Whshew!

   

   Week of May 25-31, 2015

It is amazing to me what a little sunshine and warm weather will do for the population of a country.  Bus rides in the winter are silent with everyone staring out the window (at least by the end of winter when we arrived). But, now...!  Yesterday morning we were squished into a bus we didn't think we would ever fit into (the doors didn't close all the way behind me till everyone got jiggled around a little bit as we hit a few bumps) and as I listened (couldn't look around-too many people) the bus seemed to be alive.  People chatting, smiling, seemingly happy.  It was awesome.  The only trouble is, now they want to talk to us.  Sometimes we can understand them and say a little back but mostly we have to ask if they speak English.  This usually brings a big smile, a knowing nod, and a few laughs (sometimes, a look of disgust).

     As most of you know, I am not a photographer so when it s my week to write, the photos may seem to be lacking--something.  I wish I had a picture of people on the streets on Saturday.  Every other person was carrying around what looked like a handful of reeds, which were being sold on every street corner.  I felt like we should buy some too, but Ned "Why'd"that.  It looked just like the day they were selling pussy willows last month.  The willows were important in a religious holiday regarding spring.  We finally found out this was true again.  That is one thing that makes living in a small country fun.  The people are so passionate about their customs, traditions, culture, language...anything that has to do with their country.  We always see people dressed in traditional Ukrainian clothing or costumes.  My traditional American dress is jeans and a t-shirt. One day someone asked me what foods were traditional American foods only found in America.  I didn't know what to answer-  fried chicken, cornbread, and a mess of greens in the south, a clam bake or shrimp in the Northeast...hamburgers?  I guess we just have a little bit of everybody =)  Maybe that's why its so important for us to find our roots.
 

This church has become our friend.  This is how we see it from our
window.  We pass it everyday.  The domes are on the ground waiting
for the renovations to be completed. 

Can't wait for it to be put back together again.  It is a beautiful building.

                              

The highlight of our week---whshew!  The last stump is finally out!

That right "Helping Hands"

We had a little extra help as you will see in the pictures.  Just after we got there we saw Bro Сисов working on his old tractor. It took awhile but he got it going, drove it over, hooked it in, started pulling, and- the cable broke.  Then, they dug more from the inside of the stump, found a hole they could thread the cable through, hooked it back up and it just slid right out of that hole. It was beautiful! Now we can move on to the next step.  Wednesday we prepare to put up the frame for the greenhouse.

Looks like it would be perfect for tractor tipping but its beautiful to us!

oops! try again

threading the cable

     But- first we must finish the parable.  (Can't leave you hanging.)  So-  we work, and work through trials, difficulties, sin, to root those problems out of our lives but sometimes we just can't do it by ourselves.  We need help.  We need a tractor to come to our rescue.  Someone with more strength, power, knowledge, authority, than we, who can guide, lift, and help us through our struggle.  We need to be able to take a step back, realize/accept our limitations/needs, humble ourselves and allow the Lord to do His work, having faith that He has a plan and that plan is a plan of happiness that when used, WILL bring happiness.   And happy we are.  Excited for what the next few weeks will bring.

     We are so grateful for the many people here and at home who are helping make this wonderful experience possible for us.  Everything is not all as rosy as it seems in the blog.  No one wants to hear that stuff, but it all has been invaluable to us.  We love you all!!!!!  Have a wonderful week.
Love the Mik's

Fun playing games with some members

Jacob getting ready to clean the chapel for Sunday after an amazing conference
with Elder Bednar, another 70 and 2 Area authorities

Oh ya did we mention our Grand Daughter?!!!

   

The birds, the stump, the train

Week of May 18-24
Ok for all of you that think being on a mission is for the BIRDS you're right.  I had this congregation eating out of my hand and I was just giving them crumbs.  Just think what it would have been like had it been a feast!

Spreading the gospel to some local birds

The Pigeons here are very important to the people. They represent peace and they are everywhere.  The only thing you need to be careful of is standing still too long (they may mistake you for a statue) or stepping on one as you walk along.
Now as promised last week I'm going to introduce you to the Cупep Kонтік (Super Contiek) which is a chocolate covered cookie that can be used as a straw to suck milk through.

 It makes the cookie inside the perfected dunked cookie and you don't get a puddle of mush in the bottom of your glass. The secrete is to bite off a small hole opposite of the little indentation and then get a full glass of milk and suck away.  See illustrations below.

step one find opening in chocolate cookie

Step two bite a small hole opposite side of hole pictured above

Get a full glass of cold milk and suck hard

After sufficient sucking bite into the mushy goodness
Only in the Ukraine!!! This is a missionary treat!

