Updates: December 9th and 16th

9 DECEMBER

Surprise!!! Another exchange. This one actually was a surprise haha.

President Kumferman asked us to go to another city to help the elders out with their area. It was super unexpected but it went really well. We ended up getting on a train at 9 pm, got there at 3 am the next day, had the exchange, and then left that night at 9 pm, and got home at around 4 am. So ya, we were pretty exhausted.

The Hunters are awesome and had us over for dinner again. They reported on the invitation we gave them to find someone to invite to church while they were traveling around these last couple weeks. They ended up sharing tons of experiences and telling us about everyone they talked too. It was super cool.

We had a mini MTC for the youth in our branch and a branch from a different city. It was really fun. We even took them out contacting with us and it was hilarious. They did a really good job.

We were in the apartment the other night just sitting there and talking after lunch and I started juggling the volleyball with my feet. My comp thought it would be fun to try and steal the ball, but I'm too competitive and wouldn't let him have it, had to sauce him up a lil bit ya know? Ya no. We both went to kick the ball and let's just say I woke up the next morning with a black toe that doesn't wanna move. Lesson learned - don't play soccer in the house, especially when you should be
planning.

I was reminded of a quote from President Nelson this last week, "The joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives." I've probably shared this before because I love it so much. It's a good reminder that the joy we feel in life is totally in our control. When we were are focusing on the Savior and His Atonement, we will always feel joy. Yes, trials and tribulations will come but if we are FOCUSED on the Lord, we will still feel joy! We are promised that by a loving prophet of God! I hope you can all find time to recognize the joy in your life this week and recognize the source of it.

Elder Kenyon Matua

16 DECEMBER

I about died this week.

There was so much traveling. We left Monday morning at 5 am to get to Kyiv. We got there and met with some friends and had lunch and we had a good time. Tuesday we had MLC which ended up being 7 hours. We left right after, got on a train to Khmelnytskyi and got in around midnight. Then we walked all the way to the apartment which took half an hour and we were just dead. Then came home from K-town Thursday and had a few meetings right when we got back.

Exchanges in Khmelnytskyi went really well. I got to be with Elder Pitcher who is from close to home and we know a lot of the same people so we had a good time talking about it.

We got fed by a couple of members this week and it was awesome! We are starting to see a lot of growth in the branch and how much they want to help out.

We met with our friend Andriy again and it went really well. He had read 2 Nephi 2 and had some really good questions about it. We are excited to keep helping him learn more about our Savior.

I don't have tons of time but love you all and have a great week.

Love you all,
Elder Kenyon Matua

Never Ending Exchanges

This week was exhausting!

We went to Kyiv on Monday to do Exchanges with the AP's and I woke up super sick and ended up sitting inside all day and sleeping. It was not fun and I missed out on doing a last exchange with Elder Jack before he goes home tomorrow!

We had a great Thanksgiving dinner with the senior couple, the Leifers. They fed us really, really well and made us feel right at home. That night we also took a bus out to Lutsk to have exchanges with the elders there.

I got to spend the day in Lutsk with my buddy from Tennessee, Elder Crabtree. He is such an awesome missionary and we had a really good time together talking to people and visiting less-active members from their branch.

We started teaching a young guy named Andryi who was asking questions about English that I could not answer to save my life. Luckily when we started talking about the gospel we had a lot more answers for him. He shows pretty genuine interest so we are excited!

I've been reading talks from this past conference and something Sister Michelle Craig said really stood out to me. She said that in first Nephi 3:7 it says that the Lord will provide "a way" not "the way". It is hard sometimes because I find myself praying and asking for God to guide me, and then, without thinking, I immedietly imagine what the answer is gonna be. I falsely set an expectation for the answer I am going to receive. I know we have heard it a billion times but we have to understand He will provide "a way" and it will ALWAYS be "HIS way". We cannot, as SIster Michelle Craig says, "miss or dismiss personal errands from the Lord", because we are stuck on "our way" or "my way". He will provide a way and it will always be the right way. Find time this week to discover what "His way" for you is.


Love you all!
Elder Kenyon Matua

Updates: November 18th and 25th

Photo Bomb!

November 18th - Gone

Super, super short week calls for a super, super short weekly email. (Sorry mom!)

We finally got to sit down and have a lesson with our friend Emmanuel! We've played basketball with him so much and the Lord finally blessed us with an opportunity to sit down and teach him. It went really well and took a French Book of Mormon and I hope he reads it!

Our branch did a service activity this last Saturday. We bbq'd and cleaned all trash around the territory the church is on.

