WEEK 21: I finished training and I'M TRAINING?!?!?!?!?!

Hello everyone!

Yeah you read that right! Yours truly is training a greenie straight from the MTC! Ahhhhhhh! I don't know a thing about her yet since they don't tell us until tomorrow, but I will let you know how that goes.

How is it, you ask, that I was able to inherit a greenie? Well, it is because my trainer, Sister Sutton, is leaving home today. I already miss her. She was literally the best. I make it sound like she's dying, but really her 18 months are just up. She has been such a good influence for me and I will miss her so much.

We definitely had a packed week for her and fit in some experiences last minute before she went home including, but not limited to:
-Getting her foot stuck in the mud
-getting lemon coke-the new love of my life (other than Jesus and missionary work)
-sweater weather in June? I'll just briefly testify that I know God knows me because He knew I couldn't handle the heat any longer! Every time it gets too hot for too long- boom- breezy day and happy Sister Vehar
-getting a makeover from 11 and 12 year-old Ukrainians and looking like 80's/Barbies

Sorry for the short email but it was a really good week and I'm looking forward to how this next week goes. Hopefully it will be good and full of miracles!

Have a great week everyone!
Sister Vehar


Our makeover- and our best comp photo somehow?

Our dirt hill and Sister Sutton's muddy foot

SASHA

Email from Elder Caron

Hello from Kyiv. My wife and I are currently serving in the Ukraine, Kyiv Mission (we’re in the beautiful country of Moldova). This week we had the pleasure of meeting your sons and daughters, who are also serving in our mission.

We took a couple of photographs and thought we’d send them to you. I will tell you that we really enjoyed the smiles and friendly greetings we received from your missionaries. (Every time we met one of them, they had huge smiles on their faces and were just excellent representatives of Christ, the Church and their families.)

Thank you for sharing your sons and daughters with us. We hope to see them on our next visit to Kyiv.

Elder and Sister Caron

Week 20: My First Time Out of Kiev and a BAPTISM

Happy Monday everyone!

This week was amazing just in the fact that SASHA WAS BAPTIZED! I had to give a talk about baptism, which was pretty rough, but no one left so it must not have been too bad (I also bore my testimony in sacrament this week... so that was a lot of Russian in two days)! But wow, she was so ready. She came ready to give a talk and everything! She was so excited and she brought her daughter too, who totally felt the spirit. She was a little scared when it came time to go under water, but she did it and she is so happy now! She is almost done reading the Book of Mormon, which is insane! She is reading faster than I am and I sit down and read it for an hour every day! She is amazing and already talks about reading it again! It is really great that we haven't had to push her too hard since she is so self motivated! I swear she'll be called into primary or something.

There isn't much other news this week other than my second exchange was in a small town outside of Kiev, called Zhytomyr and it was GORGEOUS. The city has grown on me, but I would LOVE to go serve somewhere like there. It's also where my trainer spent 9 months of her mission so it was really cool to be down there for her since she leaves this week. The English class scene was way more interesting with crazy Ukrainians and we also got to meet one of the sister's relative of some sort, who may or may not be the richest man in Ukraine. His house was three times the size of mine in America and he built it himself. It was quite the shock when we showed up because for the past three months, I've met people in apartments the size of a living room and a half with walls everywhere.

This week I feel super touched because of a lot of things I have heard and I just want to share with you that Heavenly Father knows each and every one of us because we are His children. He gives us some things we might think are hard, but He gives them to us so we can grow and He will always provide a way for us. He loves you and I love you too! I hope everyone has a fantastic week!

Love,
Sister Vehar

Our sweet Sasha and her daughter

A gorgeous view of the temple on a day we got down-poured on

The forest we past outside of the city

Sister Pixton and I went to visit her Uncle Victor in Zhytomer

Sister Pixton says in her letter about visiting Victor: "Sooo I found out that my Aunt Olya, from Russia has relatives in Zhytomyr. So my momma sent me the contact info of this guy named Victor, that she knows/is related to. We called him and he was totally down to meet us the next day. So after our lesson he shows up to the church, we hop in his car and he drives us to this cake shop and buys this big fancy chocolate cake. Then we drove to his house, sat by his pool and chatted with him about why we're here and told him what our church is all about over chai and tort."

