Elder Christopher Russell, Donetsk Ukraine Mission July 2010 - July 2012

Christopher Russell was found worthy to serve a proselyting mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints, and received his mission call from President Thomas S. Monson to serve in the Ukraine, Donetsk Mission.

Chris will spend the first twelve weeks of his mission at the Mission Training Center in Provo Utah learning, Russian.

On October 13, 2010 he will start his journey to the Ukraine.

Monday, June 6, 2011

4-25-2011 Easter Traditions & Russian to French Translation

Hello Family & Friends!
Trying to explain Easter traditions in Russian is hard. We have a less active who always asks us about American traditions and we tried to explain Easter traditions t to her but I don't think she understood all of it.

We ran into someone this week who came up to us and we were able to talk to him. He thanked us for our service.

Elder Loveridge was sick this week and Elder Kontadslijo was in Bulgaria so we went to the other apartment, and I made cookies while he slept.(From the Mom, it seems that when a missionary gets to around their year mark, they have to travel to Bulgaria to get their Visia's renewed; they travel with their MTC groups to Bulgaria; it's not clear if they have to stay overnight there or if they can do everything in a day trip) We don't have an oven.

We taught a black Catholic, which was interesting, and at the end he prayed with us. Then as we were visiting less actives one of them invited us in and we talked with him. Apparently, he is now Harry Krishna and he tried to "open our minds" to what he believes...which is everything. I just hope he wasn't Harry Krishna when the missionaries baptized him.

Easter was fun. They paint eggs and they bake a cake things called a paska like pascal and they can only eat them on Easter or the following Week.(This is basically a dense bread with raisens baked in it and dusted with powdered sugar)

One member fed us and another told us where to buy the Paskas. They also crack hard boiled eggs together and whoever has a crack, or a bigger crack, loses and I believe gives the egg to the other person. The best part of all this is that On Easter you say "Christ has risen" to say hello to people and they respond with "in truth he has risen". That was fun saying to people.

They don't have a bunny which made it really hard to explain our traditions to members.

A kid near our apartment asked us to play soccer. We talked with him a bit about the Book of Mormon since apparently somebody gave one to him.

We also sa one kid sitting on the back connecter of a trolley-car which was moving, since he didn't want to have to pay for the ride.

On Sunday our investigator, Solmon who speaks French, finally came to church. It meant I was translating from Russian to French for 3 hours which just about killed me, but I'm really glad he came. I only hope that he didn't come just because the place where he works was closed on Easter. We'll see what happens.

Love,
Elder Russell

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