I got to have exchanges with the Elder from down under. Elder Thorton and I had a great day and he reminded me of a lot of Aussie slang that my mate Bailey Wilson used at home. It was a good day and we got a lot done.

Read a quote from Neil L. Maxwell this last week, "The star at Bethlehem was in orbit long before it was shone". The Lord has blessings in store for you and even though it may not seem like it, and even if it feels like you have been going through the same struggles forever now, the blessings will come. He has promised you so much; have faith in Him; have faith in His plan. He loves you and don't give up on Him.


Love you all,
Elder Kenyon Matua

November 25th - Happy Thanksgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving as a zone this last week. We had a really big dinner with everyone and sang a lot of hymns together and unfortunately heard a departing testimony from my good friend Elder Eller. He will be missed. We watched the new Christ Child video and if you haven't watched it go right now because it's amazing.

We had exchanges this last week with Chernivtsi and I was with Elder Packer who is a new missionary. It was so fun and I learned so much about him and he is awesome. His great grandpa is actually Boyd K. Packer so I got to hear some good stories. And his father was the last mission president in this mission! He is such a great kid and I am excited to see him grow.

We had a pretty intense lesson with one of our friends Zhenya. He has been investigating the church for about 6 years now and he is an amazing kid. His family is more active than a lot of actual members and they aren't even members! He knows everything is true but is just struggling to realize that he knows enough. He just wants to know everything but we all know how hard that is. I love the kid and know he will come around sooner or later.

President Kumferman reminded me of a quote from Elder Niel L. Andersen, "Obedience brings freedom". Think about that and email me your thoughts on that!


Love you all and have a great week!
Elder Kenyon Matua

Updates: 4 November and 11 November

4 November
Traveling (again), Exchanges in Ivano-Frankivsk, MLC and the temple!

Sorry folks but this one is going to be very short because I forgot till now.

We had a really long week full of a lot of traveling and not a lot of sleeping but that's ok because that means we working hard right? I hope.

Had exchanges in Ivano-Frankivsk and I got to work with my old companion Elder Petersen! It was really fun and we got a lot done. We had a lesson with an investigator of theirs who is getting baptized soon and he is awesome! We also got to meet the new missionaries again and get to know them better and they are awesome!

We went straight from Ivano to Kyiv for MLC. We got to do baptisms and a session at the temple the day before though and it felt so good. I also got to see a returned missionary and it was so funny and so good to see him again.

It was a really good week and we are just trying to soak up every minute we have here. Time is going by wayyyyyyy to fast and I don't like it. I love this work and the blessings it brings!!! So great!

11 November
President Goldens visit, Investigators and the Funny Things They Say

The stress is over!!

This week took so much preparing and stressing. We had been getting ready for a couple months now for the area president, President Golden, and when the beginning of this week hit, I realized how much more we still needed to prepare. We had heard so many stories about how strict he would be so we had everything perfect. The good thing is, it all went well. Everything went the way it was supposed to and I was so happy. President Kumferman and President Golden addressed us and we got a lot of counsel and guidance from them. President Golden also held a fireside for our branch members here in Lviv and it went really well.

We had exchanges this week with the elders from Rivne. It went really well and we had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the weather is getting worse and worse. And Elder Laney and I also had four lessons planned for that day and none of them went through, so that was pretty depressing. We got in contact with all of them again though and set another time.

We finally got to meet with our good friend Artiem. He has been meeting with the missionaries for 2 years almost and has just had so many difficulties with baptism. It started with his parents being very against the church, which is still holding him back now. But, on the lesson, Elder Taran bore a very strong testimony of his path to baptism because he is only a convert of about 3 years. He told Artiem that his parents were against him being baptized but he prayed for help and for them to have a change of heart and SLOWLY but surely they started to change. That opened Artiem up a little more to talk about his parents and he shared with us how they have been changing as well. It's very slow, but they are changing. So we invited him to pray and fast for strength to ask his parents again and he accepted and seemed excited to do so again.

Our friend from the Congo, Emmanuel, came to church! I really enjoyed it and everyone made him feel so welcomed. It was perfect because it just happened to be the day that our friends, the Hunters, from Utah, spoke! It was hilarious because after Brother Hunter spoke, Emmanuel leaned over to me and said, "Matua, is no one gonna clap? That was amazing!" I couldn't stop laughing.

