Ukrainians LOVE to talk

Hello everyone!! 

I hope everyone had an awesome couple of weeks! Forgive me for not saying much last week, hopefully I'll do better this time:) I also hope everyone has had an awesome May! I can't believe it's already the end of May. Where does the time go? 

This week was good... Not a lot has happened in the last couple of weeks but some highlights are:

 I sang on a outdoor stage..! haha so we were planning on going to this concert of this famous Ukrainian band named Dzidio with some friends, hoping we could give some English practice cards out and meet some people but turns out we were wrong about the time and we were two hours early! haha. But we checked the theater which was partly outside, and Sister Savran told me to go up on the stage and sing and I said maybe if I was allowed. Well they said sure, so I was pushed up there and I sang a couple of songs and it was pretty fun. The sound people were really nice and we gave them some English cards and we also met couple other people who heard me and we invited them to English too sooo it wasn't for nothing aha. 

stage

Also as a follow up from my email a couple weeks ago that I had a lot hope for.. unfortunately Anton already dropped us (said he didn't want to anymore) even though we never even got to teach him a lesson :(

But in good news we met with Marina again and taught her part of the Plan of Salvation and Sister Savran felt prompted to talk about our life after this life( even though we hadn't really got to that part yet) and how Heavenly Father gives the opportunity for everyone to hear the gospel and she started crying talking about her grandpa who passed away. I love sharing this Plan of Happiness with others, I wish everyone knew that they could see their loved ones again and be eternal families through God's perfect plan for us. It was great to see Marina feel the spirit and she prayed with us after to know if the Book of Mormon is true so hopefully she'll keep reading and get her answer soon.

Our investigator Ilona

One small miracle but I think it still is a miracle, is that we finally got our potential investigator Ganadi from English class to meet with us for a lesson! The reason it's a miracle is because he can talk  soo much and for ever if you let him and so usually we can't get a word in every time we've tried before or he somehow didn't answer our questions but we really made sure he understood our question this time and made sure he gave us a straight answer and he said he would see when is a good time!

Guys. Ukrainians can talk! ahah. They love to talk and they go on for a long time and really fast, I don't know how they do it. Ok maybe not EVERY Ukrainian  :)  Usually Babushkas really, which we meet quite a lot with. And man, it's pretty amazing to see. If you ever want to talk for hours with someone in Russian, come to Ukraine:)

A babuska who I thought was so cute! She's 94

The most awesome thing I've noticed this week was the peace you can receive through the gospel of Jesus Christ...you can find true, genuine and continual peace and joy. And I know that because I've felt it. Through faith in Him and repentance I have received a peace that you can't get anywhere else and that doesn't compare to anything else. It's amazing and I'm so grateful for it. 

I hope you all have an amazing week full of sunshine! ( Hopefully we're going to go tan today:))

Oh and fluff! K, is there as much fluff in the air in Calgary as here?? Cause some days it looked like it was snowing! it's crazy. And it gets in your eyes and it's annoying haha but funny I'm sure if you saw us walking down the street with our sweaters over our faces so we can breathe haha

my favorite flowers

Love ya

-Cectpa Horne

A member who visited from Zaparozjha

Yulia - member we're friends with:)

Guess who I found? lol! (mentalist is the best!)

  

shopping on pday

Geezin takaya! ( that's life!) lol sorry it's a shorty

Heey! 

Sorry I don't have much time this week, since we have been back and forth today trying to find a place to email because the internet wasn't working at the branch :(

But not much to report this week. except.. surpreeese! I cut my hair. :) In Ukraine! lol guys. Prayer works. Let me tell you, I was praying pretty hard that the hair dresser wouldn't make me end up looking like Alfalfa or something! hahah. They took me away from my comp and all I could do was say "zdiess" and put my hand at my shoulders. It actually is shorter then I planned but I like it:) Good for summer! Although it's been a little chilly this week. 

I don't have the best pictures but I will send more and write more next week! 

Love you all!!

PS: Sorry if I'm slow at responding but I will! I love every email I get:))

Cectpa Horne

Happy Mother's day!!

HEY all you amazing mothers, grandmothers, great-grand mothers, future mothers and women out there! I hope you had an AMAZING day yesterday!! You're all awesome and I send hugs and kisses your way all the way from Ukraine:)

I did! I got to Video chat with my FAM!! Miss your faces already! Everyone is always shocked when we tell them we can only skype our families twice a year and it definitely is hard, it will be a while til next Christmas.. but serving the Lord in the mean while and the awesome time we do get with them makes it all worth it!

