Family!

So here is the run down on what we will be happening with me this next week: On Sunday after church we are having a little lunch with the branch and then we are all going to a near by hotel where our investigator Tolik is going to get baptized. That night at 11 my companion has a train to L'viv, where he will spend his last preparation day before he goes home. It is still unknown if I will or will not be on the train with him, as we still have not received information on who will be serving where next transfer. We will find out this Saturday where we will be serving, so I will have to let you know next Monday.

This coming week we also have a really fun activity planned with the branches from Chernivtsi and the neighboring branch of Ivano. On Saturday morning the branch is all getting in a rented bus to go up to the mountains in between the Chernivtsi and Ivano oblasts on the border. There the two branches are going to hang out all day, have a big lunch together, and have a lot of fun, and then later on in the day get back on the buses and go back to the cities that they came from. We are allowed to go if we have investigators who are going, which is nice since Elder Dorius and I have about three who are going to go. It will be really nice for them to get to meet a lot of members and have fun with them. Plus I think there is going to be a spiritual thought there and everything like that.

This week was pretty good. I don't have a whole lot to say. For three days I was on exchanges with other elders and on those days we couldn't seem to schedule a meeting with anyone so we were just out on the street talking to people about the gospel all day. Those three days just happened to be the hottest three days of the whole week. Funny how that works. But I still had the sun screen that mom gave me when I left so I made sure to use it and I didn't get burned at all. Way to go mom!

I love you all so much, and I can't wait to hear from you next week and tell you all that is going on with me and where I will be serving from now on. I hope you have a great week!

Love,

Your Son/Brother

Elder Hadfield

Hey family,

A cool little experience that I had yesterday: We were walking out on the street and I was super hungry. I was thinking to myself "wow, it would be nice if I had some fruit to eat right now." Then some old lady called us over to her, so we went. And she told us "hey boys, I just wanted to give you some apples." She then took six apples out of her bag, gave them to us and left. It was a very sweet tender mercy!

We had a really scenic river baptism this week, where two people were baptized. The weather was perfect, there was a lot of support from the branch members, and we even had a lot of non members come! To start off the service all the missionaries sand "Come thou Fount." It was very powerful!

The only hard thing was that the water was not very deep, and the rocks on the bottom of the river really hurt to walk on, on the way back to the shore after the baptism, I slipped and fell on some rocks a few times and got all wet in the river. I am not going to lie, it felt super good. Who said you can't go swim on your mission?

My companion baptized our investigator. He had to get baptized three times before he went all the way under, but I am sure he didn't mind since he thought the water felt really good.

The sisters made a really good lunch and after the baptism we all had a little picnic on the river bank.
Then on Sunday we were able to confirm our new members and give them the gift of the Holy Ghost. What a spiritually packed week.

I love serving in Chernivtsi! It is such a pretty city, and the members are awesome. I am finding much joy in serving others.By the way I am taking so many pictures and my flash card is filling up fast, it will be fun when I come home to sit down and go through the thousands of pictures and videos that I have and show them to you and tell you the stories behind them! Oh and you will be happy to know that I am getting way better at writing in my journal too! Ever since I got the new one my entries have been way longer.

I love you and miss you so much! I hope you have fun on the rest of your trip,

Love,

Elder Hadfield

My dear family,

I don't know if you all remember, but it was exactly one year ago today that I opened my mission call to serve in Ukraine! What a whirlwind it has been since then.

I have two really cool stories to tell you from my week.

First: We have a baptismal date for this Saturday. His name is Vitaly.  He is twenty three years old and he is awesome. He loves the way that he feels when he is at church and is really excited to learn more. He even decided to get baptized in the river. So on Saturday we are going to go out to the river and I hope there will be a lot of support from our wonderful branch.

Second: The Sister missionaries have this investigator names Larissa who has been coming to church ever since I came here to Chernivtsi. She has never been baptized and I am not really sure why. But yesterday I was sitting in priesthood when the overwhelming feeling came to me that I needed to go and ask Larissa if I could baptize her on Saturday. So after the closing prayer I went and found her and just told her that I felt like I should ask her if I could baptize her this coming Saturday. She thought for a second and then said yes! How cool huh? I was very thankful to God for the prompting that He sent me. What a huge blessing! Needless to say I am very excited for Saturday!

