Cold Weather, Warm Testimony

Elder Quinn and Elder Karajov standing on frozen Black Sea

To answer all of the questions. Yes it has been very cold here. Take a look at the pictures that I put up. As far as staying warm I am trying. I've been looking everywhere for some long white thermals for my top half but no one has them. I'll keep looking. 

So about Dima. Things are going great with him and his wife but not so good with his health. Since I now have a native companion we are finally able to understand everything that is going on. He had skin cancer but got it removed. He is now suffering from a very painful disease where his bones are falling apart. If this is due to the cancer, they won;t be able to help him. If it is due to the treatments they can fix the problem. He left for Kiev Saturday night and is having an analsys done right now. Please pray for him. We went over and gave him a blessing and his attitude is amazing. He just so glad that he was taught the Gospel before all of this happened because it had helped him so much. I hope to know more next week.

As for Oleg and Vova. We taught Oleg the plan of salvation and I think it went pretty well. Sister Alyona, his wife, bore her testimony and really helped out. She said "look these boys don't know the language (talking about me haha) but they are here to share this important message with you. You can feel that they know it is true, even if they can't express it." It was so reassurring to hear her say that. We could definately feel the Spirit. So unfortunately Vova couldn't make it. But he came to church yesterday which was awesome. I didn;t think he was going to because his sister who is a member usually gets him but she is on a mini-mission right now, But he came and it was so cool to see him there.

The Prophet Joseph Smith 

I had the lesson in third hour about the home teaching message for this month. It was on prayer. I focused on the two stories mentioned in it. One when Joseph Smith recieived the first vision and the other when he was in Liberty Jail. These stories are so amazing. I talked about praying with a sincere heart and really wanting an answer. Then I talk about how even Joseph Smith who saw Heavenly Father and his Son Jesus Christ asked "O God where art thou?" I said sometimes we feel like we are very alone. But look at the Answer he got. "My Son peace be unto your soul." I love this scripture. This is a loving Father in Heaven saying don't worry I know where you are and what you are doing and I care about it. It is one of my new favorite stories about prayer. So I hope that that message was able to get out when I taught it yesterday.

So on Saturday we had a Zone Conference. We got to hear from President Schwitzer of the Europe East Presidency. It was so cool. He had so many cool insights into the Book of Mormon that I had never thought of before. My favorite was when he talked about how there was no way that Joseph Smith could have written this book. He was only a young man but he wrote about so many characters. He had never met a General but Captain Moroni, writings are unmistakable soldier like. And how about Pahoran the Chief Judge acting just like any good politician. I can't send money because elections are coming up and I have some protestors I have to deal with. Joseph Smith knew nothing about Politics but the Book of Mormon holds some really deep charcters. I had never looked at it like that before. He said that he studied each speach given and then looked and similar people in todays world to see if their types of writing matched up, and they did. It was such a cool zone conference.

So last might we met with Pavel and Nelia. Unfortunately they said that we are really nice young men but they are not interested in joining our church. It hurt pretty bad to hear that because I saw a lot of potential in them. I hope that one day they will come to knew gospel. 

Our companionship Motto

Well that was about it for my week this week. No new investigators so that's not very good. But we are going to keep at it.