People are calling us!! We hope to have 4 baptismal dates - Vova receives Melchezidek priesthood - serving the Lord brings me true joy!

Thank you all for the great advice. I also know the lord loves all of us and I will continue to push myself to help my brothers and sisters in Ukraine learn this great truth. So quick happy birthday to Caleb! the big 2. It will be fun to see how much has grown over the past two years. 

So this week was awesome. We set two baptismal dates. One was with I..... He was contacted about two months ago by Elder Pace and his former companion Elder Feuz. He called us last week and wanted to meet. This week on Tuesday I was up on exchanges in another area but Elder Pace set a date with him for the 13 of April. He told us yesterday that he hasn't smoked or drank for two weeks. He is doing great. Also the next day we met with a young adult named V....... He found our business card and came to the church. Nobody was there so he called us and we set up with him for last Tuesday. The next day we met again and he said he believed everything we are teaching is true. We also gave him a date for the 13th of April. Incase you didn't notice both of these people called us. This has pretty much never happened before on my mission. This past transfer people have even called us before hand to say they couldn't make it and then try to find another time we can meet with them. We are being greatly blessed.

We had an awesome weekly planning session as we are working on not letting anyone accidentally slip through the cracks. We have about 4-5 progressing investigators which I believe is the most I have ever had at one time. Our other investigators include O....., German (who will be getting a baptismal date this week), M....., and D...... It has been awesome teaching so many people who really seem to understand what we are saying and the importance of it. This week we are hoping to have 4 baptismal dates. I just hope that we can keep doing what we need to do in order to qualify for these blessings. It has been great.

Yesterday was a really fun day. It was district conference so I was able to see everyone from Illichovsk. Also Vova was substained to the Melchezidek priesthood which was awesome to be a part of. I hope when he get set a part I will be able to be there. It has been a real blessing to be so close to my starting area.

I forgot to say that this past week we got transfer information. Nothing changed in our district as this upcoming transfer is only 4 weeks. I have really enjoyed serving with Elder Pace. We are just always on the same page for teaching and things we need to be doing. He is going into his 6th transfer and is such a good missionary. Our companionship is being blessed so much. This morning I read in Alma 26 which is one of my favorite chapters. In it Ammon talks about true Joy. I want to testify of the true joy it has been thus far serving the Lord. Ammon speaks about how much of a blessing it was to be made an instrument of the Lord. And that it is such a gift. He shows true humility as he confesses how little he did to acheive these blessings but how much the Lord did for him and his brethern. "As for myself I am weak but with God I am strong." 

Well I love you all so much. Keep being awesome!

Singing Missionaries - Elder Quinn on left

The boys sang for the Branch Women's Day activity on Friday night.  They are doing a great job!

Click and enjoy!

Daniel in Cherkassy was baptised - I am working hard on my lesson plans - We are being blessed so much

Hey everyone thanks for the letters. I got them from dad, mom, Melissa, and Natalie. It is always fun to hear about how everyone is doing. It sounds like everyone is visiting everyone else. Keep having fun. 

So just to start out, missionary night was a big fail. We had more missionaries than we had members or investigators. I was actually pretty upset, nobody came from the branch presidency and our MCL came late. We had branch council this week and there are some things that we will change. I love this branch.  This week is district conference so President will be down here to train them. We also have Elder Calvin as a senior couple and he served as a Bishop so he knows what to do. We are going to bring him to the next branch council. It should be fun to tanslate for him. They had us over for dinner last night and we told him how it went and he gave us some good advice for if we are ever in a branch council and how it would run. I would love to see one run by you dad. haha

We have been brainstorming ideas to help the branch and we thought about doing a Book of Mormon History Night and just help our members understand the scriptures better like who did what and when. but we will see when the next time we host a missionary sponsired activity. We have also been looking at I'm a mormon dvds. There are now 5 or 6 videos of members in Russia and I have heard they are making some here is Ukraine. That would be cool to use. 

As for investigators we had 3 again at church with one potential investigator. Also a woman walked in with her daughter at the end of 3rd hour and she is looking for a church. She is really nice. One of our members took her around the whole building for a tour which was really cool. Makcim still wants to get baptized, he has a lot of doctrine in his head that we need to clear up first but he is a nice guy. We also had a cool experience where a man called us who Elder Pace and his last Companion contacted. We met with him and he said since the first meeting he had never felt the same and now he feels a lot better. He is super cool and way humble. Olga wasn't able to come to church this week but said she really wanted to. We have a good lesson planned for her so hopefully that goes well. 

