Carbon monoxide and rainstorms

Dear Family,

What's up?  Glad to hear it.

So, this week has been pretty interesting to say the least.  On Wednesday our carbon monoxide detector went off in our apartment.  We're not really sure what the deal was.  We cleaned it off and did everything we could think of to minimize the threat, but the dang thing just kept going off.  It totally freaked out Elder Rooney.  Long story short, we've been living over at the other elders' apartment for about the last week.  That's been fun, but I am very excited to get back to my apartment and not be cramped up in their tiny apartment.  

In other excitement from this week, I witnessed probably the craziest rainstorm I have ever seen in my life on Friday.  Elder Rooney and I went out to find a less active lady and on the way back we noticed that the sky was a deep shade of green.  Humidity mixed with increasing winds and rain started up.  We found a trolley bus and got on just in time to avoid the craziness of the storm.  Rain whipping around like nobody's business, lightning like crazy and trees being blown apart.  The trolley bus stopped because a tree had crashed down on its power line further up the line.  We just waited it out for 40 minutes then walked through the wreckage.  It was awesome!  I got some fun pictures of that.  Luckily, I think that most people were safe. 

 

This is our district, soaked after a crazy rainstorm.

We have continued meeting with R and he has really good questions.  He thinks so deeply about the doctrine and really tries to internalize it.  I was really proud of one answer I gave to him.  I'll try to relate it to you.  He asked how God can be a just and fair judge if he loves us.  He drew up a diagram of a courtroom with God the Father as the judge, Jesus as the advocate and Satan as the prosecutor (not completely accurate, granted, but not important for his question).  His point was that God shares sympathies with Jesus and us, so how can he be completely fair?  Can't he just repeal the very laws that he set?  I answered with relating it to the story of Daniel and the lion's den.  Just to recap, Daniel gets all buddy buddy with the king and even makes it up to being his right hand man.  Then corrupt men convince the king to make a law that makes it illegal to pray to any man or god but the king.  These same corrupt men catch Daniel in the act of praying and take him to the king demanding justice.  Now King Darius is in a bind.  He loves Daniel and wants only the best for him, but the he had violated the law.  True, he could repeal the law then and there, but that would not change the fact that Daniel had gone against the law.  The only just thing would be to punish him according to the law- no more, no less.  Relating this to God, God will not punish us beyond what He has to because He loves us.  But He will dish out punishment as is required of the laws set in place.  R was pretty blown away and said, "Wow, good answer.."  That's probably one of the best compliments I've gotten my whole mission.  I hope that soon R can be satisfied with his current knowledge and accept to be baptized.

Life has been pretty good.  I've been sleeping on a couch for a week, but that's okay.  My pre-mission life prepared me for just such events.  Oh, and Rooney and Hardy in my district are going to Armenia this week, so I'm going to be temporary companions with Elder Coakwell.  Yeah!  I'm actually pretty excited, he's a good guy.  And we will get to run two areas at the same time.  Multitask, go!  

One last comment- Rooney and I have gotten really good at scheduling multiple lessons for the same time.  A couple days this week we have had four or so people planned to meet with us at the church building at 7 PM.  By the time 7 PM rolls around, enough people have cancelled or just not shown up that we get just one lesson in.  So far it hasn't come back to bite us, so that's good, right?

Thank you for listening/reading.  Enjoy your American Summer, everyone. 

Love,

Elder Brandon Porter

Below:  I found the Beatles!

 Me and G - I love that guy!

Me with my district from Lugansk

Be careful what you wish for- you just might get it!

Hey all!

Well, this has been a pretty great week missionary-wise.  I'll start with the sad news and work my way up, so as to leave you all with good warm feelings at the end of the message.

Elder Hales is getting transferred this week.  This took us all by surprise.  He and I were absolutely sure that we were going to get to serve another one together, especially since we've been together in a threesome, which is totally different than working in a twosome.  I'm still holding out for a transfer with him in the future.  Elder Rooney will be staying with me, which is kind of funny since he was supposed to have left a month and a half ago.  Oh, craziness.  You probably don't appreciate how largely these changes impact my life.  Doesn't matter.  When I get home I won't care about that either.  Anyways.

