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

July 30, 2012

We just finished a baseball game with our investigator and his little dog like Paris Hilton has. Those kind of dogs are very popular here. Anyway, we played in the rain some soccer and then taught them how to play baseball. I got a sweet couple of solid hits on the bat and luckily didn't fly into someone's window. The field
wasn't too big and we played with a tiny bat. I am having such a good time here in Yekaterinburg.

Yesterday, We went to Кыштым to visit the group of members that hold sacrament out there amongst three people. We arrived after a two hour trip in the car with the mission driver and us. the mission driver is
legit here and it was fun to spend time talking with him for most of the ride, while my companion fell asleep in the back. We arrived about an hour early to the meeting and decided to use the hour to do some sight seeing of the city or shall I say little town used for metal work in the factories there. We had the meeting with them and we blessed the sacrament and gave talks on faith, prayer and the Holy Ghost. I finished it up pretty nicely. I told everyone that I loved hot food and after church in their living room we had a filling meal of plov, salati, and torte. We drove home out of the forest covered town back to the big city Yekaterinburg. We arrived and ran to D's place to have a spiritual thought and a lesson with one of our investigators and played "Settlers of Zarahemla." (probably my new favorite board game!) We had such a good time and he brought his girlfriend to the evening, which she warmed up to us and the members really well. After that meeting we ran to meet a potential new investigator at the church.

Saturday, We awoke and went down to the park to do exercise and passed on the McDonald's. ha-ha Being here in Russia has helped me eat only fresh food and not fast food. Once we were done with studies we made salsa for lunch and then contacted on the street. Getting last minute things for the baptism, we mopped the baptismal font to prepare for the three baptisms we had this past week. I was a good turn out of
about 30 people. We interviewed the people before their baptism and made sure that everything was fine with them as their baptism was about to happen. They were smiling from ear to ear it seemed like. I love baptisms. After the baptism, we met with a man from Uzbekistan who is trying to pick up Russian, but it is super hard to teach him with the language.  He brought us some Uzbekistan meat. It was interesting.

Friday, We found the apartment!! Yes!! We spent most of our week looking for an apartment. Some of the apartments  we looked at were from alright to a dump! The rest of our week was quite similar to this day. in trying to get the missionaries situated with new apartments and moving to their new areas, which we will be doing this week. We had a busy week with zone class where President R presided on the meeting and it was a good lesson then ran along to that which he said. On Thursday, we barely had time to do weekly planning, looking at apartments, and did three interviews which required translations in the afternoon. It was good to see the Atonement work in front of my eyes and I know that true happiness is achieved as we develop
ourselves into our full potential everyday through his love, which is shown to us by his atonement.

Our other investigators, who are baptist met with us on Monday this last week and it turned into a battle almost. I didn't participate in bible bashing. I hate persuading people with words towards conversion, because it will never work. We love people into the gospel, not force them into it. As we are examples to others and inform them of our beliefs then respect is reached between you and success will be achieved. People see the blessings of the gospel as they see it through the members being manifested in their smiles and love towards one another. I love you all and you all have a good week!

Elder LeFevre

July 23, 2012

It is awesome being here in Yekat once again and being around such awesome members, investigators, and missionaries. Elder S and I have been stepping up the work here in Yekat and trying to keep this city finding investigators and having those lessons with a member present. This past week was full of things that we had to do around the whole city. All the way from taking one hour bus rides to the amazing metropolotin system they have here in Yekat. My area is being changed, along with everyone else's to accomidate the ward split that they did here this past Sunday. We met with the assistants at President's house to go over the plans on moving missionaries to their new areas and aquiring new apartments for some of the companionships.
I have been enjoying the new area and my companion and I are having a blast with the work and hanging out. My area has been the center of Yekat, and that is including the amazing monuments and parks which
provide a good place to go ride bikes on a P-day with members and investigators. That was such a fun P-day and it is hard to think that summer is half way over here in the Urals.

Monday, we were coming back from a meeting and talking when we saw a young mom and her little boy carrying groceries underneath the underpass. Elder S spotted them ahead and we decided to go and help them. They allowed us to give them a hand and we talked to both of them on the way to there house. It was cool. She thanked us for the small service of carrying their groceries which were for the vacation that they were planning to do the next day. She then invited us to come anytime and to call her and she would like to know more about the church and who we are. It was one of the best contacts of the week.
This area is awesome for contacting and I get excited to do contacting. Another instance we had was on the same street coming from president's house and we stopped a younger man our age and got on a
good discussion on the need for faith and abut the Book of Mormon. It was great to talk to him and it was going well, until one man came up to the side of us and butted into the conversation. (We had to hold
ourselves back from telling him that this was an AB conversation) I told Elder S to continue the converstion with the other man, while I would take on the man that wanted to talk about strategy and war tactics of Russia.