There was a verse that President Golden kept bringing up and that was Alma 7:7 which says, "For behold, I say unto you there be many things to come; and behold, there is one thing which is of more importance than they all -- for behold, the time is not far distant that the Redeemer liveth and cometh among his people. "

It is so important that we take the things of God seriously. If we take them lightly, the sacred things and gifts He gives us, He will take them away. We have to understand the most important thing in our lives, or rather who is most important in our lives  and that is our Savior, Jesus Christ. We have to understand that His coming is nigh at hand. And we especially have to understand that God is preparing us and using us to prepare those around us. God works miracles through ORDINARY people just like you and just like me. He is preparing you to share the gospel with those around you, so do it!


I love you all and hope you have a great week!
Elder Kenyon Matua

October Updates

2 October
Exchanges in Rivne, Lessons and Elder McConkie

It was a crazy busy week!

We had exchanges in Rivne, the city I was trained in! And it was even cooler because I was back with my MTC comp and it was cool to see how much we have both grown. We had a really good exchange. A sister in the branch there had just returned home from her mission in Eastern Ukraine and we talked a lot about the missionaries I know serving over there and we had so much fun sharing stories.

We also had exchanges with the AP's. I was with Elder Lindsey who is from AF. It was so fun talking about all the people we both knew from back home. It was a really good exchange and it was really nice getting to know our AP's and getting so much help from them.

We had a lesson with Bogdan who I mentioned last week is preparing to be baptized! He is still comin a long strong just hard finding time to meet and come to church. He still has a very strong desire to be baptized it is just going to take some pray and fasting together to help him find time.
 
It for sure feels like fall around here, we have been getting rain dumped on us everyday for a couple hours a day and it is getting cold.

Stumbled upon this funny but powerful quote the other day from Bruce R. McConkie and I love it. The gospel is so simple yet so incomprehensibly extraordinary. Don't get tied up in life, stick to the basics and all will work out.  "So often questions like this are asked: “I know it is not essential to my salvation, but I would really like to know how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and if it makes any difference whether the pin is made of brass or bronze?” There is such a thing as getting so tied up with little fly specks on the great canvas which depicts the whole plan of salvation that we lose sight of what the life and the light and the glory of eternal reward are all about. There is such a thing as virtually useless knowledge, the acquisition of which won’t make one iota of difference to the destiny of the kingdom or the salvation of its subjects."

Love you all!

21 October
Utah Couple, International Basketball and a New Companion

Super, duper busy week. So much happened and it went by sooooo fast.

We have an amazing new couple that moved here for a couple months from Utah. They had us over for dinner and it was awesome. They are such neat people and so eager to help the branch here and do missionary work.

We had a lesson with Yuri, a guy that walked into the church a couple weeks ago and it went really well. We were worried going into it because the first time we met with him, all he talked about was the bible and how it's all we need. We discussed the Restoration and he listened closely and asked some sincere questions. He messaged us the day after and told us the he will give the Book of Mormon a shot!

We played basketball with some of our friends from the Congo and Nigeria. While we were there a kid from Beijing walked up and started playing with us. I got to whip out the little Chinese I remember and it was really cool.

I will be staying in Lviv this next transfer and I will be serving with Elder Taran, my old companion from Chernivtsi! It'll be really exciting and a good transfer. It will also be a really busy one.

Love you all and have a fantastic week.

28 October
More Basketball, Fall Festival and New Missionaries!

Our basketball team made up of one kid from Ukraine, one from the Congo, one from Beijing and one terrible baskteball player from Utah.

We had a really good week! It was mine and Elder Taran's first week together and it was busy, busy. We found some really cool people and played basketball with them a couple times this week. They are super cool kids and we hope we can get a chance to sit down and talk to them. A few of them even came to our banch activity we had on Saturday.

It was a fall festival kind of activity and we played a lot of games and ate some good food. We had a good amount of people come from English and the members did a great job of becoming friends with them. One of the boys we are teaching, Bogdan, came! It was so good to finally see him because he has been so busy. He told us he is still going to be super busy but we are praying that he will find time to meet with us.

We got 4 new missionaries this last week! There is one sister and 3 elders in our zone. The elders all came through Lviv and spent the night before heading off to their cities. It was really cool to meet them and I am so excited for them to get started.

I have been studying and trying to find ALL the names of Christ in the scriptures and man, there are sooooooo many!! In just one hour I find 53 names that the Savior is called by. One of my favorites has always been the Prince of Peace and while I was studying these the other day, I found another one which was The Founder of Peace. Not only is He the Prince and perfect example of peace but He is the Founder of it! All good, joy, happiness, miracles and so on, all come from the Savior Jesus Christ. I love Him and I love this work.


Have an amazing week yall!
Elder Kenyon Matua