As you know, we now hold English Conversation Nights here.  I had a pleasant surprise this last week when someone brought a guitar with them.  His name is T, and he looks like Justin Timberlake.  We talked for a bit about music, then he said, "Alright, you want to try it out. Let's go."  So we went to the next room and jammed for a bit.  People were in and out listening and singing along with us.  Moments like that so awesome.  I love jamming.  Little tender mercy for me!

We had a great lesson the other day, too.  It was with a man named R; 24 years old with a wife and small child.  He had a lot of deep questions for us about the nature of God, and he agreed to let us start our discussion off with telling him about where our message comes from, aka the Restoration.  It was the most powerful I have ever seen the Restoration story impact anyone since I've gotten to Ukraine.  He was utterly blown away by it and further surprised that we wanted to give him our book for free.  His final question was that he saw a brochure of ours that asked "Can my family live together forever?" and he asked what the answer is to that question.  We told him yes, of course.  He got really excited and told us that he's going to bring his wife the next time he comes.  All in all, great lesson.

The last little miracle of the week was during contacting.  Just before we went out contacting, Elder Coakwell (on split) grabbed a bunch of brochures to hand out.  During my prayer to leave the apartment, I asked for us to be able to find someone who will read that brochure, read through the Book of Mormon, and get baptized.  When Elder Coakwell got down to his last 5, he handed it to a man that stopped in his tracks and read the brochure in its entirety.  He then looked up and said, "When was Jesus on the American continent?"  So we gave a first lesson right there on the street and he gratefully took a Book of Mormon, excited to learn more.  We have yet to find out if the rest of my prayer will be answered, but I feel like it will.  Be careful what you wish for- you just might get it!

That's my week in a nutshell.  I hope you enjoyed your week concurrent to mine.  I love you all and I will talk to you again next week.  Same time, same place.

Love,

Elder Brandon Porter

"Made me feel like I'm actually making a difference!"

Family,

First off, Happy Mothers Day!  Woot!  I hope you're all treating Mom very well for me this week.  Not that you shouldn't be nice the rest of the year... but right now especially!

I'm going to be talking to you all this next Thursday, so this email will be slightly shorter than usual.  I just wanted to relate a little bit of an experience from yesterday.

We had a District Conference this last Sunday.  There's a new Eastern European President, and he's touring around a bit to get to know the missions he's over, and this Conference was all of the branches under the Donetsk District coming together.  This was such an amazing experience.  If you didn't already know, all of the branches that I've served in fall under this district, so I got to see literally every member of the church that I've ever been around in the Ukraine.  It's so nice to go and talk to people I met while in the Office and find that they have some sort of good memories from my serving with them, which shows me that I succeeded in balancing my time between Office work and missionary work well.  It was awesome to see Lugansk there too. Just in the four months since I left, there's some visible growth in the members.  Z, one of the youth, seems like she's grown up a bit in maturity, and the new branch president is doing well.  

The person I was most excited to see was H, the Nigerian member in Lugansk.  He found me and gave me a big hug.  He told me that when I left he had gotten all prepared to just be forgotten by me since I was no longer serving around him, but that when I sent him that English hymnbook he felt like he had a real friendship with me.  I talked with him a bit and found out that his plan is to start up a medical practice over in Germany when he graduates, which will be just after I leave next year.  He's studying German now.  In Ukraine. Go figure.  I definitely am going to be life friends with Gabriel.  And I got really excited to find out he'll be in Germany.  We discussed plans of visiting him when he's settled there.  I'm excited!

So yeah, good weekend there.  I got very pumped up seeing everyone.  Made me feel like I'm actually making a difference!  Yay!  

Well, that's my big thing this week.  We'll talk more this Thursday.  Can't wait!

Love,

Elder Brandon Scott Porter, the first

A week of miracles!