Now for the continuation of the parable of the stump.  We traveled out to the country on Wednesday to face "The Stump" (This is starting to sound like a B-rate Horror movie) Well here goes for the next installment of:

 "The Stump"

It was a rewarding day for we turned that old stump over and loosed it’s hold on old mother earth.  What that tree took over a hundred years to put down into the ground we dug and cut off in four or five trips.  In the scheme of things it is but a small time but in our life Satan has had many more than a hundred years to put down the roots of sin into this world.  He has a tight grasp on the world and would convince all of us that his grasp is far too great for us to over come.  But it only takes a small amount of time and hard work then we can cut off the roots of sin that hold us down.  We are all in God’s garden. We are placed here so that we can work and progress.  We too must strive to over come the roots of sin that bind us down to the world and Satan’s temptations.  

After the cutting and tipping over of the stump this day we came upon another challenge.  That of getting the severed stump out of a hole that is almost 5 feet deep.  We struggled for a couple of hours and made some progress but we were unable to complete the task as quickly as we wanted.  That is the way of sin.  It is difficult even after we sever our sin from our life.  We must not think that all is done.  It takes time and effort for us to completely rid our life of the stump of sin.  We must struggle and exert ourselves to move the sin out of our life.  Much like the old stump, that is still in that hole, we will need to continue to struggle until we can completely remove it and then, after the struggle is over, we will have a clear garden that we can continue to cultivate and nurture until we have the crop that will bring us happiness. A sin Free life. 

The stump must weigh close to 1/2 a ton

We are rocking the stump back and forth and when it is tipped
one direction we fill the dirt in under it and then tip it back the other way
It is a slow process but no heavy equipment just strong backs.

So if you can't tell already the parable is not over yet so stay tuned for the next installment of "The Stump".

On Thursday we traveled up to Kyiv for a mission conference  Elder Hallstrom of the Presidency of the 70 was there along with Elder Bennett of the Area 70.  He discussed the importance of being a consecrated missionary and challenged each of us to look inside ourselves and see what is holding us back from being that consecrated missionary. I know that I have many things to work on.  Each of us, if we are on a mission or at home, are still missionaries.  We need to look at our lives and decide what is holding us back from being the type of consecrated missionary that can bless peoples lives.  It does not take a lot of change, just a willingness to share the most important thing in your life.  We don't want to meet friends in Heaven and have them ask "why didn't you share this with me?  I thought we were friends!"  

It was a wonderful conference and after it was over we headed to the train station for the ride back to Vinnistya.  This is the train we traveled on and as you can see it is very nice.  

This is the express train from Kyiv

I wish airplane seating was this nice!

The train to Kyiv was not this nice.  It took over 3 hours to get there and 2 hours to get back on this train.  Not all trains are created equal.  Well we hope you have a wonderful week I know we will.  We are so blessed to be in this wonderful country.  The people are wonderful.

This is the type of feast we get at the farm. This is rice plov.
The greens were picked just before lunch.  They were the best!

The sun is out and the gardens are growing and the gloom of the winter is past. It is a glorious new day.  Have a blessed WEEK.

Love you all Elder and Sister Mikkelsen

PS our baby was two months old yesterday.

Kyiv Temple, service, and security

    

Week of May 11-17                                            
        This was a land mark week-  and, I'm sorry,  we didn't even get a picture of the landmark.  Elder Brough told us that our EKO Market had супер конті cookies in stock.  We stopped on our way home! This, I know, has no meaning to you all but, several of our language tutors told us about these amazing cookies before we left, but said they would be hard to find because of the war.  They are double layer chocolate covered cookies with a little hole, or dip, in the chocolate on one side.  If you bite another little hole on the other side of the cookie, you can dip the cookie in your milk and suck the milk through the cookie creating a delightful "mush" inside.  I have to admit, it was fun.  Not necessarily the best cookie ever, but fun all the same.  I guess we'll have to buy some more so we can send pictures next week!
     It was kind of a mixed up week this week.  Transfer week seems to always be a little mixed up.  We lost our Dad Elder Kerr.  They sent him up by Kyiv, and now we have another son to take care of us.  (Love these Elders!)  When one Elder leaves they have to go up to Kyiv, usually overnight.  That leaves us with the city all to ourselves.  We're in a city of 400,000.  We lose 2 and it seems a little lonely.  It also means we get to teach all three English classes by ourselves, which is a challenge, but its fun. The beginning group is very grateful for Google Translate and Yandex.  When we come to an impasse, we can always look it up.  =)  We get into some pretty amazing, lively discussions in these classes every week.  With the little kids we just teach English.  (This week it was Friends and the Three Little Pigs.) The adult classes are advertised as "Gospel discussions in English with native speakers".  So, with them, we get to teach English through the 5 lessons in Chapter 3 of Preach My Gospel.  The people love it and come back every week for more.  This week I think we had 8 new people come to join our little family of friends.  They are amazing people.  They are passionate, educated, fun, determined... people.
This is such a wonderful mission that we quite often see returned missionaries who come back for a visit. 

