Triple Baptism

Baptism of three new church members

It was a pretty busy week here for sure. The baptism on Saturday DID happen, thankfully. I'll copy what we sent the mission office about their conversion story: 

Alec and the newly baptized family

"Ilona and her family were found by Elder Protzman  and Elder Baxter contacting about six months ago. They were very interested in finding out more about our message and were taught weekly the missionary discussions. After a couple months of little to no contact, Elder Shuley and Martschenko started teaching them again and their progression became evident as they started to come to church. They looked forward to every visit. Since they were found, they always had a strong desire to be baptized. To provide an example for the rest of their family, Ilona, Kostya, and Anya accepted a baptismal date for June 10th and have kept all of the necessary commitments. After baptism they felt the blessings that accompany a remission of sins."

So, although we didn't find them, we picked them up after no contact with them for a while. They're super cool and the little son is a super cool kid. It's a very poor family that lives in a village outside of Uzhhorod. They've definitely had to make a lot of sacrifices to come to church, whether it's the ~$1 it costs for bus fare for all of them or the four hours they spent walking home when they didn't have the money for a bus, so they were definitely dedicated. It took a bit of work getting them ready, but they were very ready by the time the baptism came. 

Hotel sauna turned baptismal font

Originally, the baptismal interview was scheduled for Tuesday morning, but they called early that day and said they couldn't make it, so we were worried we'd have to push it back. But, then they were able to come Friday and the interviews went well (over Skype on a member's smartphone cause we don't have computers or wifi at the church) and so everything was ready for the baptism. We don't have any kind of baptismal font here of course, so we had to rent out a hotel sauna. Apparently, they've had problems before with accidentally renting an 8-foot deep pool, so we spent a bit of time at the hotel making sure we had the right place. We did all that on Monday, but then on Friday we realized that we only rented out the sauna, and we were supposed to actually get a conference hall to have the service and everything. When we went there on Friday, everything was already reserved, so we ended up just using a lounge area in the sauna room, which actually worked out pretty well (just a little hot.) Everything went pretty well with the service. My companion actually baptized them cause he didn't want to have to do the confirmations in Ukrainian the next day. Lol. But, yeah, I think everything went pretty well!

I attached a bunch of pictures of what everything looked like, the lighting was really bad and Ukrainians are really bad at taking pictures, so most of them are terrible. But, it'll give you an idea of what it was like. 

Baptismal reception in the hotel sauna lounge

 

Uzhhorod church members with their newest converts

Most of our week was spent getting ready for all that. Other news though, last week Elder Volkov got reassigned to the Romania Moldova mission. He was assigned to England originally, but his visa got denied so he got reassigned there. He left early Wednesday morning, so I've been in a trio companionship for the past week or so. This week is transfers though, and I will be staying in Uzhhorod. Everyone else is leaving though, so we'll have some new people here. My new companion is going to be a brand new visa waiter from Kiev named Elder Rudenko. Apparently, he doesn't speak any English, so this should be a lot of fun. No idea what to expect, but I guess we'll find out this week. I'll be heading to L'viv this week for new missionary synthesis and then I'll meet him there. Should be interesting for sure.

Alec and fellow miossionaries in Uzhhorod, Ukraine

Halfway through emailing all the lights went out in the computer club and all the computers turned off. The computer club is in like an old abandoned sewer or something like that underground so it was very dark. So we had to go to the other one all the way across town. Apparently, it happens fairly often. 

Hope y'all have a great week!

Alec