February 25, 2013

After our wonderful short vacation to the Crimea, we returned refreshed and ready to work. We started off the week celebrating the Chinese New Year with the other Senior Missionaries at a little Chinese restaurant just a half mile up the street from our apartment. (A celebration is a great way to start off a new work week.) We had such a fun time that we have decided to get together the second Monday of every month for a little Sr. Missionary activity.

 

Gary had a big week putting a lot of time and effort into resolving some problems that have been plaguing the church since about 2004. Hopefully there will be a resolution of some of these problems before our mission ends. That is his goal.

 

I returned to the most peaceful place on earth, the Kyiv Temple. It was wonderful to once again be serving in the temple. The Temple Missionaries had all received new assignments so it was a little different seeing all new people during my shift but the work goes on just the same. The saints coming from the Samara Mission in Russian and the Dnipropetrovs’k Mission in Ukraine were filled with the spirit of temple work and that spirit emanates throughout the temple.

 

Temple

First signs of spring!

This week a sister with an amazing conversion story received her endowments. She lives in soviet apartment housing across from the temple. She watched the temple be built from her apartment window. She has always loved the temple but no missionaries ever went to her apartment. She finally came over to see the temple, had the missionaries and was baptized a year ago. She was definitely converted by the spirit of the Temple.

Soviet housing across from Temple

Thursday for Valentine’s Day, Gary and I went to the temple after working at the office all day and then stopped by the Ocean Plaza and had some delicious pasta at the Di Vinci Restaurant. Then Friday night we went to the philharmonic for a wonderful concert.  

Always flowers for the soloist

Saturday was a really cold day. Too cold to do much of anything, so after we returned from cleaning the church and while Gary was taking a nap I decided to once again venture out on a bus, just to see where it would take me. I thought it would be like a little Saturday afternoon drive. But in Kyiv, you can never predict what will happen. Halfway to nowhere that I knew, the doors on the bus jammed open so we were all kicked off the bus. Then where to go. Everyone scurried on other buses or the passing tram but none of the bus numbers were familiar to me so I just waited in the cold. When a bus with a number I recognized finally came about 20 minutes later I rode it to what was the end of the line and was kicked off the bus again. Luckily the bus turned around so I ran across the street and hopped on. The driver was taking his lunch break but eventually came back and I made it back home. Still don’t know where I was – not one familiar building on the horizon.

 

People abandoned by the bus

Last few left standing after 20 minutes

Home again at the market

Who could resist this picture??

The big news on the 19^th when we had a conference call with President Klebingat was that our mission was going to be divided and the L’viv  Mission was being created.  Fifty Eight new missions were announced by the church on Saturday. The new mission president is from Sandy, Utah and his name is Daniel Lattin. The sad thing for us is that as of July we will no longer be going to Lutsk.

 

On Saturday we had a baptism for Umunnakwe “Samuel” Osaemor. He is a friend of ZeZe’s from Nigeria and is studying to become a doctor. He has such an amazing love for the Savior and is truly converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Samuel's baptism

Samuel

Sunday we went for our monthly visit to Lutsk. The weather was good and the roads (except for the pot holes) were much better; not covered with snow and ice. But there is still a lot of snow over there. I am looking forward to the beautiful spring weather and the activity once again in the fields.

On the way to Lutsk

Ice Fishermen

Rolling down the highway

Stork nest

Road to Lutsk

We arrived a little early so I had our driver take me to the huge cemetery that we had been able to see the last few times we went there since all the leaves were off the trees. It is the biggest cemetery I have ever seen with the most elaborate grave markers. There was one section with only children’s graves.

 

Cemetery

Children's Cemetery

Children's Cemetery

Lutsk dates back to 1085. It now has a population of about 150,000 people but after seeing the cemetery I wanted to find out a little bit more about the city. I have so enjoyed traveling through the countryside to go there but hadn’t bothered to learn much about it.  And like with anything, when your time starts to run out you want to take full advantage of what time is left.

Lutsk has been under the control of Poland, Russia, and Germany and was completely sacked and razed in 1240 and 1500. The city was rebuilt and was predominately Jewish until about 1942. Of the thirty some thousand inhabitants of Lutsk in 1940, about 30,000 were Jews with only a few Poles, Russians and Ukrainians. There were over twenty synagogues and study houses, as well as a yeshiva, a Talmud Torah, a Hebraist Tarbut school, Jewish high school, Jewish hospital, Jewish commercial banks, sports clubs and literary circles.

The majority of the population belonged to the middle class: small and not so small merchants with all kinds of shops, businesses, and commodities -- cereals, timber, fruit, foodstuffs, haberdasheries, dry goods, ironware, paint, tar, etc.  The laboring masses included the manual workers, the unskilled employees and journeymen of various trades, such as tailors, cobblers, joiners, carpenters, bricklayers, house painters, blacksmiths, furriers, finishers (of semi-finished goods) and also those employed in small industries like tanneries, grain mills, sawmills, soap-boiling works, etc. Whether a Jew had earned his weekly expenses or not, he would put aside his work, go to the Turkish bath house or wash at home, put on a change of clothes, shine his shoes and go to the synagogue. On returning home he would find a well decked table with candles burning in their shining candlesticks.

The inferno started for the Jews of Lutsk in June 1941 with the occupation of the city by Hitler's army. The period of normality for the Jewish population of Lutsk was over. A life of misery, pain, repression, shame and abuse had begun. Indeed, the extermination was in process. Three thousand of their brightest and best men were murdered and the rest of the people were driven out of their homes into a ghetto area. For the next year the Jews were murdered, tortured and starved to death. Finally by August of 1942 every Jew was hunted down, and about 17,000 Jews were led to the Polanka Hill, on the outskirts of the city, and massacred.

The homes and businesses were plundered but the city was not destroyed. Jewish Lutsk was gone forever.

  

So, if you are getting a little more of a history lesson than you wanted, it is because these are the things I will want to remember someday. There are so many haunting stories that are a part of the history of this country. I am happy for their Independence of just twenty-one years and I am so grateful that they can learn freely about the gospel of Jesus Christ and once again have hope for the future.

 

We love going to the Lutsk Branch. The first counselor to the Mission President, President Malonos outlined a great plan for missionary work in the area which I am sure will bless the missionary work in that area. (Just let me know if you would like the lowdown.) Then we had a little quick lunch with the missionaries before we headed back to Kyiv. I might add that one of the Sisters in the branch has decided to become my beauty consultant. She is very concerned about my skin so gives me all sorts of natural beauty advice. I will be happy to share with anyone that is truly interested.

Pres. Malonos

Skin consultant

Elders Nielson and Terry, Sisters Webber and Von Stokkom

On the way home

Still winter

That takes us to the end of those two weeks and almost the end of February. We are having a wonderful mission and have truly been blessed in this little corner of the world. 

Quote from The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom:

“I know that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work He will give us to do.”

February 26, 2013