They stopped at a рынок to buy cookies and candy then we stopped at this gorgeous
 campground to put the bags together

       

 One lovely Sister from Germany came back this week.  She and our Primary President wanted us to go with them to a ....hospital/homeless shelter/sanitorium/old folks home/not-sure-what-to-call-it place.  She had raised some money to buy treats to take to the 300 residents.  We bagged up the goodies and headed out to a very humbling experience.  It was in a beautiful town about 1 1/2 hours away.  I wish we had had a huge group of youth who spoke the language and we could have stayed for an hour or 2 to visit, but we only had a short time.  They were so excited to get the little we brought.  It was a good, clean, seemingly happy place, but such a needy place.  There is so much "need" out there, everywhere.  So much work to do! 

    Worked on stump #2 again this week.  Started to dig under the roots.  Maybe 2 more visits and we'll have the thing out so the work can move forward.  I wish we had taken a picture of the path to the farmhouse each time we go so you could see the change in the green from week to week.  You think it couldn't get any greener, but each week it does.  It is absolutely beautiful!  As we were leaving I asked our sweet sister if the weeds we were walking on were the kind you would use to make what they call Green Borsch (the Elders were gone so to anyone watching this would have been a comical exchange).  They weren't but, she took me over to the right kind of plants and started picking.  By the time we left (which was very late.  Ned went on ahead and I had to run to catch up.  If you miss the last bus to town, you are in trouble) I had a huge bag of nettle (yes the stinging kind), sorrel, parsley, and green onions.  Enough to make 2 huge batches of soup.  And it's great soup!  Who'd have thought!

Green Borsch!  Greens,  potatoes, egg all added to the meat and broth.  Umm! вкусно! (tastey)

     I should add something to Ned's parable of these pesky stumps.  ....All I can think of is, "slow and steady wins the race',  even if its only in experiencing the work of removal.  You chop and chop, reach to remove the root to find there is a tap root going straight down holding it in place, or you go to dig the dirt from around the roots so you can get under them and you find that clay, which has been compacting in place for 100 years, has to be shaved off, slice by slice, with a shovel or hatchet, but, you are working with good people singing good music doing a good work having a good time so that you feel bad that it's already time to leave.  I guess, trials and troubles are only trials if you are troubled by them.  (We had to "dig deep" for that one => )

So green and beautiful.  Finally getting underneath!

     We were able to go to Kyiv on Saturday for a branch leadership training.  I loved watching the members of our branch greet their friends from all over the mission.  Ned didn't have a translator in his Sunday School section, but in the Primary group it was sad but interesting to hear their questions and concerns. It was just like being in a Stake Meeting at home.  I decided we are really going to have to hasten the work here though, so that there are enough members to warrant translations of more resources for these stressed out Primary workers.  I do need to shout out a big thank-you to our Ward Mission Leader and to our Elders.  They are so good to translate for us, constantly, and they have to make sure we get to where we need to be- on time (which means getting up early to call a taxi for us then make sure we get to the right train, etc).  They are wonderful! Missions are wonderful! The gospel is true!  Hurrah for Israel!  Everyone come on a mission! You are so needed!
Have a great week
Love to you all

Leadership Meeting- all meetings are at the Temple site.

This weeks guest for Sunday Dinner.  So much fun.  Don't have enough chairs so we have
 to move the table into the living room when we have more than 4 guests.

  

As you can see security is a top priority here.
You can also see how our neighbors door and ours meet.
Hope we never try to leave at the same time.

