Blessings

KIMI IS MARRIED!! WHATTT!!!!!!????? I understand that things are crazy with everything going on so thank you Kyle MAH BOOOYYYY for filling me in. Yesterday I finally got the wedding invitation from ya'll, Kimi and Nate look great. I was literally showing everyone haha. The card board cut out was SOOOO RAD!!! I love it, I feel like I was there (not really at all haha). I know you are all exhausted and that it’s not over yet, keep up the good work! Next week I will be able to skype at 9 30pm ish your time on Christmas day! Don’t forget PLEASE :) that is if you are all in California, if not then in Utah that'll be 10:30pm ish..I can’t wait!!!!
I know you'll tell me all about everything on Sunday so I won’t ask many questions.
This week was amazing. I turned into a new missionary. I re-committed myself and I saw the hugest difference in my life. It is so true that it’s all about doing the small and simple things. We had an awesome lesson with this almost less active woman in our branch who taught us how to make a super good and way unhealthy Ukrainian dish. It was way fun but I just wish I could speak Russian so that I could be able to communicate better with the people here. Sunday was an absolute blast. So as you might already know, some Ukrainian people have a small intense side to them...and well for the branch Christmas program...the director might be a little intense, but I love it so much haha. Alexander (who just got baptized) has a part and everything! AND he calls us and says that he WENT To INSTITUTE!! And that it was interesting and he wants to go again. I have high hopes for this man. He's already adding to the branch. K so now here comes the sad event that happened last night. Sergei, he is now becoming active again and one of the nicest people on the face of the earth. We met with him once about a month ago, and his wife and kids were there...great lesson. Saturday night we had a lesson set up with him and he was late at work so we had to reschedule...so we met last night. He lives in a "chasnie dome sector" with means that there are just a bunch of tiny little dachas. We get there and walk in. There was almost nothing in his house, extremely bare and some things were rearranged. The room we met in had one chair and it looked like he made it his new kitchen. He had us bring our shoes in (which is unheard of) so that they wouldn’t freeze out by the entry way...b/c the heat was off.


I sat in the chair while my comp sat on the arm rest of the same chair. It was quiet so I asked where the people were. aka...his wife. I didn’t think too much of it until after he tells us what went down and then I made all the connections. His wife left him with the kids 3 weeks ago and took literally everything. He says that she doesn’t love him anymore and that he doesn’t know what to do. We went prepared to teach a lesson about the upcoming Christmas...that quickly changed. The spirit directed us during the whole thing. He told us that he has barely any money but that he works every day in Donetsk and has to get there every day...that’s a long way. He didn’t ask us for anything. He sees it as a trial that he has to go through. He studies the scriptures regularly it sound like and it seems to me like he is an honest good man. I don’t know both sides of the story but he said that his wife doesn’t love him anymore. Then he goes and grabs a few pictures that look like hadn’t been pulled out of this plastic sleeve in years. It was a picture of his wedding day to his first wife. I could tell that he loved her so much and missed her a ton. He baptized her and she died when she was just 26. He married this other woman and had 2 awesome boys with her. Our lesson was that of comfort. He was the former branch president and is a very humble man, and faith driven. He asked if I would give a blessing to him. It was my first time giving the actual blessing part in Russian but I wasn’t THAT nervous. The spirit was strong and as I looked for a paper that I have with all the right words to say, I saw I had some personal money that I had in my passport (which I never have on me so it was a miracle that I had it with that night b/c it has that paper with the blessing on it) and I had the thought that I wanted to leave money for him somewhere. It was personal so I didn’t care if I gave it to him, as missionaries it’s not really all that allowed to give members money out of our MSF. So I offered the blessing and it was awesome, I didn’t really think about the grammar or what to say, I’m sure I made mistakes but everything was understandable. He tells us of his faith of the priesthood and says that whenever he is given a blessing, he tries to picture God saying those things through the person administering the blessing (or something like that, it was in Russian so that’s what I’m 90% sure he said). It was powerful. We left and right when we did I went back and threw 30 greiven on the chair we were sitting on. I told Elder Frandsen that I left some money so we ran to get out of sight just in case he tried to come give it to us haha. He called us and my comp answered the phone, Sergei said that we must have left money on accident and my comp said that he had all of our money (b/c we just pile our money together every month and he holds on to it) and that the money had to be Sergei's. It was only enough money to get to Donetsk for one day and not even back I don’t think. But my comp said he wanted to answer the phone so none of us would have to lie about the money haha. It was a crazy humbling experience. I’m so glad that I was worthy to be there and exercise my priesthood responsibilities. I also, got Jay's (Bybee) letters. That was AWESOME. I look up to Jay so much he has no idea. My week was incredible. Hard, but rewarding. I love this mission. I love you all so much! Have a great week and I’ll talk to you on SUNDAY!!!!

- Старейшина Руни

ps I got the package and opened it haha but I didn’t touch anything, it’s all sitting under our 6 in Christmas tree!