The rest of the week went by really fast after we ran around and picked up supplies for the missionaries for zone class and meeting with new investigators. We found some cool guys around our age. One is
from Uzbekistan and the other is from Kurgan. The man from Uzbekistan doesn't speak Russian too well, but enough to get an idea of what we are saying. He is Muslim, and therefore we are taking smaller steps
with him and trying to answer his question about why there are so many religions. The other man is interested in taking the lessons and learning more,but we will meet with him as much as he can and extend a baptismal commitment as he continues. We just want to try and get him to as many activities as possible. However, we have two new branch presidents in the city and new branches. It may be a while until they get organized and we can get coordinating with them on activities. Our area also changed and we are now only a fourth of center and the area around the church building. I am super excited to start up again in a brand new area and
get some awesome investigators.

Zone Class went well as we talked about accountability with all the missionaries and even did a little of a lunch for our zone, where everyone brought goods to add to the potluck there. We made interesting graphs which were shown to us by a member who actually served in this mission three years ago and is now the branch president. One represented the zone's new investigators, the next was other lessons, then member present lessons, then church attendance, and baptisms. It was interesting to see the graphs in similarity and
to see that the more member present lessons we have the more there are at church and the more people accept a baptismal date to be baptized.

It was a great week and wee ended off with splits with the Elders in the northern part of the city and enjoyed the day with the new Elder K. That was one busy day even though I didn't have to worry about phone calls and tasks that you sometimes get as a zone leader. One guy that I contacted came up to us and tried to argue and so forth. I looked at Elder K and told the man that we wish him luck and that our testimonies will remain strong. So many things in this world really try to attack who you are as a child of God in order to bring
you down to misery and among the mist of darkness which blinds us from seeing the truth in front of us. This church is true!!

Yesterday after a busy church meeting, which I got to bless the sacrament, we went over to dinner at D's place and played a quick game, shared a spiritual thought on patience and had amazing soup and rice. We had a good time and laughed our socks off enjoying every minute of it. It is good to be here in Yekat!

LOVE YOU ALL!!
Elder LeFevre

July 9, 2012

There was a baptism at a lake this past week in Chely!! Our investigator was baptized and everything went well, even though it almost all fell through. We had a lot to do before and during the baptism, especially since it was on a lake! Yeah, the first time I have ever seen it done at a lake in my life and let alone plan for one. We had Zone Leader Council last P-day and decided to go down to the trading center in town to get Elder B a sweet Giorgio Armani bag like mine, but bigger. We met the M's there a little late and got them bags in order to make a bus ride to Yekaterinburg to get trained up on the addiction recovery program that they want to start here in Russia. However, it is not promised that this program will be implemented while I am here on my mission. They are taking it nice and slow. We left the M's early afternoon to Yekat after haircuts and enjoyed the humid air. We enjoyed our time amongst the other leaders in the mission and had a good talk on unity amongst ourselves and the goal for the mission to receive 91 baptisms by the end of the year. I always enjoy being amongst the R's and being taught by the Spirit. Every day on my mission has had a lesson included within it to teach me something new about life or the gospel.

We got back from our council in Yekat late in the night, but on the way at the bus stop talked to a nice guy about the gospel and for once didn't get into an argument on the topic, if Jesus Christ was the Son of God or not. Wednesday we were back and continuing the work here in CHTZ by leading my last Zone Class in Chelyabinsk. We set goals to get six referrals as we go and offer assistance to the leaders in the branch and inviting them over to the M's to have dinner and contact the referrals. Lately, I have been focusing on getting to become close with the members in anywhere that I serve to show the care I have, in action and the trust they can put in missionaries. Being a zone leader has taught me so much in how to take the principles of communication, love, and service into action in my everyday responsibilities as a missionary and for after my mission. I am very grateful for having served in Chely amongst great missionaries, members, and a great senior couple. I am going to miss them all.

Our other investigator was to be baptized as well, but is still working on overcoming smoking. We are still trying to help him become clean from smoking, and I am confident that the elders here will have him baptized next transfer. The other investigator, who is like my good friend on church meetings had a meeting with us for the last time on Saturday before the baptism. He is picking up gospel principles before we even tell him in the lesson to lead to the next point. There is so much potential in this area in Chely and I have loved every minute of it.

After splits on Friday with the Assistants, we made our last few calls to invite people to come and whoever said they could be there to help carry people in their car to the lake after a certain point in the road. There was a good showing of 32 people on the baptism and it was cool to see our investigator be baptized in the lake there. It was of course crowded with people on the shore near us on both sides, but they mainly watched in amazement as we performed the ordinance. We had a victory dinner of brownies, juice, and later Subway in the week.

Tonight, we will be attending a big family home evening in our area and I will be saying goodbye to some of the members there as I go to Yekaterinburg to be a Zone Leader with Elder S. I am so excited to be serving with Elder S in the center of the big city.  I love the Lord, the people and my mission! I love you all! 

Elder LeFevre