Sunday, April 26, 2015

Snow sun and fun it's the Ukrainian way!

Week of April 20-26, 2015

This was a crazy week on Tuesday it snowed and on Saturday we had a picnic in the park with прекрасчый пагода (Beautiful Weather).
Snowing on Tuesday

Picnic on Saturday
But there is no mistake spring is here and if you doubt that you were not here for the opening of the Roshen Fountain last night.  That is the official spring kick off activity here in the fair town of Vinnistya.  You ask what is the Roshen Fountain it is the largest free floating fountain in Eastern Europe.  We see it everyday on our way home from the church.
Roshen Fountain on the way home from Church

I love the Tramvi system here.
 At night it is the back drop for huge laser light shows and concerts.  As we got home from a district activity last night we stepped off the bus into a sea of people.  We have about 400,000 people in our town and I'm sure about 90% of them were out last night.  I have been in New York City years ago and I think it was almost that crowed.
Night laser show at Roshen Fountain
We have taken the challenge to go out and contact people on the street and talk to them.  It is a difficult thing when your language is so limited. But this week we had several wonderful experiences.
I contacted this guy but he was not much of a talker but if you touch
his nose you will have good luck. Notice how shiny his nose is!
We met a man that was really down on his luck the other day and had a talk with him.  We gave him a card and invited him to church.  He stopped by several times and no one was there but then on Friday he found us at English practice and came in.  We had a nice visit and I think he felt the spirit of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  He spoke almost no English but I know now he has a friend in America named John.  He asked me if i knew him. It was fun to explain to him that America is very big and he said no Ukraine is big.  I then explained that Аmerica is большой (big)and Ukraine is маленький (Small).  That was a difficult concept for him to understand.  We each have our own perception of the world and since we have come here my perception of the world has gotten much larger. We must be careful that we don't judge others by our limited understanding of their situation. The Savior taught judge not that ye be not judged.  That is wonderful counsel that all of us could live by.
     Wednesday we traveled out to my favorite spot again and spent part of the day working on that troublesome stump that sits right in the middle of the Greenhouse we are trying to build.  But as we left that day the stump was about to give up it's hold on Mother Earth.
What kind of stumps are you working on?
These little guys were cheering us on while we dug and cut.
 We have dug about six feet down and cut many large roots and now there are just two small roots left to cut and out it will come.  I guess for me it has been a bit of a parable.  We all have stumps in our garden of life that get in the way of our progress and for us to be successful we must remove those stumps out of our garden.  It may take a lot of effort and time but once it is removed it will be a joyous occasion. We are going out again this week and I will post a picture of that "Old Stump" next week, and the celebration of it's removal.
We had to travel home quickly because we had an appointment with a wonderful young lady that is learning about the gospel.  She along with the talented Zina (She is the one that made the Origami Butterfly that we posted several weeks ago) came to our house to give us a lesson on making Borsch. It was good and we had a wonderful lesson after.  We are so lucky to be here and have so many people who are willing to make our life better.  Those of you in America, you are in for a treat when Sister Mikkelsen makes Borsch for you after the mission.
We teach a group of kids English two times a week and we have to take off our name tags and can't preach the gospel as we teach them because they are part of a government project. So we were trying to think of ways that we could share with them the things that make us who we are.  So this week the lesson was on "what makes a family".  The kids have all different kinds of families and we loved getting to know about them.  We can't wait to follow up with them.  In the gospel of Jesus Christ we are so blessed to have an understanding of eternal families.  We shared our testimonies with one of our investigators this evening about the blessing of eternal families and the blessings of the temple.  She lost her husband several years ago and truly loved him.  I shared with her the fact that she could be with him for all eternity.  We hope we struck a cord in her life that will help her move closer to that baptismal covenant.
On Saturday we got up before 5 AM and got ready to spend the day in Жито́мир which is just north of us about two hours.  We had a district activity with the branch there.  The Branch President is Elder Gorbokoenko. He put together this activity to get the branch together.  There were about 15 people all together.  It was a great activity.  We left on the bus at 6 AM and got there before 8 AM.  The activity didn’t start until 10:30 so we had a little study time.  We sat in McDonalds and learned about verbs of motion. 
Missionaries working the grill


Wonderful Spring day!!! That is a river in the background of the picture
It was a great time we played games and bar-b-qued chicken the Ukrainian way.  After a day of fun activities we bid the branch a fond farewell and got on our bus back to Vinistya.  Well it was the milk run for sure it took us almost three hours to get back. The bus was packed most of the time and they put the seats really close together so long legged people are not the most comfortable.
This has been a wonderful week. We are again so blessed to be serving in the mission field. It is not always easy but the most important things in life never are.  We are being stretched and molded like never before.  I would highly recommend this to any of you, what a wonderful opportunity to make a difference in a world that needs the the help.  Please feel free to help anyway you can.  May I suggest a Senior Mission!!
The Magnolia tree in the background is one of our daily
blessings in this beautiful country.
Have a blessed week I know we will
Love you all Elder and Sister Mikkelsen
And don't forget you can still love your grandkids at a
distance.  We are so blessed to have this little one in our family.