Hey, you all have iPhones, you need to take some more pictures to send me since I don't get to see you otherwise! I miss seeing you and it has been to long since you sent me pictures!

I love you all so much! I will talk to you next week,

Love,

Elder Hadfield

Family!

This week was really good! I also took out of the bank 100 dollars this week. I bought a new journal (you wouldn't believe how hard it is to find one that is not graph paper), I bought a shoulder bag since we are not allowed to use a backpack anymore, and I also bought a few ties.  I think it is pretty sweet. I had to control myself so I didn't buy to many.

One cool experience we had this week happened as we were walking to the church. We were in the middle of the center of the city and a girl and her mom stated waving at us. We turned around to see if they were waving at someone behind us because we didn't think they were waving at us. Turns out they were and they called out to us to come over to them. When we walked over to them they handed us an English Book of Mormon and said "Here is your book." We were shocked because we never take English books with us and we did not know how it got onto the bench (where the mom and her daughter found it sitting). So we took it from them and I was like "Here, let me exchange you for one you can read," and I handed her a Russian book. This whole conversation was in Ukrainian by the way. They did not speak English. We said goodbye and kept walking. I turned to my companion and said "Hey, it would be really cool if we found an English speaker to give this book too." About five minutes later we ran into a man from Africa named Fredrick who said he currently did not have a church and he was looking. We gave him the English copy of the Book of Mormon and got his number. We asked all the other missionaries in the city and they said that none of them had given out an English Book of Mormon, plus where is was is far away from where all the other missionaries live. I don't know for sure, but I think that God was watching out for Fredrick and he sent one of His angels to set that Book of Mormon on that bench!

President Latin came by our area this week. He came into Chernivtsi on Thursday and we had lunch with him and then that night we had a fireside at the church for all the members. He is a lot different then our last mission president, but I think he is really great and he will help us accomplish a lot of good in the L'viv Mission.

Well, I love you all so much! I hope that all is well with you. Until next week,

Elder Hadfield

Dear Family,

I miss you all so much! It is great to be able to hear from you every week. It brings me much comfort to know that you are all doing so well and being really good member missionaries. I know that as you look for missionary moments in your life, you will find them and you will be able to share the gospel with those whom the Lord has prepared for you! I know I am receiving so many blessings on my mission in Ukraine for all of the strides you are making to share the gospel back at home.

So on Friday we were blessed in Chernivtsi to have the first baptism of the L'viv Ukraine Mission! The lady who I told you about got baptized and I had the great honor of being able to baptize her. It is really cool to see how happy she is with the gospel in her life. It is night and day. She has always been a strong woman of faith, but the knowledge that the restored gospel brings has given her a whole hope about life.

She shared with us a very cool experience she had a few days before the baptism that I would like to share with you. Remember the son that I told you about last week that she had who died in a really tragic manner? Well, she said that he came to her in a dream and told her that she needed to join this church and then he left and she woke up. She was very calm and confident in her decision and she knows the Book of Mormon is from God.

She is just an amazing lady and I feel very blessed to have found her. She loves us and she takes good care of us. She had a garden and she gives us lots of berries and fruit. Oh, and she makes some really good natural tea from boiling leaves from a certain type of tree.

For the 4th of July we had a party with all the people who have been coming to our English classes, and all the members who wanted to come and bring their friends. It was a lot of fun. My companion and I made a lot of really good treats that people liked. Ukrainians don't really know what brownies are, because they don't really make them here, but they loved the ones we made!

On Saturday we were in L'viv for the first mission conference as the L'viv mission. President Latin and his wife sister Latin were there and it was really great to get to hear from them. They are awesome people and I feel very blessed to have them here. We didn't get a whole lot of time to talk with them on a 1 on 1 basis, but that's ok, because they are doing a mission tour this week to do a fire side with each branch. On Thursday we have a lunch with President and his wife, and then we have interviews with him, and then at seven at night he is putting on a fire side for the branch, so it should be a pretty fun week!

