So Long to Gorlovka

HI Family!

 So this week was absolutely nuts!  First I want to say that I got the Bybees letter with shirt in it and the Kidd's letter, THANK YOU SO much!!!!  I loved reading all the letters and the shirt was a perfect fit and I appreciate it a ton, so thank you.  Mom and Dad, thanks for your emails, they encourage me so much and every time I hear what I needed to hear. I love you both with all my heart.  This week was crazy. I went on a miracle split with one of my best friends in the mission. We both had the best attitude and we saw miracle after miracle and it was an absolute a blast.  Not too long ago we got a call from the office in Donetsk and they said that our landlord person was selling our apt...In 3 weeks, and we have to find a place to live...so that has been crazy.  Today we moved in and everything worked out fine. However since it was a short notice and some other issues with money going down in the office, we had to pull out personal money to pay for the apt, as to why I have some money pulled out (Dad) but we will get paid back here shortly.  I got a transfer call so I’m am leaving Gorlovka, I’m sad :(  I loved this area so much. My district both transfers have just been so solid and so fun and I’ll miss them a ton. We’ve been meeting with some members for the last time and it’s been sad to say goodbye, we administered another blessing last night to the man whose wife left him with nothing and took the kids too. He told me to tell my parents (YOU) a ton of way nice things about me, he complemented my companion and I a ton, just know that they were too nice.  He called us his brothers and that it was so nice to have missionaries be real and not just missionaries.  He said that he will never forget us and the help that we rendered during his hard time (along those lines).  He is a very humble man that I have learned a ton from. I grabbed a picture with him on his chair that we sit on when we go over for lessons, bless his soul, my feet are pretty much numb when I leave his apt and he has to live in that...strong man. He asked us for oil b/c he was going over to give his kids, and I think wife too, a blessing and he didn’t have anything  so I gave him my container thing with some consecrated oil that I always have on me...then he as he was throwing on a shirt and tie to be as dressed up as he could for the blessing, he was looking around  for something and I asked him if he was looking for his tie, he goes on to say that he doesn’t have one and that he misses having a tie for church and stuff like that....he's got a pretty good looking tie now....it’s crazy how much you want to serve someone when they have a special place in your heart. I learned a lot this week about helping the poor and needy and it was cool to see my studies applied in my life, yet again.  I have SO MUCH compared to some of these people, I’ve been so blessed. Read Mosiah 4 (I think) and learn about "beggars". It’s really cool to see how we are all beggars and to see how much we all use and need the Lord.  It really helps me want to help out a ton more b/c we're all in the same boat.  I love you all and I hope you have a great week! You’re in my thoughts.

- Старейшина Руни

More Miracles

HI family!!!
 Thanks for all the love you all give me. I pray so that I can feel your love and that you can feel mine.  You are the best family EVER!!
Cami no big deal just went SKY DIVING!!! WHAT!!! I want to go SOOO bad.  That sounds like a blast. Sounds like a great week!  This week for me was incredible.  My mission is a roller coaster.  I want to tell you some awesome miracles that went down this week.  #1 - We decided that there are too many people that are members that aren't coming to church. haha which is almost everyone...anyways, we started calling less actives.  We ended up calling a woman named Natasha, I think, and she agreed to meet with us! MIRACLE!  She actually said yes!  It was so amazing! But it gets better, we get there and her son has a friend over who sat in on our lesson, so our lesson plan quickly changed to the restoration.  Long story short, the friend is 21 ish and super interested. We hope to meet with him this week. He accepted our invitation to read and pray, it was awesome.  #2 - with our new schedule, we "find" a ton, so one night it was about 6 pm and time to find...and we were NOT in the finding mood.  It was way cold, pitch black and we just had no hope that we would find anyone.  We needed and attitude switch bad.  So what did we do? We threw on a recording that I have of me and Jarom (with some other BOYS including Dick) jamming on Ukuleles and the piano at BYU.  We listened to One Day, and made our selves be happy and have the right attitude.  We decided that it was pointless to go out and try to help people if you yourself were beat and with no hope.  So we charged up and went out with the best attitude that we could come up with.  And then we witnessed a miracle. The first man we spoke with invited us on the street to walk with him to his apt.  So we started walking home with him, he had just finished work. On the way to the apt he tells us that his wife was baptized in 2008 into our church!! He wasn’t baptized but pretty much took all the lessons with his wife, who is inactive.  But we went in and they gave us tea (fruit tea...relax) and we talked a bit.  They have 3 young kids that were way cool and not against talking about the church at all.  So we hopefully are going back with a member (her visiting teacher) to have a lesson this week with her and him.  CRAZY!!!! We are so blessed, and we wouldn't have has that opportunity if we didn’t take the time to "get in the mood" aka, regain some real hope and faith that we were going to find someone.  I learned a ton of lessons this week. My personal study has been way good and I’ve been able to apply the things I learned.  I was studying about trusting in God, and thought to myself, when you read things and it always says that God is our “loving Heavenly Father". I thought and pondered this for a long time.

I have a picture of our family on my desk and I looked at Dad.  I thought about the amazing feeling it will be when I am able to be embraced in his arms again, and about how I can go to dad for anything. I thought about how I can feel his love for me and about how strong that bond is.  Then I honestly thought about my Father in Heaven.  I came to the conclusion that I don’t have that bond with God.  And to think that God loves my perfectly.  I've always thought of God as the "Big scary God" guy who can forgive me of my sins if I do what he says.  But I’ve never really honestly taken the time to think about God as our loving Heavenly Father and what that REALLY means.  So right now, I’m working on making my relationship with God better.  It’s been interesting and inspiring.  I have a LONG way to go. But I’m learning a ton.  I’m grateful for all of you, have a great week! and DO MISSIONARY WORK with someone this week!


