Working in the Yard

Hello,

This week has been very hot. We broke out the short sleeve shirts and we still are sweating like crazy. It is kind of like home where the humidity is bad. But I don't mind it at all. I have got a little bit of a farmers tan though but that's ok. It's not like I am going swimming any time soon. In Chernivtsi there are six missionaries four elders and two sisters. This week we all were invited to go to a members house because they needed some help on their yard. We filled in holes, and moved rocks for about three hours. It was really fun. I felt like I was back with Bill doing landscaping work. The family was really cool. They had a lot of animals. They had turkeys, chickens, doves, ducks, a dog, a cat, and two goats. One of the goats was just barely born. We got to hold him, or her, I don't really know its gender. Then the mother of the family had us come inside and she fixed us a huge meal. I don't think I ever recall feeling that full in my life. I think we might have eaten one of the chickens that we were playing with when we first got there though. Oh well, it tasted really good.

The church is really growing here, we got a call the other day that we needed to find a new apartment. I am not moving, but soon a new set of missionaries will come here. I think next transfer we are getting twenty new Ukrainian speakers to go along with the fifty that we have right now. I hate to say it but I could very easily be training next transfer. That is kind of scary. Well, that just means I better work as hard as I can to learn the language so I can be a good example when I am with new missionaries.

On Saturday we had a Easter party as a branch. It was really fun. A family was here from Idaho. The father served his mission in Russia and the Mother is Russian. Their kids speak English and Russian. They are here since the father is in the Air force and they sent him here to learn Ukrainian.

Well that is about it for this week! I am so excited for mothers day:)

Love,

Elder Hadfield

On the Street in Chernivtsi

Hello,

The Kiev Temple

Let me tell you a little bit about things that have changed. My new companion is named Elder Dorius. He is a bit shorter than me but not short overall. He is really good with the language and is helping me learn a lot. He is the first counselor in the branch presidency here and I just got called to be the branch clerk. Our ward has about fifty active members, maybe a little bit more. Recently our Mission President called a Ukrainian to be the branch president. It is the first time that there has been a native branch president, so things are really moving forward. Chernivtsi is a beautiful, and it reminds me a lot of Uzhhorod.

I was able to go to Kiev this week and go to the temple. It was so great! I think that is the last chance I will get to go:(. Oh well.

Sorry for the short letter:(, It will be a lot longer next week, today was really busy trying to get registered and everything.

Love,

Elder Hadfield

Chernivtsi City Center

Dear Family,

Some news right off the bat, next week I will no longer be serving in Uzhhorod. I will be serving in the city of Chernivtsi! I am really sad to leave Uzhhorod, but I know my hard work will continue in Chernivtsi. The oblast it is in borders Moldova and Romania, cool huh? I am so very thankful for the opportunity I have had the last four months to share the gospel with the people who live in Uzhhorod. I am going to miss them, and they will always have a special place in my heart. They have taught me so much! I have learned how to show gratitude, how to be humble, how to show love by serving others, and I have even picked up some Ukrainian. I leave on Wednesday for Kyiv and them from Kyiv I will go to Chernivtsi with my new companion. I am really hoping that I will get a chance to go to the temple while I am in Kyiv, because after the next two transfers our mission will split and I will not get a chance to be in Kyiv again.

We were able to watch conference this week. We watched the five, two hour sessions in English, then we watched them in Ukrainian on Saturday and Sunday. It was nice to already know what they were talking about when we watched it in Ukrainian because it was easier for me to follow. It was a good language study though, just listening and trying to comprehend it all. I started out writing down words that I did not know, but I could hardly keep up with writing down every other word ha ha. I loved conference! One of my favorite talks was by Elder Cook, when he talked about how we can be at peace in a turbulent world. The commandments are given to us by a loving God who wants us to be happy. By being obedient we can have inner peace no matter what chaos is going on in the world around us.