Hey all,

So this has been a week of miracles.  Specifically Thursday.  Honestly, I can't think of anything else at the moment that was more memorable than Thursday.  There was just a string of events that dominoed one right into the next.  We started our day with being yelled at for singing hymns on the streets.  That part wasn't so miraculous.  But after a day on the streets, we had a lesson in the evening with S and J.  They enjoy speaking English with us, and we weren't exactly sure what their spiritual progression was like.  We had an amazingly spiritual lesson about the Plan of Salvation that they just ate up like "Yeah!  This makes so much sense.. THAT'S what happened!"  Kind of that deal.  Pretty awesome.  We're going to invite them to be baptized this next week.  After the lesson S invited to drive us home.  We were going to say no because we had another half hour to walk the streets and find people, but we decided that we should give S the opportunity to do service for us.  We were grateful, he's an awesome guy.  But it only took about two minutes to get home, so we decided to make some rounds near our home before heading in.  The first people we stop turns out to be a young family that was extremely interested in the Book of Mormon and wants to meet sometime to discuss.  They were way cool to talk to.  Then continuing on, the next guy was a Christian wanting to discuss the doctrine sometime- and he lives in our building!  We were on a roll.  I mean, in case you didn't know, we spend obscene amounts of time trying to find people with absolutely no avail most days.  This was miraculous all in itself.  But then we ran across Paul.

Did I tell you about R already?  He had met with missionaries before, so we decided to call him up.  He was amazing!  He's got a crazy story, involving getting framed for fraud and getting sent to jail for eight years.  Crazy stuff.  We found him on the street as soon as we left the last contact.  He was a little drunk and just kept repeating "I always see you guys at these times.. Always.."  Pretty much, he's seen missionaries at every extremely tough time in his life apparently.  Tonight he was in a mess where he owes 50,000 dollars to a very powerful man here, and he was freaking out.  We could do nothing but comfort him, but that was more than enough.  He was so thankful when we said a prayer with him and walked him home, he said it felt like everything was going to be okay now.  So awesome.

That was pretty cool.  Besides that..  Did I tell you that I'm District Leader here?  It's pretty interesting/humbling to be in charge of missionaries' spiritual and physical well-being.  I've been trying to incorporate the whole idea of Socratic teaching into our meetings.  The best teacher is yourself, right?  And as part of that DL duty, I get to interview this girl, K, for baptism tonight.  I'm so pumped for that!  From what I can tell, she is super ready, so I don't envision any problems coming from that.  

English groups got started up again, by the way.  They are great!  We just sit for an hour and a half with kids that want better English and chat.  It's great!  And more often than not, the conversation inevitably turns to why we're here as missionaries.  They actually WANT to know!  If you can't tell, I'm super pumped about that.  Every Friday at 7!  Also along with that, we have enough youth here in Petrovsky to have a successful youth night!  Like Mutual. I think I underestimated the power of a strong youth foundation at church before.  It really adds life to the branch.  Compared to Lugansk where pretty much all of the youth left this last year for school or marriage or whatnot.  It's nice here, in short.

So, I'm loving Petrovsky.  It's a great place and, like everywhere else, it has great people in it.  Life's good. Not to mention having two awesome Elders as simultaneous companions.  Life is gooooood.  Anyways, I love you all!

Til next week

Elder Brandon Porter

Petrovsky is awesome!

Hey all,

First, I have to say that Petrovsky is probably the best functioning branch in the mission.  Oh wow, it actually took me by surprise.  I thought that Center Donetsk was doing well, but this one's amazing.  There is a ton of active youth here and all of the members seem to pull their weight in their callings.  Amazing.

So, my transfer with Elder Keith Perry ended this week.  Dang.  He was probably the closest I've come to having a companion that I could relate to on practically every level.  We had a good time.  But the good times are not over.  I was sent to Elder Hales over in Petrovsky, as I already said last week.  He's a great example in how he decided to come back out on the mission after having been given the option of ending his mission honorably due to medical problems.  Plus we can discuss movies and music like none other, and common ground is priceless on the mission.  He and I were already pretty good friends due to dealing with his medical issues while I was in the Office.  But it gets even better- we are in a threesome with his previous companion, Elder Rooney.  One of the funniest kids I know.  Threesomes are lots of fun.  The load is lessened for everyone and it's a lot easier to keep the mood light and it's even easier to talk to people.  Having a three person blitz while walking down the road is a lot more likely to get a real conversation than just two people going at it.  It's great.  Rooney is waiting for his companion  to get back from America after medical leave (which is unconfirmed as to whether he'll even come back, so Rooney may be with us all transfer.. we'll see).