Our apartment door opens into our neighbor's door.  Quite often, sometimes early
in the morning, we would carelessly let our handle knock their door.  She sternly
corrected me one day(not sure what she said but the meaning was clear)  so Ned
created the wonderful doorstop

The continuing Parable of the Stump

Week of May 4-10, 2015
The week flew by again and now here we sit reporting on all those wonderful things that took place this past week. We have been blessed with many spiritual experiences.  On Saturday one of our wonderful investigators committed to be baptized.  That is so exciting that they will be able to have the blessing of the gospel in their life.  We make decisions each day as we face the challenges of life.  What do I wear, should I go here or there, should I buy this or that, ..... the list continues.  Many of those decisions carry very little weight by themselves but all added together they make up who we are.  We must each look at our course and decide if we are on the strait path. Notice the word is STRAIT not "straight".  The second one denotes a direct undeviating path that we just walk down.  The first STRAIT represents a path that may have many twists and turns.  Boats must travel through straits all the time and it is a very tedious navigational task that requires constant vigilance by the navigator and course corrections by the pilot.  We too in our journey need to make sure we are navigating the "STRAIT" path of life with great vigilance and that we are piloting ourselves very carefully by following the directions of the "Navigator" even Jesus Christ.

This is a river tour boat that we pass by everyday

As we pray each day we are opening that communication line and we need to listen for the course changes as they are whispered to us. For instance this week we traveled to Kyiv to have interviews with President Packer.  What an amazing man!  He gave us several course corrections for our mission ship and now we are making course corrections to be on the correct heading for success as a mission couple.  One of the assignments I have been given is to assist the members in improving their teaching practices. At first I had all these grandiose ideas of things that I could do to teach wonderful, inspirational lessons.  I began to prepare for Sunday's lesson and then in the interview with President Packer he said something that hit home.  He said that these wonderful people are doing all that they can and it is not our responsibility to add to that burden.  Wow I had to go to my knees and seek for guidance in how to approach the lesson teaching concepts.  As a missionary I have lots of time to prepare to teach lessons.  The members are working so hard and have so many other things to do that they could not spend the amount of time or resources that I was thinking about.  So the Navigator gave me some gentle course corrections and I planned a completely different lesson.

A little taste of home while visiting Kyiv.  Notice the Ukrainian by my shoulder

We had the opportunity to go out to the farm to work and enjoy companionship with some wonderful members.  We got there and it was time to go to the other stump that is also inside the boundaries of the proposed greenhouse.  Last week it was a joyous occasion when we finally got the first stump out but now we have an even larger and more stubborn stump to remove.  So here is page two of the parable of the stump.  In life we all have stumps in our gardens and we work so hard to remove them and when we do it is a joyful occasion.  However as in this garden there is another stump that is even bigger and deeper than the last one. I think all of us in life realize that getting one stump out of garden of life is not the end of the work.  We will always have other Stumps that will affect our garden and we will need to remove them also.

Just one more "Stump" we all have them in our life

Farm wagon and springtime vegetation 

One blessing of getting the first stump out is that we know we can do it. We just need to continue to chop and dig at the other ones until we too can remove them.  It's my prayer that each of us will continue to work on the stumps in our lives so that our garden plot of life will be clear and ready to receive the seeds of faith that we can plant and nurture until they spring up and bless us with a sure knowledge of the truthfulness of the gospel.
We hope you all had a wonderful Mothers Day.  Janet was doubled blessed this year she had both Mothers Day and her birthday on the same day.

Birthday sign and balloons at 2:30 AM

Same thing at 8:00 AM (It's the thought that counts)

Flowers and gifts Janet got on her birthday.  The picture is
painted on real papyrus. 

This cute card turned into a bouquet of flowers. The creator is so talented!

So in celebration we invited some people over for a good old Bunkerville-style Bar-B -Que.  I purchased a small portable charcoal stove and charcoal (not the briquette things we have in USA but the real charcoal).

Celebration Dinner sorry didn't git a picture of the new grill.

 The chicken turned out great and we had a wonderful evening with one of the families in the Branch and our investigator.  We also had the biannual phone call from Jacob in Cancun.

The blessings of Skype "Happy Mothers Day"

Oh look it's Daniel holding his new niece.
Happy Mothers day (love Skype)

He is doing great and teaching about 40 lessons a week.  It was wonderful to talk to him and all of our kids.  What a blessing Skype is. It is the next best thing to being there.  Well, thanks for listening to my half hearted attempts at parable writing.  We pray for all of you and hope that you will will have a blessed week. I know we will.
All of our Love  Elder and Sister Mikkelsen.

This is how they cook Georgian Bread
It just hangs on the walls of the oven.

It was Victory day this week. There were lots of celebrations.
This is the local Victory Square.