23 March - Another busy week

Grubbin at an Indian restaurant

We had another fun week that started off with a day full of service for a less active member here Chernivtsi. We spent a lot of time cleaning up around a massive orchard and helping them get to places they couldn't with their trees and stuff.

We had exchanges on Wednesday with the Zone Leaders on Wednesday. I go to spend another day with Elder Cluff and it was super good. Other than the fact that we spent an hour and a half at an Indian restaurant waiting for our food. But other than that it was a successful day.

Friday we had a super good English practice. Not very many people but it was still really fun. We played a game called "goes um, like uh". Someone gives you a random topic and you have to talk about it for an hour and a half without saying those words. Very hard but very fun.

It doesn't sound like a very busy week but there was a lot in between. I just don't have a ton of time right now.


But Love you all and have an amazing week!
Elder Kenyon Matua

Cool finding activity in town

Having dinner with some friends

Pizza at our Elders Quorum activity

18 March - Busy, busy

We're finding!

First off happy birthday to the boys back home! Love you Mica and Quinn, keep tearin up on the field.

We had a super busy week, packed full with lessons. I was blessed to come into an area where the elders had prepared so many people to teach. I'll share one funny story that happened to us this week. We called a less active member named Andriy to meet with him around 5 o'clock on Wednesday. So we were at the church waiting for him to come when one of our investigators, also named Andriy, walks in. We started freaking out thinking that we called the wrong Andriy and also we had planned for the wrong lesson and ya we were just panicking. We started talking to him and just decided to straight up ask him if we called him earlier that morning. We then said, "No I texted you asking to meet and you replied saying you could meet at 5". We were lost bruh. So we ran upstairs to ask the sisters if they had a lesson and they said yes. Come to find out that he (Andriy) texted our old phone (the one that the sisters now have) and that's why he was here and the sisters thought that it was one of their investigators because his number was not saved. BUT we decided to go ahead and have a lesson with him and if our less-active member shows up at 5 we will have to try to figure something out. I don't know if Heavenly Father just wanted to give us a little scare but it ended up being perfect. The other Andriy came an hour late so we had a lesson with him after our lesson with the other Andriy. MIRACLE! Sorry if that was confusing. Probably every other male you stop in this country will be named Andriy so I'm still confused most the time as well.

We had a really good exchange with the missionaries from  Khmelnytskyi. I got to spend the day with Elder Swasey. He is a great missionary and very, very, very energetic which kinda tired me out but we laughed all day and had tons of fun. We had a pretty successful finding activity while they were here. We put up pictures of temples and a lot of people stopped to look. Chernivtsi is actually sister cities with Salt Lake City so everybody here knows where that is.

More finding in the town square

Yesterday the district president came here to speak to us and hold a bunch of branch council business and all that fun stuff. I love hearing his testimony. It is amazing. I always look forward to hearing him speak when I know he is gonna be here. We also got to take the sacrament to a couple sisters in the branch and was able to offer a blessing for one of them. A really neat experience.

Sorry for such a long letter but it was a pretty good week. Learned a lot and can't wait to keep learning more. All of us missionaries are on the edge of our seats waiting for General Conference. None of us even know if there will be anything about missionaries but we are all anxious to know.


Have an amazing week love you all!
Elder Kenyon Matua

Having fun around town

Resting on the bus

Dis guy

Made our 72-hour kits

Happy to get a package from home - Thanks mom & dad

Yes! Some of my favorite things

Updates for 4 March and 11 March

Washed our clothes old skool

Transfers!

We got transfer texts! I will be serving as the new district leader in Chernivtsi! I will be serving in a trio with 2 trainees that are just finishing being trained by my trainer. I am excited to go to a new city and excited to see what serving in a trio is like.

We had a fun family home evening at the restaurant that one of the members sings at. She invited us all there, us and the Polischuk family, to have dinner and talk but unfortunately she wasn't singing. But it was still super fun.

I taught everyone how to play the card game kems on Tuesday. After years and years of playing it I still don't know if it's called kems or kemps but whatever. It was super fun and we all got into it. The last English practice here was fun and I am sad to be leaving such cool people.

Our washing machine was broken all week but luckily we had the other apartment and ran over there a few times to do laundry. The only bad thing is it takes almost 30 min to get there so it was a pain, but worth the clean clothes. We finally got ours fixed but we haven't even tried to see if it works. The repair man came in here and messed around with it for like 20 min and then left....but I'm sure it's fine....

