experience for both of them. I had a great time with my companion. It was the first time I'd ever been out with a native Russian-speaker. We went tracting and after a few doors I said, "okay, now we'll take turns." He was scared at first, but I threw him in and he swam. It was great. At the end of the day we all met up again and had a chance to share some of our experience. It was awesome to see the young men get up one after another and talk about how scared they were at first and then how once they had "a lot more experience" it got easy. It seemed like everybody loved it. It was definitely one of the best young men's activities I've ever been to. I'll certainly try to repeat it somewhere else. There were some refreshments after that and I think they watched The Best 2 Years after.
Things are going well. Elder Copling and I are getting along great and we're happy. I love being a missionary and it's truly a privilege to be here. I'm learning everyday. I know this is where the Lord wants me. There are some new pictures up on the mission website, so check it out:
http://www.ukrainekievmission.com/
Thanks for everything,
Elder J. Mahoney
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