August 27, 2012

This past week was buckling down to get the job done and have fun while doing so. This past Monday, was super fun. Elder S and I decided to go play some american football out in the grove here in the city to attract some people to play with us. We started out there about five in the afternoon with just the missionaries and a few members playing with us to make a total of 8 people. After about a half of an hour, we invited some body builders that are there every monday. At first, they said no but during a break for some water they came over to us and started to talk with us. One of them spoke english and wanted to learn how to play football. We invited two of them into our group to join and play. In the end we had the whole group of bodybuilders trying to play a weird game of rugby/footbal mix. It was super fun!! 

Tuesday rolled around and we met with some old investigators that may be showing some progress now that we had given them a break and others are falling off the map due to no progress. Then later last week we invited our awesome friends in the ward to play some card games with our investigators form the park and gave them a tour of the church and the first lesson. It was turning out to be a good week and these two guys that we found are legit.

This past week was just lined up with fun activities and having a good time doing the work of the Lord as always! :) We had a picnic with our investigator. It was totally fun and we had a cool rainbow appear too. We bought a ton of food and filled up on KBAC and juice while playing games. We visited a member's house on friday and taught a lesson and helped organize everything after the fridge broke there. It was just in time to stop by. We even taught alesson to a nonmember who was there visiting. 

Friday was zone class with the new zone and we got some fire in this zone thanks to all the great missionaries we have. I am excited to see the activities that we have planned work out and get the branch involved on it as well. Things are moving forward here in Yekateringburg and we set a baptismal date with an investigator. I love you all.

Love Elder LeFevre

August 20, 2012

This last week had to be one of the hardest for me and my companion. We only came out with six meetings this last week. We started off this last week having "Capture the Flag" and ultimate frisbee in the park with members and the senior couple last Monday for FHE. Unfortunately, no investigators came to our activity but some members and recent converts did! We had a good time and I came out victorious with the flag in my hand after both games!

Tuesday, We took the day contacting and then went down to D's house to have our dinner hour and helped him pack to get the train station on time in order to go to the young single adults conference in Krasnoyarsk. We all met up at the train station and handed off his bags to the people on the train and met up with some of my favorite people in the mission that were going to the conference as well. It was great to see everyone form Chelyabinsk and Perm. I love both of those cities!! The mission in general is full of cool young single adults. After wards, we were going to head down to a little town outside the city to visit a family there, but the meeting didn't work out and instead went out to eat at the japenese restaurant with some members and Elder and Sister C. We ended up doing the spiritual thought with them. It was super good and I enjoyed the free herbal tea they brought to us complimentary and the hot towels with fresh mint on them! It was awesome. It is cool serving in Asia/Russia! 

Wednesday, was my visa trip and I left early in the morning with half of our group because we get the direct flight to Helsinki since we live in Yekaterinburg. I actually went to two endowment sessions and we had time to relax a bit and I memorized all the articles of faith in Russian. We also got to stop in TGI FRIDAYS for a good old coconut milkshake! You got to try one they are great. We came back Thursday morning at six and I went to bed quickly until about eleven o clock in the middle of the day. We made some amazing Plov and did weekly planning and Zone class planning all day it seemed like. It reminded me of the MTC! 

Saturday was the day of the city celebration for Yekaterinburg and we were aloud to be outside and be amongst the crowds talking to people. It was fun being there and we met up with one of our investigators with his girlfriend. We played a quick game and had a thought and left to the church to have four meetings with our investigators. They all fell through unfortunately and we had a good coordination meeting with our branch mission leader. He talked about the miracles that happened on his mission in Novosabirsk when they decided to live by the white handbook completely. So lately, I have been going though the white handbook and writing things down that I could do better. 

We had one new investigator this week and he showed up at church! That was the biggest miracle and yesterday the Lord blessed us with a meeting at an inactive's house. We decided to stop by and it worked out!! I love you all and may the force be with you! aka the Holy Ghost!

Love,
Elder LeFevre

August 13, 2012

It was definitely a week of turning around for the whole zone and us as we hit our highest mark of meetings the whole transfer. We have spent a lot of time on the streets talking to people and asking them the questions of the soul. I really love contacting and am glad to talk to everyone on the streets.

