President Martino, Sloppy Joes, and a huge wall of Dimitri

10/30/2017

There is a special place in my heart for those who serve down in Odessa. Their trials and travels are no alien thing to me. I know because I have experienced it myself.

This week we had another special Zone Conference. But this time the special Zone Conference was extra special. We had not only both Kiev Zones together but also with the Odessa Zone. Those poor Odessa missionaries had to get on a bus at 3:00am and ride for 6 1/2 hours up here to Kiev in order to make it here by the conference at 10:00 am. I understand this because this was me. But it was awesome for me because I could pay attention probably unlike them. 

Also what made this a super special all mission conference was that our Area President, President Martino came and taught us. That was a really neat experience. And then for lunch we had sloppy-joes which was made by Sister Mitchell as one of her last hurrahs that would continue even after she left. She made everything and then froze it about a month ago and then left and then we got to partake of her dedication to us. Another one of her "last hurrahs" was completing (we actually did most of the work) the cook book for the Senior couples here. The title is "Family favorites with a touch of Ukrainian". Probably my favorite recipe in there is called "Sloppy-joe meat for a 100 people". 

After that there wasn't much that went on. I got sick and was out for four days and am still by no means in the clear. But despite that I was so sick we still didn't get home form the office until after 6:30 pm which probably aggravated it.  

But one thing that is noteworthy is that among all of the many special conferences and meetings we had a special area broadcast on Sunday. There we heard from Elder Golden on the Area Presidency, Elder Martino the Area President, Sister Bingham the Relief Society General President, Elder Kearon of the Presidency of the Seventy, and finally President Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

This week while at the office we got word that there was "a big man who wants to learn more". We walk over front he office to the church part of the building and the first thing we see is this huge wall of person. The guy was a giant and not exactly thin either. We talked with him for a little while and for a little longer while with Brother Rudenko our MCL. Dmiti (the guy we are talking about) came on Sunday and watched the broadcast with us. While Elder Glade was doing something I got cornered by him and he just talked to me. He has a lot of strange ideas but there are those little glimpses of promise. So we'll see what happens. 

Before we watched the actual broadcast on Sunday we heard from our local leaders. During this period the International Branch and the Borschagovsky Ward were together and we first heard from the Branch President of the International Branch who spoke to us in English while our Borschagosky Bishop Translated into Russian, then President Podubny our Stake President Spoke to us in Ukrainian and the same Bishop who translated before translated for him into English. That was pretty impressive.

Elder Glade is Elder Glade. He made me chicken noddle soup. 

Things are going to get pretty difficult here in a little bit due to the fact that we are loosing even more missionaries and not getting enough in return. But as a mission in response to that have decided that we are going to need to compensate somehow. And that some how is Spiritualhow. So we are all going to read the Book of Mormon from Nov 1st to Orthodox Christmas. This is going to be a really cool experience for us.

That is all.

Старейшина Класон / Elder Clawson

New Missionaries and a Whacked Head

10/23/2017

I hit my head pretty hard this week. We were doing English practice and I dropped something and went to pick it up and while standing up I hit my head on a shelf pretty hard. And it still hurts pretty bad even today. 

We got new missionaries this week and they are the best ever! Even before we met them the Spain MTC called us just to tell us that we are getting the best they've got. And we saw that immediately when we first met them. In our district we have one of them now. Sister King. She's pretty cool. It's kind of exciting to have this kind of opportunity to work along side a new missionary. 

This week end we had Stake Conference and since we have some new Senior Couples we lead them to the different buildings where the meetings were at. So Saturday we were traveling with them as well as Sunday.

In our ward building there is a keyboard right by the bathrooms. So whenever Elder Glade has to go I practice. I started learning an Organ Fugue by Bach. It isn't the easiest for a binning piano player. 

Last week the weather was very much Autumny. But this week felt like January came early this year. Last winter I somehow managed without a scarf. I am not sure how. But with the new weather we have been having we went and got me a scarf today. 

On Wednesday we are going to have a special mission conference with Elder Martino the Europe East Area President and we are all super excited for that. I'll let you know how it goes. 

Старейшина Класон / Elder Clawson

Special Conference and Special Transfer

10/17/2017

This transfer was somewhat of a strange one due to the fact that it was a seven week one and the end of the transfer was going to be on a Monday instead of the usual Tuesday. And that was already strange because we as a mission were used to transfer day being on Wednesdays. It was also an exciting transfer getting to be here in the Mission Office and finding out that we are getting a new group of missionaries coming in! Our mission has been really struggling with departing missionaries and none to take their place. Yesterday was that transfer day and we had eight end their missions and leave this morning. But the good thing is that we have nine arriving today from the Madrid MTC which is a huge blessing to us. 

