Our apartment

Kitchen 

study area 

hallway 

bedroom - look mom, my bed is made!

our empty refrigerator

Missions can be discouraging, but don't worry I am staying positive.

Hey everyone thanks for your letters this week. I love hearing from all of you. Don't worry mom I am staying really warm. President has made a new rule of no sweaters without suit coats also I got some thermals last week that keep me really warm plus it got a lot warmer this week as far as weather goes. As far as transfers go they will happen in two weeks so I will find out then if I am leaving.

Dima's heath is poor and things are not looking good.  I have a few questions about the temple and temple work.   

Well this week was interesting. We found 4 new investigators but all were dropped before the week went out. Oleg tract's wife became one but when we called to say we were still planning on meeting with them that day she said "It's ok you boys don't have to come by anymore." Our other investigators all ditched our meetings and won't answer our phone calls. Oleg and Vova are at an interesting place. Oleg's wife sister Kazakova came up to us on Sunday and said "Look you guys are going so good with my husband he has made amazing progress but he doesn't like when you ask him to do things".  She said we can come by and teach her while he listens. That goes against everything I have been taught as a Missionary. We have been told to make bold strong committments and to promise blessings. We asked her how she expects her husband to progress further if he won't read or pray, she said he is just not ready.

The only people who will listen to me!

We had a big throw down lesson with Cylvester and his dad last night and really hit them hard.  We have tried to be nice and be friends but now we just need him to keep the promises he made at baptism. One thing good about it was his dad really started asking his son some good questions about his testimony. At the end we told them we loved them and that we want the best for them. I really hope everything works out.

So as far as our investigator pool it is more a investigator puddle with just Dima but that is how it is in our whole district. In fact we are the only ones with an investigator who will meet with us. This week was really hard. I'm just tired of starting over all of the time. I can handle when people reject us on the streets or when they dog us on our lessons but I hate it when people have potential and then they stop meeting with us. It is just so fustrating. We are really starting from square one this week and we are not sure on what we should do. We have talked with the same people on the streets two of three times and we just aren't finding legit people. 

The street we tract on 

Same street, but at night

This letter is a little more depressing then most of my letters but don't worry I am staying positive. Actually I have been working on a speech that I want to give on a bus in front of everyone. I heard of someone do it in Kiev and they got a baptism from it. We will see how it goes..... haha. 

Well that is about it for my week this week. Thanks again for everything. I love you all so much.

Love Elder Quinn

Dima is an amazing person.

Well first I'll say I am so happy for Natalie and Johnny that is such awesome news. So far my predictions are coming true. So thanks again for all of your letters. Iy really sounds like you are all doing really well which makes me happy. Dad thanks for that great quote, he is one of my favorite speakers. Also Hannah there is a song that you an learn to the tune Praise to the Man, that is what helped me. Well again I am so excited about the new baby keep me updated of course.

So as for my week it was pretty cold. Not a lot of our investigators wanted to meet with us so we had to drop a couple of them. I really hate doing that but We can't waste time planning for them if they won't meet with us. Now for Dima. He is such an amazing person. The news came back bad, the cancer has spread to his bones and the doctors are not super hopeful. They gave him some medication and said they will check him in a month but health care isn't the best here. I am really worried. I'm not sure how things with his girlfriend are going because this sickness is taking first priority obviously. He still comes to curch even though I can see every step he takes hurts and he still pays tithing and fast offereings and he is not even a member yet. He is so cool. I just want everything to work our for him.

Vova and Oleg are doing pretty good. They really like having us over and have been participating more and more on the lessons. This past week we had one on prayer and what it really is.  We are going to talk about Alma 32 next time and say all you need is a desire to know if these things are true. I hope it goes well. Usually we meet with them every monday night but the said they couldn't meet today so I hope we can find another time.

Well thats it for our investigators. Although we did find one this week named Oleg (there are only like 12 Russian male names haha). But I will refer to him as Oleg tract because we found him while tracting. We were walking around and Elder Karajov asked if I wanted to go tracting. I said for sure so we picked a building and went. After 4 floors of no success we came to Oleg. He was smoking and we started to talk to him. We asked if we could pray with him to bless his life and to help him. He then asked if we could pray to help him stop smoking. We were like ya absolutely! so we prayed with him and set up for Tuesday. He took a Book of Mormon and said he would read the first chapter before our meeting. He was way cool.


