The Ukrainian Bear

October 14th-20th

Hello Family and Friends!

Another amazing week here in Odessa! I just love it here so much! The work is moving forward like crazy and we are seeing so many miracle happen! It was another very busy week!

So last monday we had another awesome lesson with our investigators that are getting baptized! It was so amazing. We had the District President (Stake President) on the lesson with us. It is very nice to have him because he helps us so much since our Russian is still nothing amazing. Every lesson we have had with them we have been lucky enough to have a member each time. We are so blessed to have so awesome members here. We taught them the Plan of Salvation. They loved it and the spirit was so strong. I know that they are just so ready to join the church. It is so amazing how the Lord just prepares people and gives them to us to teach.

Tuesday was a slow day. We just studied then hit the streets for a little to do some English Advertising. It went good. We got a lot of people to sign up! We then were supposed to have a lesson with a less active but it fell through. We ended up just ministering all night. It was very good and talked to some good people.

On wednesday morning the Assistants came to our apartment to start exchanges with us. I was very excited. I got to go with Elder Pace. He is so awesome. I went on an exchange with him when I was in my first transfer. It was so fun. So we did our studies at the church then had lunch. He then had to do assistant stuff cause there was so stuff going on. I just studied more. haha. We then had a lesson with a less active. It was so awesome. This man is from Nigeria and speaks english. It was such an awesome lesson. He is so strong and has an amazing testimony. He just cant come to church cause of work. It is such a hard situation. We watched a conference talk with him. It was so good. We then had English. It was very good. We had a really good turn out! Our English program is doing so awesome down here! I love it!

Thursday was a pretty down day. Not much happen. We spent a lot of time on the streets. It was good but not much success. We talked to a few cool people.

Friday was Zone Conference! It was so good. President and Sister Klebingat came down from Kiev! I learned so much from them. It was so cool to see everyone in our zone there. President is so amazing and such a spiritual man. I am so grateful to have him as my mission president. He taught me so much. Also Sister Klebingat taught us some stuff too. It was so good. It just amazes me that English is neither of there first languages yet they speak it so perfectly and so much better than me! They are so amazing! After conference we had another lesson with our investigators. They are still doing amazing and are so excited for their baptism this week! I am so excited for them! It is going to be amazing!

Saturday was slow. We are looking for a new apartment here in our area so we spent quite a bit of time doing stuff. We looked at a couple. It is crazy hard though because of the language. haha. We hope we get a good one. We also met at night with another investigator. He is so cool but he lives in a different area so we have to pass him to the other elders in our district! It is cool though cause last night they set a baptismal date with him!!!! We were so happy!!!

Yesterday was a great Sunday. We had a really good turn out at church. The branch seemed alot happier and together. It was so amazing. We then had a lunch thingy after church and it was awesome. All the members just love each other and it was so cool. We did some less active stop bys last night and that was all.

Overall it was an awesome week. I am really excited for the baptism this Saturday. It is going to be so amazing. We I love you all. Thanks for the emails. I hope you have an awesome week!

Love

Elder Grochmal