Yesterday we had a special missionary conference that involved most but not all of the missionaries. Just those who could come and were coming up from outlaying areas for transfers. This conference we had Elder and Sister Golden from the Europe East Area Presidency come as well as Elder Kearon from the Presidency of the Seventy. They spoke to us and we had a wonderful time there with them. It was kind of fun because they all had British accents and it was a relief for one of our missionaries who was departing who was from the Isle of Mann. 

Right after the meeting our transfers went into effect. I as expected am staying here in the Office with Elder Glade. A lot has changed here in the mission but not much between us in the office. We are probably going to switch roles though so I can get trained on what he does so when someone new comes in I will be able to cover all bases. 

This week we got our new office couple in to replace the Mitchells who leave on Thursday. Elder and Sister Andrus are from Orem Utah and are so great. 

Other than Monday, Saturday was a crazy day for us. Earlier in the week which was yet another crazy day, one of our members brought her neighbor who is deaf to learn more from us. I having been trying to learn Russian Sign Language was able to talk a little bit with him but we were so busy that day that we couldn't really do anything else besides give him some pamphlets. But we planned to have a meeting with him on Saturday morning. It didn't end up happening because the man came about an hour and a half earlier and then left after not finding us here we later learned. 

Church was good as usual and we had the Cherkassy Elders come up and stay with us again over night because Elder Mattina's companion Elder Johnson (the one from the Isle of Mann) was going home. 

Things are going to get busier and more stressful but that's all part of the fun. 

I just want to say that I have a firm testimony that Jesus is our Lord, our Savior and Redeemer. He is the way. A testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ is the first gift of the Spirit and Charity is the crowing gift of the Spirit. The Book of Mormon is the word of God and it contains the fullness of the Gospel. Missions change people and this work saves lives.

Love you all!

Старейшина Класон / Elder Clawson

Gen. Conf. Rockets and a Baptism plus a few Miracles.

10/09/2017

So today I started wearing my thermals, boots and coat again. It's kind of weird because when I first came here I was wearing these things and now here I am again. 

This week was fun because we had a few events going on. On Saturday we had a ton going on. Seryozha the Zone Leader's investigator got baptized! He has changed so much from when I first met him. He is an example of how the Gospel changes lives. His baptism was a ten-o-clock which went that we had to be here at eight to start filling up the font as it takes about two hours to fill up. We got here with the Zone Leaders and we realized that the font was in desperate need of cleaning. So we vacuumed and moved it and then started filling it. The problem was that because we took the time to clean it we didn't have as much time to fill it up so when it came time to perform the actual ordinance, the water wasn't quite up to the waist like it should but more like upper-mid thigh. And due to that it was a little tough for Seryozha to bend down low enough to get all of the way under the water and had to do it again. But it worked out the second time. After that he was just glowing and had the biggest smile on his face. After the baptism we as a ward were going to watch the Saturday Morning session of General Conference. So during the time before the baptism we were setting up chairs and the big projector screen. In the room where the projector is we found that from the last event they did in this building that they had not yet taken the sound equipment back to the center Kiev ward building. At that point we got an idea. We set up the big speakers and pulled out the mixer and everything so our movie night would be even more of a movie night. And so General Conference and the movie both had good A/V (Audio/Visual). It was a happy moment for me to do that kind of stuff again and everything worked out perfectly. Between us watching General Conference and watching Meet the Mormons for our Movie night we had English Practice. So basically we didn't do anything else besides what was listed on Saturday. 

We had a miracle day on Thursday. While we were busy working in the office at three different points random people off the street walked in and wanted to learn more about the Temple and our Church and what we believe. The coolest ones were Nadezhda and her son Roman who came in and said that they tried to go into the Temple but someone told them that they couldn't go in unless they were members and had a temple recommend. She asked after that, "How does one become a member of your church?" And after that she was tearing up when I started to explain everything and show her around and when I showed her the Book of Mormon and the little video on temples that we have. They were both so awesome. And later that day there was a guy named Valeri who walked into the temple and we got a call from the front desk asking us to come over and talk with him. He wanted to stay in the lobby and talk but we explained to somewhat of the relief of the temple worker who was talking to him that we try and keep the quietness of the temple there and keep it a holy place but that we could talk in the church. We had a mini lesson with him but after that we sensed that he really wasn't super interested but still a super nice guy. On Sunday Valeri, Nadezhda and her son Roman and her other son who wasn't there on Thursday Rustam all came to church. That was a huge miracle. We couldn't stay the whole time because of other responsibilities but we had another member who is super excited to "relive his missionary days" to sit by them and become friends with them. Yeah, this week we saw lots of cool things happen. People came to church that got to watch Some of General Conference and see someone (Seryozha) get confirmed a member and receive the Holy Ghost. Members brought their non-member friends and less-active friends to the Meet the Mormons movie night and I got to mess around with expensive sound equipment. 