Alexander's Day

FAMILY!!!
WOOOOW, things at home seem crazy. I hope all the wedding things go as planned! I loved hearing from you all. I’m excited to see pictures from the wedding. I was just reading in my journal and in AUGUST I wrote that Kimi got engaged....where does time go?! So this past week was "transfer calls" and....I’m staying in my area with my comp!!! I’m so excited. I prayed to stay haha. We are killing it here and I love this area so much. So, as you might have heard, we had a baptism on Saturday!! Alexander is officially a member of the church! We’re going to do "Shashleeky" today with him at his Dacha. It’s pretty much shish-ka-bobs. The whole district will be there. It'll be super cold but I brought the football (thanks again mom!) so it'll be a good time. So on for the baptism we picked him up and went with Alexander so that we knew he would be there haha. But we got there a bit late and NO ONE was there. I freaked out inside. There was one member there and the font was full but not even the missionaries were there! I felt so bad. Then God taught me patience. Finally the other missionaries showed up then SLOWLY people started coming. The baptism started about an hour late but in the end it all worked out. It was so cool too because it was kind of a risk...as in we decided that the branch needed to grow up a little bit and prepare the baptism instead of the missionaries doing it all as usual. So we called the Branch President and asked him who would be speaking so that we could make the programs (that’s the only thing we did) but he gave assignments (he’s kind of a slacker sometimes so it was way cool that he made an effort...also he never used to like the missionaries either because one of the missionaries offended him or something......anyways things are slowly getting better!).


WEll, Alexander asked another elder to baptize him, which I was kind of bummed about because I wanted a member of the branch to do it, but it’s no big deal. He was baptized twice because he's HUGE and well...yea. After the baptism an angel in our branch brought goodies and the branch SWARMED him after. It was SOOO rad to see the branch actually functioning together. At church I was able to stand in the circle for the confirmation...that was a special experience. Alexander will be a wonderful member. He gave up drinking, smoking, and friends I would say to join the church. The week before the baptism I’ve never seen anyone so drained in my life. His parents were against it, and his friends were calling him crazy and stupid things like that. My heart hurt for him that whole time. IT was rough for him. So, also at church...remember the "brotha" Frank? He came to church! He shows up like a total baller in a light cream colored suit down to matching socks and shoes...looking waaay fresh. Anyways, he said that everyone was warm and he felt super good so we'll see what happens! Things are going great here. Garrett Jones wrote me tooo! WE found another guy named Rocky from the Peace Corps and he's from Vegas...we're going to hang out with soon. Well, I have pictures to send and that takes a while but I love you all and I EXPECT pictures from the wedding!
Thanks :)
-Sean

Happy B-day Mom!!!

MOMMMMMMMYYYYY!!!!!
с днём рождение!!! That means happy birthday!!! I was just thinking about last year's birthday PARTY Cami threw for you...jeez time flies. Well, in case you're wondering your birthday and my 8 MONTH mark is on the same day!! It honestly feels like a dream. It was great to hear from you all today! Kyle is going to college?! AHHH that’s nuts! It makes me happy to hear that everything at home is going well. I LOVE hearing from my family! This week for me was the most memorable week of my mission, which is ironic b/c it absolutely FLEW by. After last week's emails form every single one of my family members, I felt your love and I felt your prayers. I hate trying to write it all down b/c it’s impossible to describe everything and how everything went down but pretty much if you want to see miracles, just look. I remember a letter Cami wrote me; in it she said to look for miracles every day, when I read that I thought to myself ok, but didn’t really put too much thought into it. Then this week opened my eyes. I started feeling closer to my Savior and as a result I started seeing more and more. I've come to a conclusion that the Gospel is just a more intense way to live haha. Higher highs and lower lows. What the Gospel helps me understand is that you CANT experience the highest of highs without experiencing the lowest of lows. Something I’ve learned on my mission is, you’re going to find what you're looking for. That goes both ways. If you look for miracles, you're going to see them. If you look for bad pictures on billboards....that’s exactly what you're going to see. I've started to try and apply that principle in my life, and it’s very interesting to see how much my attitude truly does change everything. I’m so grateful for the Atonement in my life. I still feel like I’m living below my privileges. The atonement covered/s everything. That includes all bad and all good. I'm trying to use the enabling power of the atonement more in my life along with the redeeming power of the atonement. We are our biggest critics. IN life you have to learn that you are not PERFECT, especially being on a mission where that’s what you feel like you have to be. The whole" no regrets" thing on your mission is kind of hard for me to grasp. From my experiences, the times that I’ve learned the most on my mission are the times where I look back and say, dang...I could have worked harder. Why? b/c when I look back at something that I did or didn’t do, I regret, BUT it makes me want to change and be better. Therefore helping me learn and grow. Also, none of us are perfect. Another thing that I’m beginning to learn is that we need not to demand perfection, that’s impossible. What we do need to demand is improvement. I love this Gospel and opportunity to serve b/c it’s helped me learn so much about myself and who I want to become. The mission is an MTC...Marriage training center. How can we tell if we were successful on our missions? When a mission president asked Pres. Faust how he could tell if he was a successful mission president, Pres. Faust said, “tell me where your missionaries are at in 20 years, that’s how you can tell if you were a successful mission president." Anyways, I just realized that my letter was all over the place, but those were just my thoughts that I’m having right now. I love you all so much. I’m having the best experience for my life and wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Live every day to the fullest. Stop worrying so much about the future. When we do that, we miss out on today.
Have a great week!

- Старейшина Руни