Elder Stott finally won a game of Phase-10

We got some super super super exciting news yesterday. We will finally be getting smart phones!! Everyone is super pumped. Except of course the few that are leaving soon. We are all super excited to have 8 new missionaries in our zone and get  to know all of them.

I am so excited and so ready to go to a new city. I am sad to be leaving but also very happy, bittersweet.

Chernivitsi

Chernivtsi is a cold, bleak place

This week was very busy and very tiring. I got into Lviv last week, Monday night at 11:30 and then had to catch a train here to Chernivtsi at 4 am. Got in around 10:30 am and met my new companions Elder Taran, from Ukraine, and Elder Tuttle, from Highland Utah. It has already been interesting serving in a trio, makes cooking on a little tiny stove fun. Chernivtsi is a super cool city. I wish I was here in the summer because it will be twice as cool but its getting there.

We are working with some very cool people right now. One of them is named Andriy and he has a baptismal date for April 6. We had a lesson about the Word of Wisdom because he has a small problem with smoking but he hasn't smoked since last week and we are trying super hard to keep him going.

We had a good sacrament meeting, I spoke and both sisters spoke as well. The branch is very small. Only 18 people came to church. But that just means we got a lot of work to do. We did some Less-active stop-by's which went really well. One of them was about an hour out of the city and it was a really good stop by. We were able to take them the sacrament and they were so grateful for it. They can't really come to church every week because they can't afford a bus to get down here so it was really cool to see how grateful they were to receive the sacrament.

I am excited for whats ahead in this city. It'll take some getting used to especially because everyone starts every conversation in Russian. But might as well start learning now. Have an amazing week!!


Elder Kenyon Matua

Several Updates in One

25 February

It was a busy week this week full of exchanges. We actually only had two exchanges but we were hosting both here in Rivne and it was back to back days, but they were both awesome!

Visiting the sites and sounds of Rivne

Our first exchange on Wednesday was with the Zone Leaders. I got to spend the day with Elder Eller. We spent both exchanges outside doing A LOT of contacting but on Wednesday we decided to put a little punishment to whichever companionship got less IP's. Elder Eller and I won and we got to dump buckets of water on our companions. We also got to go to one of the members houses on Wednesday and have a short lesson with her and it went very well and got to help her with a couple of things she was struggling with. The Zone Leaders left Thursday and the Lutsk elders got here on Thursday. I got to spend the day with Elder Holden who is in training right now and he did awesome. Spent that day outside a lot as well and they ended up leaving right before we had English practice. 

We met with Katya on Sunday and had a super good lesson on Tithing and Fasting and she loved it. We were trying very hard to stress the point that she needs to get baptized sooner than later and that right now at such a hard time in her life it will help so much but she just can't until her divorce is final because her husband said no to her getting baptized. But she did say, "I don't care if the world disagrees with me getting baptized, I will get baptized." 

Transfer calls will be here on Friday and we can't wait to see what will be going down. Super excited!

18 February

Man, a super super crazy week especially with the new announcement. None of us know what to

Our Branch Valentine's party

think, whether or not we are super happy about it or we are kind of ehh. But doesn't matter what we think because it happened!

This week was a little rough because I got sick traveling home from L'viv but all is well now. We had some really fun activities this week including a branch Valentines party on Saturday. It ended up being pretty fun even though it was planned in such short notice. It was my first time helping make real authentic Ukrainian food too.

We had a good training from a member in Kyiv about finances and stuff as a branch because Elder Stott is in the Presidency. Super cool learning about finances and stuff but I am not excited for having to do it all myself after the mission...it's a little scary.

We received a couple referrals and we were able to contact them. One of them named Ihor ended up coming to church yesterday. He is a super neat guy and he liked church! He even asked us after sacrament how he can become a member of the church. Super cool! We are excited to work with him, the only small obstacle is he lives 45 min away so we will be working that out.

These are just some of the trays of eggs since serving together

I started reading Jesus the Christ and man is it a lot of info but I am already learning so much about our Savior on a whole new level. Super excited to continue reading that and actually understanding the New Testament.


Have a good week
Elder Kenyon Matua

Squad