My dear Family,

So just a little update about transfers. I will no longer be serving in Kmelnitskiy. This next transfer I will be serving in L'viv.  Oh and by the way I will both be serving as an office Elder. I wouldn't peg myself as an "office" type of guy, but I will have a lot of fun doing that. I feel like it will give me a good opportunity to get to know president and his wife a little better. Overall I am way excited! And on top of that I think they might have me keep going to Ternopil from L'viv, which made me really happy because I love the wonderful saints in Ternopil. Oh, and another early Christmas present was that I found out that I need to take a day trip to Uzhhorod to renew my document that allows me to be a resident in Ukraine. I have to go to Uzhhorod because that is where I got it in the first place when I came to Ukraine. So that is exciting. I have a lot of blessings. I am planning on clever ways find people to teach. I really want to baptize or at least teach a post office worker! We will see how it goes. The Lord knows the situation there and He will gather his children. Nothing will stop Him from doing that!

One of those blessings is my awesome family and my great parents. In Ternopil we visited an orphanage of older children, about 12-17 or so, and it was kind of sad that they did not have parents who love them and take care of them. I am comforted to know that each of them has heavenly parents who love them and will take care of them forever. None the less, it made me more thankful for my family here on the earth. Growing up in such a great family, you think families are the norm, as you get older you see the sad truth that they are the exception. I love my family!

Our Ternopil trip was a success once again. The members are so strong and full of faith. We also talked about faith in our meeting. Samuel, a returned missionary who is from Ghana gave a talk about how faith can be broken up into three parts. 1. Knowledge 2. Belief 3. Action. Then he shared the example of faith like a seed in Alma 32 and applied to to knowing, believing, and then acting. It was very powerful.

This week we met a few more times with Masoud! He is so great! We watched more conference talks with him in Persian, and read the bible with him in Persian. He is coming along great. We explained to him the whole story of the Book of Mormon and he now understands about Lehi, the Nephites and the Lamanites, and why the Book of Mormon is important. We found out there is a Persian copy of the Book of Mormon in the Kiev mission so we are getting it sent to us to give to Masoud. He is way excited to read it. He will be in Kmelnitskiy for two more weeks before he leaves. He is a very genuine person. I am going to miss him.

Thanks for reminding me that tomorrow is veterans day! I am sad to say that I did not remember. I am proud of you dad, and grandpa! You both are such good examples to me. Tell the girls to help you rake the leaves! Congratulations to grandpa for getting re-elected mayor! The mayor is a great man! He will do great. Funny story, so on my calendar you made for me it has the mayor from disney world and I showed it to another Elder. We are together right now since both our companions left to go home last night. Anyway I told him about the "he is a great man" inside joke and so we say it all the time and think it is funny! I will take a little time today and write him a letter.

I love being a missionary! I know that we can be a force for good in the world as we do what is right. I love my family! This is my last email from Kmelnitskiy.

Love,

Elder Hadfield

Hello Family,

On the 31 for Halloween we did also celebrate a bit. Mom and Dad sent me some great pictures of Halloweens in the past and I was able to make a really cool slide show with an English club that meets at a local library. They really enjoyed it. Basically we gave a history of Halloween and then showed two traditions we have during Halloween. 1. Dressing up, and 2. Carving pumpkins. The Library is called "Window on America," and is supported by the United States so they were very glad to have us come by. The Librarian is a very cool lady and she is taking a work trip to D.C. to visit the library of congress soon. I told her I was from D.C. and told her if she had any questions she could email my mom haha!. So the picture I attached was from that. We made paper pumpkins, and drew on them, played some other games, and had some treats. Then some of the people who came to the club found out that we speak Ukrainian, and they thought it was the greatest thing ever. That lead to a lot of other question, which is always good because people always want to know what we are doing in Ukraine! We are always very happy to answer.

I am glad that you liked my story about out trip to Ternopil! You will be excited to hear that we are going back this Sunday! It will be great. This Sunday will also be my companions last Sunday is Ukraine as he is going home next week, so I will miss that because I will go on exchanges to go to Ternopil.

This week we have been working with our awesome investigator from Iran and he is just an amazing person! It is hard to teach him out of the Book of Mormon because there is no translation of the Book of Mormon in Persian as far as we can tell (is there?), so we found the Bible for him in Persian and he has been reading that a lot. He speaks ok English, and while we are not able to read from the Book of Mormon with him we shared the story of Lehi and his family and he was like "Yes, I believe it." He found out that his father has cancer and that was really hard for him. He may be going back to Iran soon to be with his dad, so he really liked the plan of salvation when we shared it! Also we had a sports day and played soccer and he is super good!

I am not sure if I told you but in our apartment we have a bike, so that is sometimes fun to ride on at night or in the morning. I am sad to hear that the socks won the series... but on a better note, our investigator has an iPad and we asked Siri if the Lakers won (since my companion is a big fan) and we found out the lost to the Spurs, so that was cool!

I miss you all very much!

Love,

Elder Hadfield

Hello!

I had a very good week this week, and I have a few really cool\fun stories to share with you.

So this Sunday, I went with another Elder in my District to Ternopil, a city that is about two hours away from my current city. We went there to hold sacrament meeting. There are currently no missionaries there, nor have there ever been missionaries there who have lived constantly. There are five members of the church in Ternopil. One is a peace core worker from the states, and the other three are from Africa. One of them is from Ghana who just got back from his mission in Nigeria and is studding in Ukraine. We had one of the most powerful meetings I have ever been a part of. We all sat around a conference table in a hotel in the center of the city. When it was my turn to give a talk, I just sat in my seat on the round table and talked. I bore my testimony to those fine saints that God loves them, and I did not just say it, I felt it with all my heart. I love that city. It was so cool. I hope that Ternopil will be opened, because it has a lot of potential. It is a beautiful city and I just felt so good about it!

On a more funny note, we had quite the train ride home last night. We ended up sitting next to a drunk man, and on the other side of us was a dance team of 10 year old girls. They had some kind of competition in Ternopil and they were on their way home. The drunk man was hassling us pretty hard, but then we got talking to the trainer of the dance team and she was very nice. She thought it was cool that we learned Ukrainian and was asking a lot of questions. To make a long story short the little girls stated asking me and the elder that I was with for our signatures, we felt quite popular. I had a few american quarters left over in my bag from a long time ago, so I pulled them out and gave them a few and they thought it was the coolest thing ever. We ended up telling the trainer about the baptism that we had this week and about the Helping Hands activity that we did. She was very impressed. Hopefully she comes by the church sometime!

I almost forgot, we had a baptism here this week. A girl in a part member family just decided to get baptized! It was really cool. I was asked to give a talk at the baptism about the gift of the holy ghost so I brought my sweet Ukrainian blanket that you sent my for Christmas last year, and did a sweet object lesson. Everyone loved it, and everyone wanted to take pictures with me and the blanket after haha.

One other cool thing that we did this week was a Helping Hands activity. We basically cleaned up a park . We picked up a lot of trash, did some weeding, and some other stuff the people in charge of the park asked us to do. It was a blast.

That in a nutshell was my week. I hope you enjoyed reading about it.

I love my family. I hope all is well.

Love,

Elder Hadfield