- Старейшина Руни

New Working Hours....

Wow, thank you so much mom and dad for your letters, they were both powerful and exactly what I needed to hear. I love the council mom gave, “look with the Lord's eyes". I've actually been trying to do that. When I’m on a bus or something and no one is talking to us, I try and look at people as "they really are" (Jacob 4:13...I think). They are all children of our Heavenly Father, which means that they have all the potential that I have to receive all that the Father has. It puts things in a different perspective. So thanks mom.
This past week was tough and great all at the same time. We had a zone conference and our mission is changing little by little. We just received a new schedule. Up at 6:30, out the door by 7...finding people till 8:30 (in the FREEZING COLD!!), then coming in for exercise and breakfast. Our studies are broken up and it’s just crazy how tired I’ve been getting. They decided to shift around the schedule for the whole mission to compensate for light and when men are going to work, lunch break, and coming home from work. With no real light up in a lot of areas at night, it’s hard to find people in the pitch black and it doesn’t help that by 4:30pm every day it’s already dark. It’s been interesting but I’m trying my best b/c I love my president and he holds the keys to lead this mission. This past week has taught me a ton. I went on a split with one of my favorite people in this whole mission. We had a KILLER lesson in English with a guy who is in a band, doesn’t believe in a "middle man" aka, Jesus Christ or prophets, and only wanted to practice English with us. But Since God always wins, the spirit directed our entire lesson and it was one of the most powerful experiences on my mission. Then we met a guy right after the lesson who, if we hadn’t been so full of the spirit from our lesson, we wouldn’t even have given a second thought to, but we spoke with him. He just went on and on but we stood there in the middle of the street, both as calm as could be (it was already almost 9:20 at night...) and by the end of this conversation with a very bitter atheist man, we testified and told him we would answer his questions (one of them being, "If you have a God who loves us so much, why does he let bad things happen to good people?"). He then smiled and said thank you and that he just wanted to know the answers to these questions. The Spirit softened this man's heart and it was all just amazing. Then looking back on our circumstances, we spoke with that man at night, already late to be inside (b/c of a lesson that got out late...haha so we were still obedient), we just happened to stop that man underneath the ONLY light on the entire street which was about a quarter mile long...think God had anything to do with that? Me too…. It was amazing. There were so many other miracles that I want to talk about but writing is not a strength of mine so I’ll just tell you when I’m home haha. I had a killer week and I could not be so dead and beat, but it’s all worth it. I received a ton of complements from other missionaries for some reason recently. I've learned a ton about putting effort towards a relationship. Before my mission I remember Dad told me that “in order to have a successful relationship, both people have to put in 115%", I’ve lived on that quote. And I see the BIGGEST difference in a relationship when the other person puts in just as much as you. I’m just waiting for my "Jarom" haha. We'll see if he shows up. Anyways I love you all so much. Have a great week!
--
- Старейшина Руни

PS: thank the Kidd family for the gift please!
- Also duct tape would be HUGE! :) And maybe just a TON of pictures....if there is going to be anything sent my way soon!

Happy New Year!!

HI family!
I’m speechless. I had the best time with you all last week! Skyping was so rad. It’s good to hear that everything turned out well. I’m way bummed about Bro Schwab passing on. But at the same time, I’m way excited for him. He has truly lived a life of service and can expect LOTS to come. It was so cool to see you all last weeeeeeeeeeek!!! I understand more and more of God's plan and how perfect it is almost every day (some days are way harder to understand than others haha), Family is truly where it’s at. I love you all so much and can’t wait to party with you guys when I get back! But that can wait; I know that I’m supposed to be here.
This past week was insane. Alexander, the guy that we taught who was baptized, got on the internet and looked up some unfavorable information about the history of the church, has lost almost all of his friends, and called us drunk out of his mind the other day.....it was a hard day. So the next day we took a member with us and had a lesson with him and had the member just answer questions and we shared some scriptures and bore testimony. Alexander is a good person; he's just going through a hard time. I've added to my testimony through this experience that you will find what you are looking for. If you look at something and think negatively about it, that’s exactly what you will find negative things. Then eventually everything you look at will just be dim and negative. It’s not worth. Work should never be something to complain about (in Alexander's case), be grateful that you even have a job. I know that as a missionary it’s easy to think that way but with a positive perspective, things are so much easier to understand and handle. New Year’s was great! We went to bed at 10 -10 30 and set our alarm for 11:55! We woke up and did the count down and everything. We tried to find something of the Martinell’s and whipped that out at midnight. It ended up being way nasty haha but it was a good memory. we hit the sack again I think 35 seconds later...At church the next day there was almost no one there, b/c New Year’s is the BIG holiday here so people get a little crazy. We had to be in by 4 pm and 6 pm on eve and New Year’s Day. But President Camero was there at church and we all got have interviews with him...that man is AMAZING! He gave me a powerful blessing. He's just so loving and in tune with the spirit. I've learned so much since just talking with you all. The scriptures are powerful and I’m sad that I never saw the importance of them before. One thing I’ve learned recently is that I always have to have no regrets on my mission. Don’t make any mistakes..this that and the other, but something that I’ve realized more and more, is that the missionary I am today, is b/c of those mistakes that I’ve made and those regrets that I have. I learn so much from experiences that I’ve gone through on my mission, good AND bad. I've learned that God doesn’t tempt you (obviously) but allows you to be tempted. B/c if He took our temptations away, then that would also take away our opportunity to choose good or evil; thus taking away our agency. He can’t take our temptations away b/c we live in the world. But he can help us overcome them. I love being a missionary especially here in good ole' Ukraine. I love you all! Have a great week!

- Старейшина Руни

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