Recently I have redone all of my study plans. I am really trying to push myself in the language as well as teaching. Elder Pace and I have made a really good effort to make our companion studies good. It has been really fun and rewarding as I can see we are being blessed so much. 

In other news, Daniel up in Cherkassy was baptized this past week. I was so excited to hear about it but was sad I couldn't be there. I will probably call him later today. 

Well that's it. Lova ya all.

Love Elder Quinn

I am now an official Oddessan - We have great potential with our investigators

letter from March 4th..

Hey everyone this week I got letters from dad, mom, Natalie, and Grandma Hoole. So I think I                know what is happening. Everyone is thinking "oh Elder Quinn comes home in 4 months aka 2 years, so I will just tell him about everything when he gets home." Well let's not forget who the favorite brother is... haha love ya all.

This week was a pretty good week. I went on exchanges up in Suvorovsky. I have now officially served in every area in Odessa. I saw Vova on Wednesday and told him and he said I can now be called an Oddessan. It was pretty funny. He is doing really well and is hoping to get the Melchezidek Priesthood this month. I am super excited. It has been really fun to see him weekly. I need to find him a wife.

 We had a way cool lesson with Olga after English and you could tell she really felt the Spirit. She came to church Sunday after saying she may not be able to make it. She really enjoyed it. We barely talked with her because she has a bunch of friends in the branch already. It is really cool. We are hoping to give her a baptismal date this week. She is so ready to get baptized. On the lesson she prayed and we helped her through each step like you would a little kid. Afterwards we told her how good she did. She seemed pretty excited. She needs to meet Vova,  they would go great together :)

Maksim is doing okay. We had a lesson with him yesterday, and it was interesting. He has some different  beliefs but says he knows the Book of Mormon is true. But he hasn't read it.... He said he would read all of it by Satuday but we told him he didn't have to do that, it is better to read and remember than just speed read. We will continue to work with him. He has met a couple of times with our branch president so we will see how to best help him. But he still really wants to get baptized so at least the desire is there. Andrei is kind of hard to meet with as well. We talked with him at English and he said it would be better for him to call us. He is really busy with work and said he doesn't know when he will get called in. We are hoping to find some time this week to meet him. 

But this week was really good. We had 4 investigators at Sacrament meeting. One of them is a new investigator who referred us to his friend. They are both named Michael. The one who came to church really enjoyed it. We will be meeting with him this week as well. We have a lot of potential which is really good. I like teaching.

So in my studies lately I have really been focusing on teachig skills. As Russian becomes less of a problem I have tried to improve the way I teach. Specifically in commitments, then promising blessings, and also using scriptures better. I can tell that Elder Pace and I have greatly incresed our teaching abilities. We have been watching these videos from Salt Lake called the district. They are live videos of missionaries teaching investigators. They are normally used for training. But we have been watching them nonstop. I feel like I have learned a ton from them. There are some really good missionaries in them. It has been fun role playing a lot as well. We try to do one a day durring comp study.

Well that is it for my week. Thanks again for everything. This week we are doing the missionary night again. Hopefully it goes well and memebers show up. 

Love Elder Quinn

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

photos from Elder and Sister Colvin

We feel fortunate to be working with such fine young men.
Elder and Sister Colvin

I want to seek more gifts of the Spirit - New Ukrainian mission will be formed in July

letter Feb. 25.......Hey everyone! I got letters this week from dad, mom, Katie, Dave, and Natalie. Thank you so much I love hearing from you all. 

This week was a pretty cool week. We met with Makcim a couple of times but were not sure on how to act.  But we have had some members on the lessons who are a big help. Things will definately progress with him. We also had another miracle this week as we contacted a man on Tuesday and he called us on Thursday. Ya he called us! It was awesome! He said he was in center and wanted to meet. We ran to the church and had one of the best first lessons I have ever had on my mission. It was aweosme to work with Elder Pace. We just flowed really well together. We gave him a really powerful soft commit to baptism and he accepted. But the miracle doesn't stop there. As we talked about the book of Mormon. He asked to see mine. He said "Oh ya I have this book, A man moved out of my apartment and left it. Then not too long later I met you guys. You know I don't believe in accidents." It was awesome. We promised him that it wasn't an accident and that he is on the right path. It was awesome!! So that night a recent convert brought her friend to church. This recent convert just glows with the light of the Gospel. She loves this church so much. And her friend was also really cool. We talked to her for a little and set up a lesson for this week. She said that Sveta, the recent convert, always talks about how great this church is. She wants to know why. Her name is Olga and will definately be getting baptized soon. It was cool to get a really prepared referral from a member. 