We like to throw out new ideas every week in order to get the zone excited and the work moving forward here in the Yekaterinburg Mission. One of the biggest highlights of this last week was the contacting blitz that my companion and I put together for the zone. (The Amazing Race) We had the senior couple, Elder and Sister C, and us standing at the check points contacting as the companionship's went to destinations completing tasks in collecting numbers and names for the awesome Elders in another area of the city.  It turned out well as some companionship's got invited to teach a lesson in a home even! I had extra money on my MSF card and treated everyone for a ice cream cone in our zone and shared a spiritual thought on unity and us being a team. After that experience I felt the trust that Heavenly Father and President R have in me as a leader of the zone here in Yekaterinburg. The activity left smiles on everyone's' faces in seeing the accomplishments they made and overall loved the change up.

This past week however, has been tough because of the fact that we are trying to build our investigator pool up in this new area and trying to get to know people in this branch. It is tedious work, but we are continuing to be diligent in our efforts and complying to the rules and being obedient with exactness. The best view about what I do every week is the fact that it is all fun and by living the gospel and the rules everything works out. Missionary work should not be stressful and looked at as a job. In reality it is not a mind set that will be forgotten after the mission but a life style of representing what you believe and answering questions through your personal testimony of the truth. I have had fun this transfer and that includes the time in Chelyabinsk as well. I am glad to be apart of building the kingdom on this side of the world!

In the struggle for new investigators and adjusting to new apartments and transports, we have been blessed by our efforts from street contacting. We have some promising people on our list of names and have a list of people in the branch to go visit. I love the members here and the relationship that I have built with them. We have fun every week seeing many members and their nonmember friends on our weekly capture the flag activities and on lesson's at member's houses. We are laying the foundation for the future of our area. We have been celebrating our successes with tacos and listening to good old EFY music! ha-ha.. Oh and I learned how to make stuffed peppers last week. We made our own after having some at a member's house and they were the bomb! I am not just saying that as a hungry missionary, but in reality.

We had three member present meetings yesterday at D's house and played a quick game of Settlers of Zarahemla! I almost won. D won even while he was taking a little nap during the game! Next time it is my time to win! ha-ha.. We are having a great time in here and trying to stay out of the rain from time to time. ha-ha.. Seems that the Russian fall might come earlier this year!

Love you all and have a good last few weeks of summer until school starts!
Elder LeFevre

August 6, 2012

So I got my haircut today outside our house where there was a giant poster of Keith Urban. This led me to believing that they know what they are doing, but a couple of things were lost in the translation and she was not in a good mood so you may see some pictures of me in a Russian style hairdo. I told her the number and explained it and yet she still went with it really short at the beginning and left longer bangs. Yeah, picture that on Elder LeFevre! No worries, we got it all evened out before we left.

Yekaterinburg is doing great. It is different managing a big zone and our phone goes off nonstop it seems like. The week was really good and we had time to be out on the streets and talk to people, which I love to do everyday of the week. The Russian people are my favorite. We decided last week that we need to get ourselves really organized as leaders in order to compensate for all the decision making that we have to do and planning. During weekly planning, I had a great idea in my head of what to do as a zone on a contacting blitz, but integrated with a game and rules. We will be having the Amazing Race in our zone this Saturday in the seven key's area to boost their contacts and help them find new investigators. It is going to be awesome!! We will have six companionship's participating to complete tasks such as the number of street meetings on the way to each checkpoint. However there will be no roadblocks. Ha-ha.. that would be a waste of our time.

Last Monday we played baseball with a mini bat and taught our investigator and members here how to play baseball with some of the rules. It was awesome cause we were playing in the rain and now today it is blazing hot! The climate here is one of a kind. Before you know it there will be snow on the ground again and we will be living with no sunlight. I can't wait. 

Time is flying by so fast and I love the mission so much. We had a couple of other meetings last week with some potential investigators and we dropped others, because I will refuse to argue and debate on any religious subject. You can tell very quickly if things or meetings are going to be worth your time from the first few moments of a lesson. Right now we are getting referrals of a few members that we need to visit in our new area. It has been a slow transition in moving the first group of elders into their new apartment and then us and the sisters into our old one. We will now be living with the assistants and have to travel into our area everyday. (We will be buying a sweet travel card! Souvenir.

Other than that, we went contacting a ton this past week and just trying to find new people to teach and plan out cool activities to get the members excited about missionary work and get to know them as well. We don't want this feeling as if there were a giant wall in-between us and the members. Our area is great and I feel that there is a ton of work that needs to be done in it after we talked to Daniel and Pres. S. We have some the coolest members in our area! I love starting off from scratch, but I am praying that we can get more focused on our area and not working out other problems. The mission is teaching me a lot about life and I cannot get enough learning about the gospel of Jesus Christ our Redeemer every day! 

Love you all!!

Elder LeFevre