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!
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