Oh, I almost forgot, transfers are this week and I am staying in Chernivtsi. I love it here very much, so I am super excited to be able to stay! Well I have to go, Я вас люблю:) I hope you have a fun week! Keep looking for opportunities to share the gospel with the people around you! I am very proud of you!

Your son/brother,

Elder Mitchell Hadfield

2 July 2103

Ummm, Ummm, Good!

Dear Family,

If you are all gathered around the computer anxiously awaiting my thoughts of the first presidency broadcast then I am sorry to disappoint you. Did I get to watch the broadcast? Why yes, I sure did! Did I get to watch it in a language that I understand? Why no, I did not. Now I know what you are thinking. "You have been studying Ukrainian for nine months now, you should understand it!" Well that is all true. But knowing Ukrainian does not help very much when you watch the broadcast in Russian. It does help a little because a lot of words are similar, so I understood a lot of words, but as far as complete understanding goes, I didn't get most of the broadcast. No worries though, tomorrow for district meeting we are going to watch it in our native tongue! I admit it was a really cool experience to watch it in Russian because rather than paying to much attention to what was being said I got to take the chance to listen to what the Spirit was trying to tell me. I can't really describe it, but it was very neat.

So this week we set a baptismal date with our investigator named Violetta. She is about 55 years old and lives with her husband very close by to the church. We go over to her house to teach her and loves meeting with us! She had an unfortunate situations with one of her two sons many years ago where he died, I don't want to go into many details, but she really misses him. The plan of salvation really hits home for her. Plus she thinks I look a lot like her son that passed away, and he was tall like me, so Violetta really likes me. We will be holding a baptismal service for her on Friday morning this week! I am super excited! Then after the service we have a train to L'viv where we have a conference to meet our new mission president, which is going to be great!

I almost forgot Happy early Independence Day! We are still not sure what we are going to do to celebrate yet, but we will think of something! Oh, now I remember, we are going to sing patriotic hymns for companion study! Sounds fun huh?

That's all from me for this week. I love you all so much!

Elder Hadfield

Me and President Klebingat at my last meeting in the Kyiv Mission

Dear Family,

So this week we had a zone conference in L'viv with all the missionaries who will be in the L'viv mission. I got to see a little more of L'viv this trip because we did not arrive in the middle of the night like last time. The city is very beautiful and I hope I have a chance by the end of my mission to serve there.

We left of for L'viv on Friday afternoon by train. Trains are fun... but when it is really hot and the train has no air conditioning it can be a little miserable. But I had a lot of fun anyway. There was a little old man who was selling little carved pen whistles. I asked to buy one, so he blew into it to test it... then he gave it to me haha. It was pretty funny. Then he asked if we understood Ukrainian well, and we told him yes. So then he started to sing some Ukrainian songs for us. It was really sweet. Then he recited some Ukrainian poetry. I got some of it on camera. The man was very nice. After he finished I got to talking with him, and he found out we were missionaries. He started listing of all the different churches that there are in the world. Then I asked him a question. "Why do you think there are so many different churches in the world?" He looked at me for a bit and then he told me that I gave a very smart question and then declined to answer saying that he did not have any idea. He then asked me the same question. I boldly but humbly answered by telling him that while most churches have a lot of good things, Satan does not want God's children to find the true church of God with the fullness of the everlasting gospel of Jesus Christ. The man was a little shocked. I told him about the Book of Mormon, gave him a copy, and he agreed to come to church. It was a really great experience.

On Saturday we went running with president in the morning followed by our conference. Don't worry, we had time to shower and change in between! At the conference President gave us all the advice that he usually gives in his departing missionary interviews since that was our last time to get to be with him. Then he and his wife shared their conversion stories which were incredible and then following they told us about how they met and their story together which was pretty cool as well.

Then we got back in a train a headed back to Chernivtsi. We found out that we will have another conference in L'viv on the 6th of July, except this one will be with our new mission president. I am excited to meet him, and learn from him.

I hope you enjoyed all the pictures! I love you all so much! Until Next week,

Elder Hadfield

The beds are a bit small on the train.

My Companion and I on the way to L'viv.