Hello everyone and happy Monday from Dnipro! Last Saturday we got a call from President Wirthlin and he told us that I'll be coming to Dnipro to be Sister Training Leader there and Sister Dehart will be training and Sister Chen will be staying in Kharkiv and will serve with Sister Butler--my half-daughter (I trained her for one transfer before being transferred to Kharkiv!). It was really hard to leave Kharkiv and the people there, and looking back it was a really great last week there (Nastia got back from Poland and we met with a sister in our branch whose husband is a non-member and it was a great first lesson! The spirit was really strong and we planned another lesson and they're going to invite some awesome members to be in on the lesson. I love Kharkiv and it will always have a special place in my heart. I am so grateful for the time I was given to serve there and I will never forget it!
Real quick recap of this week. It was honestly a weird but super cool week. My new companion is Sister Sowards and we are both new in Dnipro center ("whitewashing" for all you RM's) so it's been kind of crazy because there is tons to do! Especially because we are the only sisters here and there are 6 elders! We're like two districts, and our district is with the AP's (Assistants to the President) but we're also like one big district at the same time so it's really fun!
This week was full of meetings with President and doing a train the trainers with all the missionaries that are training. This transfer we got, wait for it, 6 NEW SISTERS! It was so awesome! Just to give you an idea, before they came we had about 15 sisters in our mission! I felt so lucky to be here in center to be able to welcome them and get to know them, they are all so great, fresh out of the MTC (missionary training center) and ready to serve! Haha during orientation they were all kind of nodding off, but they were troopers and made it through the day. We had a few other meetings for training new leaders and then we are trying to get a handle on our new area. It's been fun and crazy and a little overwhelming but we're learning a lot and Dnipro is starting to feel a little more like home :)
We had English practice, district council, saw Sister Shepherd (!!) for the first time in a few months, got to see President and Sister Wirthlin's apartment when we went to pick up Sister Bevzuk since she went home on Tuesday and the Wirthlins do a departing missionary dinner and testimony and Sister Sowards and I got to sit in on their testimony meeting and it was so cool! And then super early Tuesday morning we said goodbye to sister Bevzuk (sad, but wow I am definitely seeing that girl again, I made her promise to show me around Kiev when I come back to Ukraine!).
Sunday we got to meet our branch! There are so many kids I was in shock!! And I played the piano for sacrament and then a member asked if I could play in primary and it was so fun! The kids are adorable, I want to take them all home with me! They called me their "aunt!" We also met with Katia after church who is a recent convert, and then a couple in the branch invited us over to their apartment for dinner! So nice! We contacted on the way to their home and we met a super awesome lady, Lena and she was super interested and really wanted my Book of Mormon and we exchanged numbers and she wants to meet tomorrow! Woo.
I could write a book about what's happened, but this was a very condensed version and if you are dying to know the rest, you're just going to have to wait ;)
This week I've been reflecting a lot on my mission so far, basically a year ago this week I was the one getting off the plane in a strange place where people spoke a crazy language that I thought I would never learn and now I'm on the other side and doing things that 12 months ago I thought were impossible to do. It's cool to see the progress and everything that happened in between. I am so grateful for my mission and for this new chapter of it.
Love you all and have a wonderful week!
Love,
Sister Kropelnicki
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