One of the craziest things to me is that suddenly I am about the oldest missionary in my district, in terms of time on the mission.  I went from youngest to oldest.  Elder Hales is in his fourth transfer, and the other elders here are Coakwell, who is training, and Withers, who is the trainee.  I'm in my seventh, which makes my time on the mission almost more than all of their combined.  So weird.  Along with all this, I have been assigned to be District Leader here.  I don't know, I guess that's probably a lot weirder to me than I can convey here.  For those of you that don't know, that means that I am in charge of the missionaries in our district, so I lead our meetings, interview the investigators for baptism, and I talk with the branch council about what help we can provide them.  I'm determined to be a good leader here.  I think I'm off to a good start, so that's good.

Being here has shown me that my Russian is way better than I had thought.  We had a couple experiences already the last couple of days that were just kind of crazy.  One was yesterday.  We passed a group of drunken older men who motioned for us to come over.  One of them started talking to Elder Rooney about the church, trying to mock him in his words, and the other four took me aside and started barraging me with questions.  One was totally hammered, waving his cigarette in my face and yelling (in English) "My name is.. my name!"  It was.. interesting.  Each of them were totally ridiculing us in every way they could think of without getting violent.  To be totally honest, I was ticked.  They were sitting there blowing cigarette smoke in our faces and calling us foul names and just bagging on the Church and our calling.  But my mind went back to the quiet dignity of Christ when people ridiculed Him.  He didn't deserve any of that, but he was calm and collected as he responded.  I mimicked this method as best as I could, not getting outright mad or anything.  Finally the one with the moustached face softened and he started apologizing, telling me how they were all just drunk and they're not really like this and how he'd love to talk some other time sober.  I wasn't able to get his number since another drunkard then booted me away, but that was a pretty cool change there.  All through the experience they kept asking me where I was from.  I kept telling them "America" and they were like, "No really, what city?  Donetsk?  Kharkov?.."  They couldn't grasp that I wasn't Russian.  I guess that's a gift that I've been given here.  Lots of people assume that I'm Russian.  Hey, I'll take that over being called a stupid American any day.

The other experience this week came just a few minutes afterwards, actually.  We were soon after stopped by a man with a greased back rat of hair carrying a bunch of bags.  He tells us that he talked with President Campero the other day and that we have to help him.  He won't tell us what he needs help with, but he is very insistent so we take him to the church building to meet.  Immediately he pulls out his bags and has us look at each of his books to tell him if there are any mistakes.  They're all dictionaries from English to Russian, and they are terrible translations.  Super sketchy guy, he continues to tell us that his sister is a member of the mafia and he got caught in a meth house and the mafia stole his passport and the police won't do anything.  Somehow he figures that we can send one email to them and all will be well.. Um, no.  Long story short, he doesn't want the Gospel, he wants political freedom.  But I was amazed at how I was able to hold my own in that meeting.  I was like "hmm.. maybe I do know Russian!"  Good times.

Well, I'm out of time now, but I'd just like to say I love you all!  I'm doing great out here, don't you worry. 

Love,

Elder Brandon Porter

It's a good thing the Spirit does the teaching

Family!

Hey, how's it going?  Thank you for all of the love in email and letter form that I've been getting.  I love reading all that's going on in your lives.

The biggest things that have happened this week, in order:

1.  Our investigators, L and H (roommates) both committed to baptism this week!  It was an amazing lesson that led to it.  L has had a complete turn around that I am just in awe over.  He is so ready for baptism.  And H is getting there, he has time.  Great guys.  By the way, L is a musician and a photographer!  I have been in my element talking with him.

2.  Elder Smith is getting transferred.  On Thursday he'll be gone and I'll have a new comp in the office.  This transfer has been the fastest of my life, it's insane.  I'm really kind of sad that it's ending.  We've been getting along really well.  Oh well, we have the rest of the mission and college to be around each other.

3.  I made chili.  With chicken nuggets.  No, I could not find ground beef on short notice.  Sadly, there are physical repercussions to eating a pot of chili..

4.  Elder Antamanov also received a transfer call, I forgot to say.  It's too bad he's leaving me again.  But I have a feeling that he and I will serve in the same district again before the mission is over.  I love that guy a lot, he's awesome.

With it getting warmer,we are having some more success in finding people.  Yesterday morning we got 3 numbers!  That's three more than we've gotten all winter!  So that's pretty cool.  And, Dad, you're right, it is often harder to convince people that they've found the truth than to find them to begin with.  Thing is, I feel like I don't ever convince people.  It's either they've been prepared or they aren't, no matter how hard I try. It's a good thing the Spirit does the teaching.

