July 16th, 2012

The past week has been a bit of a whirlwind. At the beginning of the week I was still in Chernigov packing and visiting some people for the last time in quite a while. We went down to Kiev on Wednesday night and checked my bags at the train station. On Thursday morning we met up with our new companions. I finished 3 good transfers with Elder Derrick Copling and started a new one with Elder Erich Schultz. That even we got on a night train down to Odessa. I'm serving in the center branch here. President says I'll finish here. It's a pretty neat city. I like that there are a lot of immigrants. I look forward to meeting some. I heard a couple Africans speaking French already, the other day. I think there's like 1.5 million people here. The city seems to be really spread out and it seems to take quite a while to get places on the bus. It is very hot these days, up over 30 degrees. We don't even have a fan in our apartment so I sweat basically all day and all night. It was 26 degrees when I won't up this morning and it's about the same when I go to sleep, hotter during the day. I'm working on changing the fan situation.

I'm serving in the biggest branch in the city. There's a district with several branches here. Our branch is in a super cool location just about 100 metres or so from the Opera House. There are lots of people around all the time. It was neat to go to church here on Sunday and meet a lot of new people. About 80 people come every week. I haven't been in a new area for 7 transfers, so now I'm trying to meet everybody and remember who they are. We already have a couple decent investigators and one baptismal date, so things are off to a decent start. I can feel that miracles are soon to come. There are 4 Elders in our branch and 2 more are in our missionary district from another branch. We have a Canadian, a Ukrainian, and a Bulgarian in our district along with 3 Americans. It's the most international district in the mission right now I think. Except one other that's tied with us. It's fun.

Time is going so fast. I love serving here. I'm constantly moving toward some goal. I'm trying to get some things don't before this is over. I feel it a privilege to be here. I know that this is Christ's Church and we are doing his work. God lives. He answers prayers.

Thanks for everything,

Elder Mahoney

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