On Saturday after conference we went to a park bench in center to do some weekly planning. We said a prayer to start and I felt like we needed to go stop by victor at his house. I told my Companion and he said yeah. So we got up and walked over to his house which was about ten minutes away. We knocked on his door and nobody answered. So we went to another park bench close by and started planning again. Within fifteen minutes we got a phone call from an unknown number. My Companion answered it and a guy on the other end said that he was walking through center and stopped by a bench. He stopped by the bench and saw a blue book on the bench. He sat down and waited thinking that somebody would comeback and pick up the book but then after a couple of minutes he opened it up and started reading it. He then found our number in it so he called us. He said it was super interesting and that we wanted to meet with us in 15 minutes. My Companion told him of course so we met up fifteen minutes later. It ended up that when My Companion and I had left Center to go to Victor's house we left our Book of Mormon on the bench and Vacil (his name) found the book and called us. What a miracle! We ended up talking to him for two hours answering his questions and teaching him every single aspect of the Gospel. He is about 20 years old and is just searching for God. While we were talking to him, Victor walked by and we talked to him and he was doing great so that was an answer to our prayer and Vasil totally met a member of the church. It gets even crazier though.

So we are teaching him and right as we get to the Restoration, right when we start talking about the first vision a drunk old lady walks up to us and starts talking to us. To back up a little we had already seen her earlier on a bus and she had tried to grab my crotch. To make a long story short, she is not a very good lady. We tried as hard as we could to get her away and eventually she left. Then we started talking about the Book of Mormon and right as we opened the book of Mormon, and right as we started reading another guy walks up and starts Bible bashing with us trying to prove to us that there couldn't be any more revelation other than the Bible. My Companion totally shut him down. Atta boy Elder! Then we had a super long conversation with him. We ended up giving Vasil, the elect guy, a Book of Mormon and invited him to Church, and then we left. And on Sunday he totally came, he loved conference and there were talks in that conference about a lot of what we talked about on Saturday. Lots of things that explained the Gospel. I received a lot of peace from President Uchtdorf, when he said that darkness is real but light will always win. We had just witnessed it. What a crazy crazy story.... We are planning on meeting with Vacil this week. I will probably get to teach him once before I leave.

I hope all is well at home! You are always in my prayers as I am sure I am in yours. For the last time from Uzhhorod,
Love,

Elder Hadfield

Family!

I am doing great! Thank you so much for the letters.  How was Conference? From the things I read it was great! I have yet to hear it, but I will get the chance to do that this week. We might watch it in English beforehand if we can get it to work, but if not we will watch general conference this Saturday and Sunday in Ukrainian with our members and investigators. I am looking forward to hearing from the apostles and Prophets of the Lord. My only concern is that I won't be able to understand them that well in Ukrainian ha ha! Then I can just print and study the talks.

I love Ukrainian, last Sunday was our fast Sunday since we have to watch conference a week late, so I bore my testimony. The members were so happy after because I didn't make a single grammar mistake! I felt happy because I have been working really hard to understand Ukrainian and how it works. I do admit that my testimony was not that long, but none the less I was proud of myself.

I love basketball! We were walking down the street and I saw three young boys shooting baskets on a playground basketball court. So we walked over and asked if we could play with them. We thought that "horse" would be a good game so we asked if they knew how to play. We explained the rules of "horse", and we found out they have the same game here in Ukraine. They call in "Minus Five." For every shot that you miss you get a minus. When you have five minuses then you are out. We played with them and then invited them to come to English.

Overall I am doing well and working hard. I love you all!

Love,

Elder Hadfield

Happy Easter.... I guess. We have been out of the loop so we totally did not even know that it was Easter. We thought it was next week for some reason or another. Oh well. As far as general conference goes, we will watch one week after it comes out, but then even when we watch it, it will be in Ukrainian. SO I am going to take notes as I watch, then when I have a chance I will read the talks in English and we will see how close my notes were to what was actually said haha! We have to wait a week because we need to get copies of General conference in DVD form to be able to play at the church (on a small projector that we have).

On Monday last week we went to a castle close by Uzhhorod with a few of our members and a few of our investigators. It was a blast. The castle was up on a big hill so we had to hike up to it. It reminds me of the one we saw in Germany. It was more of castle ruins than an actual castle, but none the less we had a really fun time. We took the American family with us and they were very grateful.

We met a girl who did an exchange trip from school to Boston. She was there a few years ago, and she was telling us about how the family she stayed with was big red sock fans. She said they even bought her a Kevin Youkalis jersey haha! How funny right? I did get the chance to go to a sporting event though this week! Remember the basketball team we play with? They had a game against a team from another city and they invited us to come watch. It was a blast. They ended up losing by three, but they played great. It was so fun to watch a basketball game, and to be able to yell and cheer.

