There are two highlights that I wanted to share from this week. The first one is about Nastya, the girl I’ve talked about in my past weekly emails. Our cute little investigator wants to get baptized and we finally set a date with her. She’s going to get baptized on August 24th. She’s so cute and excited to get baptized and we’re just hoping that eventually her desire will be for the right reasons. Right now, she just really, really wants to do it, but sometimes she says things that we’re like, “Oh no, she doesn’t really have a testimony!” She’s just doing it to do it and so we’re hoping that eventually as she keeps meeting with us she will develop her own strong testimony. We’re just so excited for her and her strong desire to get baptized-and she has a testimony, we just have to help her see that she has one I guess. She wanted to get baptized before I left, but we won’t let her cause she’s got to have that testimony before we let her get baptized, so I’ll just have to Skype in for it in August.
The other one-We were contacting one day this week and it was a long contacting session. We were on this long stretch where there were no people and Sister Goncear and I got kind of bored after a while of no people to contact and so she started telling me some riddles. Eventually, she ran out of riddles and asked me if I had any riddles, so I start telling her a riddle and there are two old ladies on this bench a little far out of the way for us to contact. I didn’t even see them, they were so out of the way. We passed them and I’m just talking to Sister Goncear and we hear someone screaming at us from behind, “Girls! Girls! Stop!” We turn around and this little old lady is kind of hobbling up to us and we were confused. She says, “I know you!” and we’re like “uh... we don’t know you”. She says, “Not specifically you, but I am acquainted with your church. I’m actually a member and I saw the book...I knew you by the book.” Sister Goncear had been carrying a Book of Mormon and ugh, this lady was so adorable! She hasn’t come to church for many years. She told us she was so excited to see us and invited us into her house for a few minutes to talk. So we walked into her apartment and she just kept saying “Five minutes! Five minutes!” We shared a spiritual thought and just talked to her and found out her story. She had been baptized in 2004. This cute little lady is an invalid so she kind of walks a little funny. She used to be a professional skier. After that, she was a sports journalist. We are so excited for her. She’s just a cute little miracle because literally there was no one on that stretch and we could have turned back after a while, but for some reason we just kept walking and found cute little Sister Galina. After talking to this lady, I just had the strongest impression that God remembers each of His children and loves us and knows us by name.
I know I’m usually bad about sending home spiritual things in my weekly emails, but as I'm wrapping up my mission I wanted to share some final impressions. A lot of people keep asking me “What was the biggest lesson you learned on your mission?’ or “What do you wish you knew at the beginning of your mission that you know now?” I just feel like the biggest thing I’ve learned, or something I’ve realized is how much God’s hand is in this work and just in our lives in general. I feel like, just like Sister Galina-that was one of the roughest contacting sessions of my life and just every time I’ve had one of the hardest moments of my mission or times when the work isn’t going easy or whenever it’s just really hard and you don’t want to do what you’re really supposed to do, I’ve just seen how right after those moments I have seen the biggest miracles and sometimes I feel like God is so funny. They come in the strangest ways or in ways that you wouldn’t expect. It’s just so crazy how personally God knows us is what I’ve realized. Before the mission, I feel like yeah, I knew that God is our Heavenly and He knows us individually and knows the thoughts of our hearts. We learn this in Seminary, at church and our parents teach us and you kind of think about it and forget about it, but I just feel like it’s been engraven in my heart just how personally God knows us and how He knows exactly the kind of miracles that we need to take away our doubts or to help us see the right way or to help us with the motivation to keep going. I just know how much He loves me and all of us after this year and half of this wonderful experience. Honestly, the miracles of God are just so personal and I feel like after this I can never deny that He hears and answers our prayers. I don’t understand how anybody could say there is no God if they had seen the things I have seen after this year and a half. I just know that God knows each of us so personally-I don’t know how better to say that. He just knows us and loves us. He will send anything to help us, even if it’s a flood in your apartment after the hardest week of your mission even if it’s just so you can think about the flood instead of that hard week. Or, if He sends you a poor, invalid babushka running after you to see how much people have been touched by the Church and by the Gospel. I’ve just seen so many miracles, I could send a long list. God sends miracles after hard times to remind you that He is there and that He knows what you are going through and He wants you to see the light at the end of the tunnel. He’s willing to do anything to help you there.
I’m honestly so sad to come home! I hope I’ll continue to be this close to God that I can continue to see these miracles still in my regular day to day life. I’m just so thankful for this opportunity to have served. I’m excited to come home and hug my family, but it’s going to be really hard to leave a part of my heart here in Ukraine and in this work with these people. I just want to testify that even on the hardest days, these have been my most favorite moments of my entire life. The happiest moment at home could not even compare to the joy I've experienced here, even on the hardest day. Even in the biggest points of disappointment, I’ve been so happy because I’ve been carried by the Lord for the past year and a half. Without the Lord, I could not have done this! Without you, I couldn't have done this. I love you all so much and I can't wait to see you all very soon.
Love,
Sister Vehar
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