This past week was Zone Conference. It was awesome! President Klebingat talked about some fun doctrine revolving around the house of Israel and our pre-earth assignments. It was really fun to listen to. We also talked a lot about Spiritual Gifts which has changed the way I look at them. I have decided to seek after more gifts and to continue this seeking through out my life. It was a great Zone Conference. Afterwards I got an Interview with President, I talked to him a little about doing Dima's work and he pointed me in the right direction of how to get all of the paperwork/blue card I need. I will be looking at it today online. 

So I don't know if any of you heard but The Ukriane Kiev mission is getting cut in half. They are making a L'viv mission which will only be Ukrainian speaking. The split will happen this July. It was really exciting news. The work of the Lord cannon and ill not be stopped. I am just glad that it won't affect me but I can see some of the Ukrainian speakers feeling pretty sad. but as President said he can't feel too bad as he was the one who started it in the first place. But ya that is pretty cool. 

In two weeks we will be doing th meet the missionary night here in center. You can send me some more photos if you want because we have less missionaries. Hopefully it will be a good chance to get some referrals. Apparently they haven't had great success with Missionary Nights in the past but this one will be different. Also This week I saw a couple more people from Illichovsk. Sister Finanko, remember her? She is the saint of a women who fed us every week. She said to say hi specifically to mom, so Hi from sister Finanko. It was really funny. She saw me and she ran over and said I herd you were in town we shook hands but then she just gave me a big hug. Elder Pace said he saw the hug comiong from a mile away. It was pretty funny.

Well that is it more my week. I love you all.

Love Elder Quinn

My Mission Vision statement....

Letter from Feb. 18th..Thanks for the letters. I got them from dad, mom, and Natalie. Just remember that you are all in my prayers! 

This week was an interesting week. We don't have many investigators or even a lot of potential. I have never gone so long with people not stopping to liseten to me. One thing is nice is the super clean Russian. But we had the coolest miracle! So in third hour on Sunday a member walked in and said there is a man who wants to talk to us. We walked out and asked how we can help. I am not joking when I say the first words out of his mouth were "I feel like my baptism wasn't valid." We sat down and taught him the full first lesson. When we discussed the apostasy he said "Ya I am so sad that it happened." Then we talked about the restoration and he got really excited. He stopped us and said he is looking for the true church. I looked him right in the eye and said "You just found it." It was so cool. It was also really fun teaching with Elder Pace. It was our first time teaching an investigator. We were on the same page and it really just flowed so well. He has been so much fun to serve with. So this man's name is Maxcim. We will be meeting him on Tuesday so keep him in your prayers. 

So this area has had a lot of baptisms lately and it has been fun to work with the recent converts. They are all doing really well and seem to get a long great with the branch. We are hoping to seek some referrals from them coming soon. We are planning on doing a Mormon.org night because there are 5 of them that are in Russian right now. Then we want the members to make their own profiles so that we can hand out cards with their names on them. It should be really cool. We have a lot of good ideas flying around about doing a mormon.org table and playing the videos infront of our church. It should be really cool. I think that I remember our ward doing a night similar to this. I also want to ask if you haven't already done so you should all make a profile. It is super easy and you can send your friends to the site.

This past week I went on exchanges with an Elder Romney. Yed he is related to Mitt. He is his Grandpa's cousin. It was fun to serve with him. He went to airforce like a bunch of Elders in my NTC district so I made some jokes about that. I am also surrounded by Utah fans here. It is too bad especially since BYU hasn't beaten them in 3 years but what ever it actually doesn't come up much if at all.. This upcoming week is Zone Conference which should and will be awesome. I am really looking forward to it. 

There is a senior couple here who is really cool. Their names are the Colvin's. Elder Colvin did a portion in a combined district meeting about vision statements. He talked about how he ran a Hospital and made it into a premier Hospital just by using a vision statement. So here is my Vision Statement that I have been working on all week. "I want to be known by the Lord as a missionary, who as I taught by the Spirit, using strong language abilities. and teaching clearly, exemplified true charity, love, and respect for my brothers and sisters of Ukraine which effected every aspect of my missionary service in helping them return to our Father in Heaven." It may be a run-on sentence but it works for me. I have a bunch of new goals and action points to go along with it so hopefully it goes well.

Well thats is it about my week. I love you all so much.

Love Elder Quinn