I am not sure what it is called in English, but people here have their own dialect. Its called Carpathian Language. Its a mix between Hungarian, Russian, Ukrainian, and Slovakian. Crazy right? Tell me about it. We had some lessons this week with people who only spoke Russian. It was pretty tough. Though the languages are similar it was hard to understand. They understood Ukrainian though because they live here... thank goodness! I was defiantly blessed to understand and to answer far beyond my ability!

We had a baptism this week! It all went very well. I was able to baptize Yeva. She is 65 years old and she was a bit scared about having to go under the water but she did great. She called me the night before her baptism to ask for my shoe size, so I told her. The next day she came to her baptism and she had knitted me size 48 white sandals so I would not have to get in the water with bare feet. What a sweet lady. After she was baptized she bore a very sincere testimony that no matter what age you are, Jesus is always waiting to help you repent and change your life.

I had a great week this week! I am doing well and every thing is working out for us here!

I love you so much,

Elder Hadfield

 

A castle close by Uzhhorod with a few of our members and a few of our investigators

Hey Family:)

So I had to get on the computer a little early today since we are going on a little trip for p-day. I will tell you about it next week:).  Things are moving pretty fast here in Uzhhorod, we had a record breaking 14 people at church yesterday. It may not sound like a lot, but when you think about it, a few moths ago we only had one!

This week we were walking to the church and we saw a family of five, and I noticed that one of their kids was wearing an Under Armor hoddie. I have an Under Armor backpack and people ask me all the time what brand it is because they don't have anything Under Armor here. So that was a clue to me that the family we saw was not Ukrainian. Then we heard them speaking English, believe it or not it felt crazy to hear someone speaking English on the street. So we decided to go and talk to the family. It turns out they are from Colorado and they are here in Uzhhorod to adopt an elven year old girl from an orphanage. They are here for one month because they have to wait for all the legal paperwork to process and things of that nature. They had the young Ukrainian girl with them when we met them. The only problem is, the family only speaks English and the girl only knows how to speak Ukrainian. So we sat and talked with the family for a while, and talked with the girl because she seemed a little scared. We told the family that we would love to meet up with them later so that they could get to know their daughter. We are going to translate for the family and for the daughter so they can talk to each other! Pretty cool huh? It was a blessing that we ran into them so that we could be of help to them. Before we said goodbye to the family, we showed them to a restaurant and we ordered food for them since they did not know what Ukrainian food to get. We ordered them some of our favorites and they were very grateful.

So here is the story of what happened to my Ukrainian grandmother, as she likes to call herself! So we had been meeting with her for three months, since I first arrived in Uzhhorod. She was one of the first people that we met here. She has been to church ten times already! But anyway she grew up under Soviet rule. She has so many crazy stories of what happened during her childhood. And she likes to remind us that we do not have nearly as much life experience as she does, which is totally true. When we first met her I could not speak a sentence of Ukrainian, but now I can communicate a lot better. About a month ago she went to Kiev to visit her son. On Sunday while she was in Kiev, she met up with the Sister missionaries and they showed her around the temple grounds and took her to church (shout out to the Sisters, they are the best). She even got to meet our Mission President. She loved the Sisters and the temple. She came back to Uzhhorod with a new light about her. We thought we were making real progress when one day she called us and told us that she was going to Hungry and that she didn't know if she was coming back. Two weeks later she came back, had us over for lunch, and the first thing she said to us was "How can I help you get me ready for my baptism." We were just blown away. It is really cool to see the joy and the happiness in her life. When we first met her she was very sad and pessimistic about the rest of her life, but now she is always happy and smiling. She even tries to dance around sometimes (I guess she used to be a gymnast when she was younger). We are having her baptism this Saturday and I am going to baptize her! I am very excited.

Love,

Elder Hadfield

Hello,

I am staying in Uzhhorod for another month or so at least! Great huh? I am very excited. We have the four best basketball players in the mission here, and we are all staying. We were all very happy about that! We are going to go play basketball again today. I love this city. The people are so warm, and we are starting to see our hard work pay off.

My favorite part of being in Ukraine is all the friends I am making. Ukrainians love that we do our best to learn their language and their culture, they open up and they love to share their love for their country and their history. Something kind of cool about Uzhhorod is that in the past sixty years it has been a part of three or four different countries. 

My Ukrainian Grandma is going to get baptized on the 30th of March! Pretty cool story, it is kind of long and I don't have a lot of time so I will tell you the whole story next time.

It is hard to be away from my friends and family, but I know that what I am doing is worth it!

I love you all so much! I am excited to talk to you next week:)

Elder Hadfield