That's about it for this week.. This was a really fast week.  For this week, I'm really excited for Wednesday.  That's when the new greenies come in- and I will get to introduce them first to Donetsk and show them around a bit!  That's a weird round-about moment in the mission.  It reminds me that I actually have been here a while.  Basically, I'm just excited to see some new kids and send them off.

I really can't think of anything else for this week, wow.. Well, then that'll be all for this week.  I love y'all and I can't wait to have more news to tell you soon!  

Love,

Elder Brandon Porter

In response to questions about his current branch and how it is that someone is cooking for the office elders:

Answers to your questions:

My current branch is pretty good.  It's probably the most functional branch in the mission.  They actually can run pretty well without missionary intervention, which is a very good break.  Much stronger in terms of members than in Lugansk.  And they have a real church building!  So basically, my only role here is to be a missionary.  Yes!

Sister M cooks for those of us in the office, namely APs and office elders.  She really needs the money, so we're glad to oblige by paying her to cook.  Because it's her main income, she cooks and cleans for us every day, cooking mostly just on Mon, Wed and Fri.  She cooks enough on those days so we have leftovers until she cooks again.  According to that plan, we don't ever have time to cook besides breakfast, but sometimes the APs overeat and we have to cook for ourselves.  It's a good mix.

The cold is finally subsiding!

Family,

Well, the cold is finally subsiding.  That is a very good thing.  It's staying consistently at right around 0 degrees Celsius, and it probably won't get much colder the rest of the season.  We survived!  I feel like a war veteran talking about it.  It wasn't that bad.  But it was pretty dang cold. 

Along with the change in weather has come a flooding of Ukraine.  With water, in case you didn't catch.  With all of that snow built up, and the drainage systems in the city aren't that great, all the roads are pretty swamped right now.  Oh, Ukraine.  You can't make up your mind, can you?

Besides all of that, not a whole lot has happened this week.  For most of it my companion was sick.  So while he was sleeping I would set up lessons or read or watch church movies.  None of those are terribly exciting, but I kept from being bored.  We did manage one great lesson with L, though.  I don't remember if I told you about him.  He's a Nigerian, here for electrical engineering education.  Up to now he hasn't been all that serious about all this, kind of beating around the bush.  But this last Wednesday we went over there and he had completely changed.  He was more at peace with himself and the world, and he had been reading from the Book of Mormon.  And he had questions about his reading!  He asked about spiritual gifts and how he can receive them.  The discussion drifted from that to the power of the Priesthood to the baptismal commitment.  He said he had to think about it, but then went on to share his convictions of how what we tell him is true and how great the message makes him feel.  Great guy.  And a musician too!  We talk a lot about that.

On the complete other side, we had one investigator straight up tell us this week that his life goal was to earn a million dollars then commit suicide and leave the money to his family.  That lesson did not go how we planned.  Luckily, with a Ukrainian paycheck, he's not likely to earn a million dollars any time soon.

I had a surreal missionary moment today.  I found out that the leadership in Lugansk (my last area) was changed yesterday, and I called up the senior couple over there and discussed the changes and how certain people and their needs will be accounted for and how each person will fulfill their callings.  Then I realized- I'm not even assigned to Lugansk anymore.  I never really thought that I would care that much about an area that I'm not even serving in.   I guess it surprises me how much I actually care.  Interesting.

Really not a whole lot has happened besides that.  I'm still in Ukraine.  Surprise!  Well, I think that'll be about good for this week.  Not much to add.

I love you all!  Have a great week.

Love,

Elder Brandon Porter


One more thought from one of the letters addressed to family members:
I'm glad you appreciated my thoughts on the Armenia trip.  It was a great experience.  I thought it was great how effective and useful I was actually able to be.  A lot of times out here in Ukraine, we all feel like we're spinning our wheels, digging a hole with a spoon, or choose your favorite metaphor for feeling useless and repetitive.  I've had a lot of talks with Elder Smith about that recently actually.  Being here, we have to be ready to do great things, and at the same time be ready to have absolutely no results.  It's interesting.  I love my mission, but I won't lie, it is pretty difficult.