Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

A few factors influence what and how we can do missionary work.  Some are time, travel and language.  We have developed one sucessful way to be more effective right where we are.  Every member we meet has very close family members that need the gospel and we bring them to us, to share dinner, conversation and gospel principles after our office work is finished.  They can learn a little English, we learn a little Russian (we get to use the words and phrases we have been working on) and on both sides, we struggle to communicate.  Sometimes it is funny and there are a alot of good laughs. Sometimes we help them with family history that they will be able to share with family members.  Sometimes the non-members join us or sometimes we talk about ways to share the gospel.  And we make alot of wonderful friends.  We would like them to meet all of you and you to meet them. Here are three groups we have had to dinner in the last two weeks.

Above are four young men who have kind of adopted us.  They have been to several family home evenings in our home and we wonder why they keep coming back to see these two old people. I guess it shouldn't be too much of a mystery though.  They do not all live at home and three of them have no other church members in their families. Vitali is a returned missionary.  He works upstairs with CES as a clerk and knows English pretty well. Yurick  likes to stop by the office and visit occasionally.  He has a job refinishing furniture.  He wants to go on a mission. These four just returned from a Europe East Area young adult conference and Yurick was bubbling over with his feelings, 'It was like going home". He was not referring to his earthly home but an idea of what it must feel like to be back in Heaven.  He told of how he could be open with any one and of the new friends he made; of how great it felt to be around girls who were modestly dressed.  He tried to find words in English to describe the spirit that was there. Aleksey is very quiet and it takes alot of work for us to communicate with him.  Antoine just recieved a patriarchal blessing, is planning to serve a mission and his father is in the FM group that works upstairs. Some have been working at our home on their family history to find names to take to the temple.  We shared ice cream sundaes with them on one visit.  They thought that the "frosting" on top ( Ivy's special chocolate hot fudge sauce) was a new idea, but they enjoyed it.

Lena, her husband Sasha and daughter, Lubov.

Sister Lena made me a tie out of light blue and yellow material (Ukraine's colors).  She is District YW president.  They brought a photo album to share.  In one of the photos she was pictured with Sister Julie B. Beck (General RS President) when she visited Donetsk with the General YW presidency. They shared with us pictures of "their" missionaries, pictures of returned missionary weddings, new babies, and the wives and children of "their missionaries" years after they have returned home. This family's conversion story is special. Everyone here has a conversion story.  We learned a very good phrase early on, "расскажитя меня о вашем обрающнии".   Which means, tell me about your conversion. Sasha works in the coal mines and is a district high councilman. Sasha tells of his grandmother's old Bible, how Babushka would read to them during soviet times.  Though religions observance was not allowed, he remembered feelings he had as a fifteen-year-old, reading that old Bible.  He knew there was something in that book for him.   Then, while serving in the army, he felt longings to know more about God.  Later, through the Holy Ghost, he and his wife were positioned to meet the missionaries when they took a different route to the market at a different time of day than they always went.  Through the crowd Sasha made eye contact with a young American in a white shirt and tie. The missionary immediately approached the family.  With his limited Russian, all he could say was, "Do you know about Jesus Christ?" Sasha answered, "Yes."  Then the companion had to take over. 

 Their daughter Lubov (her name means Love in Russian) returned a few months ago from a mission in Keiv, and just last week a young man who is her special friend returned from a mission in Moscow. Of course this family bussed to the airport to see him de-plane, then came to the office where he received his release.  It was touching to observe and talk to each of them seperately later on Sunday.  Both Lubov and her mother have artistic gifts.  Lubov makes jewelry.  She made Mom a white shiny bead necklace.  There is another cute mia maid sister named Nadia but she broke her leg just before our get together and couldn't take the long bus ride to our apartment for dinner.  She loves Mom and makes a big thing out of seeing her at church. We served ham and "funeral potatoes", which were a hit, and we sent some home to Nadia.  As this family left our apartment that evening they had a one and one half hour, two-transfer, bus ride home to Makeevka.

Dimitri (Deema) is the ward mission leader in Donetsk Centraly branch.  He has a 14 year old non-member son (Dennes) who lives with Deema's ex-wife.  Dennes was supposed to come to dinner and his dad was in hopes we could talk to the son about the gospel.  This time it didn't work because of a big exam in school the next day, but he is looking forward to next time.  We shared our videos of our "big"  (unbelievablely big) family and Dima wanted to know if we knew each grandchild's name.  As the family discussion went on he was desirous that his special friend Olga could meet us and talk about family. She is a non-member living in another city and will travel into Donetsk this weekend to visit him.  We will probably be on their agenda of a fun (?) place to visit (or a place of "light"). We will plan special ways of sharing the gospel when she visits.  Deema grew up far to the North by Alaska.  He is a program director for a chamber orchestra and has a side business providing balloon-sculpture decorations for special events. He used to be a mushroom farmer.  He speaks less English than some of our other visitors and we had our dictionaries out all the time.  We served fried chicken and baked potatoes with the skins on.  Eating the skins of potatoes is a new thing to Ukranians, but even though it was strange, he liked them.

This afternoon Mom met with a young student named Sophia again.  Since the last meeting, Sophia had called her grandmother and found four generations of grandparents on her mother's line and has gathered two generations on her father's line.  In the conversation Mom asked if these four generations had records or what type of documention accompanied them.  Sophia said there was none.  She is from Kazikstan.  Sometimes marriages are arranged by the parents there, and when there is an engagement there is a gathering or contract meeting where the genealogies are rehearsed. If there is a bad person or a felon in a family line the engagement can be broken.  That is how and why the genealogy is memorized.  Sophia believes that The Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith must be a prophet.  "We have this evidence!" she said holding up the BoM, but when she was asked what she has against being baptized, she just could not see herself leaving the Russian Orthodox church.  "I was baptized in this church as a baby", she said.  To leave my church would not be right.  (sigh)

We still feel the limitations of locomotion and of language. 

We are learning ways to narrow the distance in both areas!!