Winter Wonderland E-mail -- February 4, 2013

Hello!

Well, everything is alright health wise, maybe that helped me overcome something that might have befallen me. I'm always really touched to know that there are people praying for me. You know, we know that there are our families, all primary kids everywhere, that sort of thing but it's really nice to just know that there are people thinking of you. Life here in Ukraine has actually been relatively warm. Around 30-35 all this week. I'm hoping that this year we'll escape from the normally terribly cold February. Just about everything melted with the rain this week but then we woke up this morning and we're back to a white winter wonderland.

Big news in our missionary work, our investigator who is 19 came to church yesterday and brought a friend and bore her testimony in front of our 250 member ward. Plus her family, younger sister, and parents went to church in her hometown, our church! Her mom even said that she (the mom) needs to get baptized! So we're hoping that will spur our investigator into actually doing something herself. This is the one I've been meeting with for the last six months. What's interesting though is that Sister Ebeling and I were talking and we came to the conclusion that even if she never gets baptized maybe it all happened so that her parents could find the church. Interesting how the Lord works.

As for transfers I'm going for another one here in Kyiv with Sister Ebeling. I'm really excited about this, honestly. I love the members here and the work, it's hard, and draining but honestly the hard part is always that desire to just see more of your mission and not feeling like you're stuck. But there are definitely worse places to be stuck. Plus I'm building some great friendships here in the ward, and when you've been in one place for a long time they seem to trust you more to do your work. Just in the last few weeks we've really built relationships with the Bishop and Relief Society President. They're all so amazing!

Sister Ebeling and I are doing great, I've determined that she and I have known each other for a long time and that our friendship is going to last long after this life. We just get each other. We're both very opinionated which means life isn't always sunshine and roses, but it is always fun. I love her so much, we're really more like sisters. We also just have the best time together, we're always laughing about something. Like this week we had the most awkward day ever. I don't remember what happened but all of these really awkward conversations and experiences with members kept happening. Also even though we really planned this week all of our plans would fall through and we'd end up doing something else. I think the Lord gives us these weeks to remind us that it really is His work.

Life's good, the work's good, We just keep moving forward.

LOVE YOU!

--
Sister Daniel