On Saturday night Sister Larson and I went to the opera house in Odessa center (literally 50 steps from our branch building--so cool) to see Katerina, which is a Ukrainian opera based on one of Taras Shevchenko's poems and it was SO COOL. It had traditional Ukrainian dancing and of course ended in a betrayal closely followed by a suicide (because operas). Before the opera we went to a Relief Society activity where we learned how to make Hawaiian haystacks with Sister Anderson, then went into Odessa center, got dinner and ate on the Potemkin Stairs (look it up--they are so cool!). Saturday was a great day to say the least.
We also had a lesson with Alina and we had Sasha, our branch president's son, help us on it and it was a really solid lesson (even in a cafe with boderline-inappropriate music videos playing in the background. Living 45 minutes from your branch building is SO hard. I never knew how important church buildings were before I got here! But we are hopefully going to get our own building in four months! And then we can always have our lessons there. Woot.) Alina agreed to keep the Word of Wisdom and although she won't be ready for our original baptism date, we're hoping in 2 weeks she'll be baptized! She is just super hard to meet with because she's in university right now, but man she is so prepared and ready.
We also had a lesson with Zeena and a member, Sister Raya (who is a literal angel and if every church member was like her we would have zero problems. Ah I love her to death), and any lesson with Sister Raya is guarenteed to be awesome and this lesson was no exception. It started a little rough though. We talked about the Plan of Salvation and when we talked about how we know that God has a body of flesh and bones, Zeena was kind of shocked and didn't want to continue because her whole life she has been taught that God is a spirit that we can't comprehend or know. It was pretty uncomfortable for a little, but then we bore our testimonies and read some scriptures about God and talked about it together and wow you could feel the change in the room. The spirit was so strong and Zeena actually felt peace about the fact that God does have a body like we do. It was such a good lesson and we could not have done it with without Sister Raya. She is so golden, and so is Zeena. She had such sincere questions and we invited her to be baptized once she knows that this is the true church and that Joseph Smith was a prophet and she said that of course she will! She hasn't had a confirmation yet but we fasted for her yesterday and I know she will recieve it. She told Sister Larson and me after the lesson that with girls like us, how could the church not be true? Ah I almost cried she is the sweetest. She also told us that when we met her on the street all those weeks ago, she was in a really bad place and was starting to not believe in God and was even considering suicide because she felt so alone and unloved. God knows and loves each of us and I feel so humbled to have been led to her. She is so special.
Some other stuff from this week:
-Babushkas are the BEST and we were shopping at the gorcery store and it was pretty warm outside so when we came into the store I took my jacket off, but literally the minute I did a little Babushka came up to me as I was picking out apples and told me that I was going to get sick because I didn't have a jacket! Haha it was great and so I put my jacket back on (bc getting sick is the worst!) and the babushka was very pleased.
-We made lemon bars this week for a lesson with a member and one of our investigators but they bailed last minute and while we were sitting at the tram stop thinking about what to do instead, a guy came up to us and told us he knew who we were (which never happens because people here never come up to you and start talking unless they're drunk or crazy), we were "Those missionary people from the Chruch of Jesus Christ of the Entire World of Saints" haha. He was pretty close. He ended up being a really nice guy and we gave him a lemon bar (which ended up being SO good even with our super bad oven) and we started talking to him about our church. He told us that he met with the elders five years ago. It was cool how a cancelled appointment turned into running into someone else that we could share our message with (and our lemon bars).
-The clothing store that Zeena works at turned into a baklava store and we visited her after church and she gave us some free baklava (because her boss loves us haha). It was funny though because the whole store is decked out with paintings of Italy and it's all Italy-themed, but they sell baklava, which is definitely Turkish haha.
-We are also teaching a girl named Anna who is the greatest and just a really good, pure person. She came to church with us yesterday and we taught her the restoration lesson and gave her a tour of the building. She loved learning about family history and how families can be together forever. She is so prepared and we're kind of racing against the clock to teach her because she goes back to the cruise ship in a few weeks.
This week was busy and I've noticed that when we're really busy we are always a lot happier and more filled with the spirit. It is not just spiritual stuff and miracles galore, but we did see a lot of that this week and I will be forever grateful for them, especially when things are hard (because there are always hard times, no matter what's happening). I love this work and I love the people here. Thank you everyone for your emails and prayers for the people we are teaching. I love you!! The church is true! Have a great week.
Love,
Sister Kropelnicki
With Zeena at the clothes-store-turned-baklava store where she works
At the opera
A special brunch our branch put on for Women's Day
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