Week 19: Slang and Members

Hello friends and family!

This week was really great! We met with lots of members of our church and it was honestly so awesome to get a better hold on this huge ward. We met with both active and less active members and I think I honestly love working with the members the most because we ask them for people who are interested in the gospel or need support, and we almost always get less actives, but I still love it because we go over and strengthen them! This week was really neat though because all the less actives we met with came to church! There is one, Tatyana, who had a hurt back so she didn't go to church and we asked if she at least read the book of Mormon and she said no. We challenged her to read it everyday and then bam she was at church. All I have to say is that the Book of Mormon works miracles.

This week our mission president asked us to clean up our language and eliminate slang. I didn’t realize how much slang I use! It has been really funny though. The companionship with the most slang has to bring treats to district meeting and we didn't lose so we're doing good so far.

We had zone conference this week and it was really motivating to get me contacting which has been the bane of my mission, but not anymore! Sister Sutton bore her last testimony because she leaves in exactly two weeks! That is really crazy and weird to see, but all is well and we are trying to cram all of the Ukrainian experience in for her these next couple of weeks!

Sorry it's short this week! But here are some funny pictures of ads I see everywhere for computer services that people use old pictures of actors as their picture and also Sister Sutton wearing a really good camouflage skirt.

Have a great week everyone!

Love,
Sister Vehar

Week 18: "No Subject"

Hello everyone! Happy Monday!

I honestly don't know how to describe this week. We didn't meet with hardly anyone because school is out and everyone is heading to the dacha (*small, little countryside homes outside the city) for vacation. We had one lesson with a member who was in town and it was definitely one of our odder ones. These ladies love cats and are notorious for it. Surprisingly, they only had two this week, but it was apparent that was one of their lowest numbers as they showed us pictures, each with a minimum of four cats and they were never the same??? One of them actually tried to keep one of my photos from my album to put it in her collection. I came out of their apartment feeling like I had sniffed a sharpie the whole time from all of the cat smells. At the end of our lesson we asked them if there was anything we could help them with and they look up to the light above us and say something along the lines of "You can come back and clean our dirty light". On our way out, these pigeons were flying around in the apartment hallway, and one of the sisters just picked one up. Apparently, they were the neighbor's "pets". So we will be going back to visit all the animals and to clean these ladies' light in the next week or so. What a place this is, Ukraine.

We had another lesson with Sasha this week about temples, eternal marriage, and family history. It was super special because Tad R. Callister came and spoke to the adults and Sasha went and they talked about families and temples a lot! It was so good for her and she is really excited to get baptized. When Sister Sutton showed her her family tree, she realized that our names on our tags were our last names and not our first names (those are all people use here). She felt a little lied to, but it was really funny because she told us she had thought our last names were really weird first names, but we were from America so she didn't say anything. So now everything makes a little more sense.

We had a Mission Meeting this week with Tad R. Callister and it was amazing! It was eye-opening and I feel like I learned so much! The whole mission was there so it was wild. I focused on getting to know younger missionaries since most of the ones older than me are going home soon. Our mission is so young in terms of the length of time the missionaries have been serving (elders 2 years and sisters 18 months)! Most of the sisters are going home this transfer, so starting in July there will be three whole Russian-speaking sisters who have been in the field longer than me. It's a great comfort to know there are sisters in Lviv who will join us. But for now I am gonna have to step up my game!

Today we went to center Kiev and it is gorgeous! I took some pictures for you!

I hope everyone has a great week!
Sister Vehar

💙💛🇺🇦💙💛🇺🇦💙💛🇺🇦💙💛

A sculpture of the Archangel Michael as a coat of arms of the city of Kyiv on the gate

Monument to the founders of Kyiv

Sisters Sutton & Vehar

All 14 sisters in the Ukraine Kyiv mission

The entire Ukraine Kyiv Mission (62 missionaries, 9 senior couples and President/Sister Kumferman and their daughter, Maggie

Some of us sisters enjoying a delicious meal (L-R: Sutton, Vehar, Eakins, Reid, Soucie, Flukiger, Pixton, & King)

One more of Sister Vehar and Sister Sutton