Four Month Mark!

Привет!

It is another completely beautiful day here in Kyiv! Wow I am so blessed to be here! The weather literally is perfect right now, I'm kinda dying being inside right now, haha, I want to get out there!

Well friends and family I hope this letter finds you all well. I hope that you have had the opportunity to notice your blessings in your life and really dwell on the happy things. Remember life is to be enjoyed not endured and let me tell you, that is the truth! I love life! I feel so bad for people that have to dwell on every bad thing that happens to them. Life is life, bad things will happen, but take the bad things that happen and let them help you realize how amazing the good things really are! Like, wow, we are so blessed to be living at such an amazing time with so much exciting stuff. Take advantage of all the opportunities you have and be happy while you do so! That was a random rant, I hope someone needed that. Haha. Anyways, I feel that I have failed to keep you truly updated on my mission experience here in my lovely Харьковский so I will do a little catching up now.

First and foremost I love my mission more and more everyday. The other day was my 4 month mark and I started freaking out because time is going by way too fast! There are so many times here where I just want to pause and live in the moment for a little while, like I love my life, it's the best! The weather like I said earlier has been perfect lately, so gorgeous. We were walking down the street the other day and I told Sister Parish that I just wanted to put this weather in a jar and send it home to you so you could all feel it. But seeing as that isn't very possible I'll just talk about it in my email and make you all terribly jealous. Sorry! And guess what I LOVE Russian! Okay I've always loved Russian but you know when I first got here and didn't understand anything it was hard for me to truly appreciate it. But now that I'm speaking and understanding, like wow I love Russian! I remember when I opened my call how excited I was and the second I read "in the Russian language" my heart dropped. I never thought I would learn it, but I am learning it and I'm not enduring the learning but enjoying it! Yes! :) Heavenly Father has blessed me time and time again while I've been here and I never fail to recognize His hand in the blessings that I have. One of these new blessings being Зоя (Her name is pronounced Zoy-ya)

Зоя is a new investigator that we have. We met her last week on the street and she was SO nice! After just a few minutes of talking to her she gave us her number and said "Please come over, let me feed you and we'll talk more." Like, what the? That doesn't happen here! I remember walking away thinking she seemed so familiar but didn't really think anything of it. During our meeting the other night I put two and two together. She is Lexi. Like literally I am teaching my sister Lexi right now! Everything about her is Lexi, from the clothes that she wears to the way she speaks, the music she listens to, the food she cooked us, her hospitality, her house, and how artistic she is. Like it's kind of freaky how похожий, exactly alike they are. Lexi you are here in Ukraine with me! I love it! It is such a blessing! And Зоя has been such a blessing since we haven't had many investigators for a while, she is exactly what we needed to keep our spirits high. :)

We are also teaching another lovely young lady who is INCREDIBLE! She has taking lessons before and was ready to be baptized but her mom was insistent that she get married before she is baptized so now 2 years later she is planning the wedding for the end of August with a baptism celebration not long after. :) For our first lesson with her I wanted to talk about the Book of Mormon and commit her to read it everyday as I introduced the lesson and what we were going to talk about she said "Can I just say something?" She then went on to bear one of the sweetest testimonies of the Book of Mormon I have ever heard. Needless to say Наташа gave the lesson that day, and I was beyond strengthened from it. She is amazing and I'm so grateful for the opportunity we have to meet with and learn from her! Because I guarentee I am learning more from her than she is learning from me.

Our sweet investigators are the light of my life. I LOVE THEM! Please keep them in your prayers. Please continue to pray for cute Sister Parish and I as well, we know it's your prayers that keep us going and we are SO grateful for them!

I love you all more than words can say! I wish I could just show you a day in the life of Sister Lee, so you could understand the truly wonderful, spiritual adventure I am having, but for now these weekly letters will just have to do. I hope you can sense my love for this work in the words that I say because I really do love it. Being a missionary is the best, I mean my job is to bear my testimony everyday, and invite people to come unto Christ. Does it get any better than that? NO WAY! Being in beautiful Kyiv having the opportunity to speak Russian is quite the plus too. Wow, I have the best life.

Well, we'll end on that note. I hope I didn't make you all too jealous ;)

All of my love,
Your sister, Sister Lee

(Sister Lee is sending me her pictures in a different way, so they don't have her awesome descriptions right now. I'm hoping that will change, until then just enjoy the pretty pictures and imagine her what her captions would say.)