So a pretty successful week I might say. 

Another cool thing was during Elder Rasband's talk on Saturday he talked about this Granddaughter who was taking some kind of church tour on the east coast who realized that she was going to be in her brother's mission. They asked her brother's mission president if they could meet up but even after he said no they by chance got to see each other for a second. We were watching this with the Zone Leaders and Elder Lundquist shouts "I was on that bus!". So apparently he was on that tour with that granddaughter and then he told what he remembered form that. Then on the talk they showed a picture from that event and I realized that I had a part in this to of sorts. That missionary was my first Zone leader and then Second District leader in the field! That was crazy. 

Also, Elder Renlund showed some cool stuff at the beginning of his talk. The first rocket he showed is called the Soyuz which is one of my favorite ones. So yeah. 

Старейшина Класон / Elder Clawson

Seryozha's Baptism

Our set up for General Conference

This already after we cleaned up a bunch so it isn't the whole thing. And behind all of the rows of chairs we had the couches from the foyer for the old people. 

I was excited to play with all of the equipment.

General Conference . . . and basically nothing else

10/02/2017

This week was pretty all over the place. We had some days were we practically had no time to breath because of all of the things we had to do. 

We had interviews with President Kumferman this week which were amazing like they always are. President Kumferman is so funny, he always is saying to Sister Mitchell that he doesn't need to schedule more than 20 minutes for each missionary when she asks him if he wants more time, but he just goes over on almost every single one anyway. Maybe there is some mission-president-thing that we don't get that makes us think that way. 

We were supposed to have our office staff meeting on Wednesday but that didn't work out due to President going over on his interviews. But we did eventually have it a couple of days later. 

One of the saddest things happened to us this week. We were in the office like usual on a normal Tuesday and we were finishing up somethings that were kid of urgent the next day so we had to stay a little later. The Zone Leaders in our district called and asked if we could order some pizza or something so when they came in about 45 minutes we could all eat and then go home for the night. This was a very exciting time for some of us and we leaped on this opportunity to order Domino's. And it was even Tuesday where there are really good discounts at Domino's. So we used our computer skills and order online and were attentively watching the pizza tracker they have on the Domino's website like a pot of boiling water. Perhaps it was because we were watching it but it never moved from the "Processing order" to the "In the oven". Then the Zone Leaders got a call from Domino's and they said that unfortunately they would only be able to get it to us in an hour and a half. At that point we would already have to have been home and we had to tell them to say no. After that we went home and cried ourselves to sleep. But there might be a chance tomorrow to let Domino's redeem themselves.  

Sunday was great. There were a lot of great testimonies born that were carried by the Spirit. We went to the International Branch as usual. But we had one of our recent converts from the Borshagovsky ward come and he asked me to translate for him. It was kind of weird translating for someone into Russian instead of English. It was especially hard once the very wise and seasoned members got up and started telling a story from their life and unseeing words that only an 19th century professor would have known. But other than that everything went great. Unfortunately due to the fact that we aren't in America we didn't get to watch General Conference. We have heard all about it and are super excited for next week when we can watch it. But perhaps we might try to sneak a session or two here and there. 

Fall is basically here. You can not only fell it but see it on the trees and on the ground where the trees dumped all of their leaves. This is the awkward time were it is not cold enough yet to were your normal winter coat but definitely to cold to go outside with only a shirt on. 

We got roped into yet another choir performance but this time it is the whole stake. I am fine singing but I don't like it when I get signed up left and right for things like this without asking us beforehand. And then get super mad when we try and explain that we have other plans. "Yeah just use the missionaries. I mean they don't have anything else to do." I am sorry. I really do like singing and helping them out. But I just wished that they would organize it a little bit differently. 

I feel like my emails are getting more and more boring each week and you would probably understand if you read this far. I guess I'll try and do more interesting things each week so I can report on them. But there isn't a whole lot of exciting things that go on here in the office. 

Старейшина Класон / Elder Clawson

Here is something interesting. Some of the pictures of the Kiev Zoo.

I found my people (the sheep and llama)

And also My companion with a snipe.