This week was really great! I've seen quite a few miracles! And hopefully these ones will actually be on going ones! ( since I feel like almost every little miracle I write home about, I don't end up having a continuing story to.. )

But last P-day was fun, we celebrated the birthday of one of our friends from English (and was one of our potential investigators) with a friend she brought ( who is now also our friend and one of our potential investigators) and also our member friend Yulia. And then that night we were on our way to a less active members house to see if we could meet with them because her phone doesn't really work and on the way I smiled at a man passing by and Sister Savran said hello and so he turned around and asked do I know you? She was like "maybe." haha. We told him who we were and talked with him for a little while about why we're here and he asked what we think about families. We gave him a family:Proclamation the world and Jesus the Christ pamphlet and a card with mormon.org on it. And he said he would probably be interested in coming to church on Sunday.  Then yesterday: He came to church! Came in after the passing of sacrament and then also stayed for second hour and went the end of Sunday school after talking to some members for awhile. He said he had already read the intro of the Book of Mormon online and he said he would be interested in meeting this week and have lessons! He's awesome and guess his name.. Anton! Another golden Tony coming our way? I think yes! :) 

Sacrament meeting was also really good yesterday because it was fast and testimony meeting and I was sitting beside our friend Angelina who's 16 and is awesome and bore a great testimony (that I actually understood pretty much everything of!) told me that I should go up, ahah man and then I really felt like I needed to, so I did! :) I think maybe the spirit knew that I would feel more pressure to go up, if it came from her nudge and she must have been listening to that prompting.

Also as I said before that Marina "used to be" our potential investigator, it's because she's now our new investigator! We hung out on Saturday and we asked if we could tell her about what we believe and we taught her the first lesson and it went pretty well and she said she would read the Book of Mormon and that we could meet up again and talk more. :) 

We also met a man on the marshootka yesterday who spoke English so I asked him where he's from, he's from Syria and his name is Mohammed and he was super nice and then asked us if we could meet some time and talk about religion because he said he has a lot of questions and no one has been able to answer them! We were like uh Yeah! We'd love to! Super cool. 

Sooo hopefully next week I will have more updates on all those new people! Life is good when you're sharing  and living the gospel guys. its true:)

Peace

Cectpa Horne

Devochky, nyet!

HELLO 
So I almost always come to this point thinking, hey it's been a really good week! ... What did I do again? hahah I have the worst memory and it feels like forever ago that this week started but also like yesterday.. weird. So I looked in my planner and I remember what I did now: 
We went to a trampoline" park" on Monday! Definitely not as big as the ones back home but it was still really fun! Sorry no pics  :(
And Then lots missionary work:).. We cleaned a lot of windows this week actually haha. Service is good:) Although I've already had too many encounters with cockroaches for my lifetime :(

And then we had a district conference this weekend! Basically the same schedule as a stake conference (meeting Saturday night and Sunday morning) except smaller but a lot of people came on Sunday! It was really cool to see. Lots came from 'Zaparozha' too (city just south of Dnipro on the Dniepper River). The speakers were all really good and President Sullivan (my mission President/also the district president) talked about how there is a war going on right now, between good and evil and putting our efforts in to building a stake of Zion, we will be creating a defense and a refuge from this war and storm. It was really good and I'm so much more motivated to help build a Stake so we the people here can have a refuge from the storms of the world. 

The world cannot bring us everlasting peace, we can find a safe refuge in the arms of our loving Savior Jesus Christ, this is the message we're trying to share here in Ukraine and it makes me sad every time people don't want to listen to it because I know how much it can bless their lives. I don't think I've mentioned this before but everyone in Ukraine calls us "devochky" haha it means girls and it's not impolite to say here but man I have heard that so many times, I now always think people are talking to me if I hear " devochky" or devochka" hahaha ... and then usually their polite 'nyet spaciba' (i.e. no thanks) and sometimes you get the more rude ones but hey I am happy to be persecuted for Christ's sake :)  Matt 4:10 ---it's really not bad though don't y'all worry! :)

Love you all

Cectpa Xoph

6 months?!? whaaaaat?

So ok, first of all apparently I've been out on my mission for 6 months now?! yeah
 Last Wednesday was an awesome day because we had my second zone conference here! It was really good! Funny story though: At the beginning of the zone conference all of the power went off. It was a little hard because they had some presentations to show on a projector, but it worked out alright. We did a fun activity talking about the importance of being in tune with the spirit and how when we teach with the spirit, we teach with power. I was conducting the closing song and since the piano is electric we were doing it a Capella but half way through the song the power came back! And an elder started to accompany us but I noticed we were in the wrong key and sounded really bad so I got us back on track and it ended up sounding alright in the end. President then said before the closing prayer" Can I just note that during this conference we have successfully gained power and become in tune" LOL it was a pretty on point joke.

Summer is here! No more snow and it is super hot and sunny! We got to go to Zaporizhia this week for exchanges which was fun. And transfers happened!.... I'm staying! With Sis Savran and we still have all of Dnepro lol, we thought maybe some more sisters would come in but oh well! I'm good with it. Although we're losing some good elders, which is sad.

I'm super excited for Mother's day! I get to skype my fam!:)

Miss y'all, love ya!

Cестра хорн