Cylvester is not interested in coming to church.  It is pretty disappointing.  We are sad about this.

On other news Elder Karajov was called as second councellor in the branch presidency. That is going to be so good for him. He is no doubt going to be a branch president when he goes home after his mission. But this also means that my time in Illichosk will most likely come to an end after this transfer. It makes me really sad because I love it here and I have really felt connected with our investigators but I am ok with moving on because I know other Elders will continue to do well here. But of course I may stay here I may not. Apparently there are 27 news misionaries coming in next transfer and the mojority of missionaries are in there 4th or 6th transfer. We have a really young mission.

Well thats it for this week. Thanks for all of your letters and congrats again Natalie and Johnny. I am so happy right now.

Love Elder Quinn

P.S. I found some thermals hopefully they work.

More photos

Our District

Funny things we see when we are out tracting 

Elder Karajov by statue of Stalin 

My future car, the Lada  haha

Way cool family - our friends 

The parable of the "olive mistake" 

Babsoshka (84 year old) doing the splits!
she used to be a ballerina

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.

Unusually Cold Weather in Ukraine - news article

← Crazy for Waves – Rescue Competition

After 30 Years, A Sea Became Black?

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Megha

---

In the areas of Kerch, Evpatoria, Odessa, water turned into ice. On the beaches, just 100 meters from the shore you can see small icebergs.
Because of the prevailing situation prior to February 15 maritime traffic is closed in the Ukrainian ports. the Romanian port of Constanta is Closed , On the shores of beaches ice thickness reaches 40 cm. Romania, and Bulgaria declared a “yellow” and “orange” code of danger.
Nevertheless, the inhabitants of these countries did not despair,they use frozen water as a skating rink, and ice and snow for building a sculpture. Last time such weather anomalies occurred in 1977, while the Black Sea off the coast of Odessa is completely frozen.
1. Bad weather struck the coast of the Black Sea.

The Gift of Tongues

Alright so about my week. It was awesome! The cold has finally arrived in Ukraine. My cheeks got so numb I felt like someone could perform surgery on me and I wouldn't even feel it. But it is all good because what is a mission without -10 degree weather. So as far as which is colder Chicago or Ukraine, I'm not sure because when it gets cold in Chicago I don't go outside haha. But again don't worry I bundle up so it is not too bad. 

Well I made a mistake last week, my new companions name is Elder Karajov, and he is awesome. He is actually the same age as me on the mission so we are co-senior companions or as he puts it co-junior companions haha. He is really cool and super funny. He is a little quiet which has caused me to talk a lot more. But I'll talk about that later. He knows English super well and his mom is from Russia so he also knows russian. On our first day together I was telling him that I don't know Russian super well he said alright lets speak in Russian then. We now speak in Russian while on the streets. It is such a big help. 

So as far as language goes. I have never felt the gift of tongues so strongly on my mission then is this week. I had to make a lot of calls to set up for the week and I was really nervous about calling some of them. Usually Elder Wells would but now only I could because Elder Karajov doesn't know them. So I litterally got on my knees and explained to Heavenly Father my situation. I told him that I needed to set up with these people so that we can teach them and bring them closer to His son. As I got up I made the calls. I 100% understood everything they said. I set up 4 appointments and even talked to someone about their day. It was seriously the coolest thing ever. Right after I got back on my knees and thanked Him for the help. 

Another cool story with the gift of tongues. While teaching this week I have felt words and phrases come into my head that I didn't know I knew. And since Elder Karajov is a quiet person I had to lead on all of the lessons this week. I have also lead in all planning sessions. This is mainly because I know the area better. I don't want this letter to come off as conceited but I have really taken a lerdership role in this companionship. I feel like only through the Spirit have I been able to get anything accomplished. I feel like Ammon after he runs into his brothers. I am weak but I glory in God's strength. It has been a very humbling yet amazing week. 

As far as Dima goes, things are going really well. He continues to read and pray and come to church. He is such a cool guy.

For Vova and Oleg we are meeting with them tonight. We will be teaching the Plan of Salvation. We taught this lesson two nights ago and it didn't go so well. I really hope things go well tonight. After this we are going to go home and practice it a couple of times in Russian.

I man we were teaching, Pavel gave me a piece of cake and said here you have to try this it is Liver Cake. I said oh because it is red and he said no because it is Liver..... haha so ya I ate Liver cake. I actually wasn't too bad. It tasted like a hamburger that was left out for too long.