Вечная жизнь

Всем привет! I want to write this whole email in russian because we got smartphones and it is super easy to type our emails on these things, even in русски!

Anyway, this week we had zone conference and interviews. As usual it is always exciting when we get to have President and Sister Kumferman and maggie down in moldova with us. One thing that i miss about serving in Ukraine is seeing them more oftern, but it makes these zone conferences even more special. 

As for our week, it was pretty good. We started teaching 2 new people this week. The first is Mihaela she is a super cool girl who grabbed a book of mormon at a book table, none of us had a chance to talk to her so i ran after her to get her number. She is so interested in the gospel and came to game night and loved it! The next is a lady named Nadejhda, she has come to 2 sacrament meetings before meeting with us and we were finally able to meet her and start teaching her which was very exciting. As for Alina (she was scheduled to be baptized), she no longer will be baptized. It is a long and crazy story hahah. 

Anyway so this week i was studying eternal life and exhaltation. The missionary purpose is centered on our goal to inherit eternal life. Elder Dallin H. Oaks said "we do not preach and teach to 'bring people into the church' or to increase the membership of the church. We do not preach and teach just to persuade people to live better lives. We invite all to come unto Christ in order to open the doors of the celestial kingdom to the sons and daughters of God. No one else can do this." He perfectly states here the actual goal of all the work we are doing, on both sides of the veil. 2 nephi 9:39 says that "to be carnally-minded is death, and to be spiritually-minded is life eternal." Once we are baptized we are not through progressing. We have to stick to the path and to remember God and our covenants we make with him constantly. We cannot lose ourselves in the world but lose ourselves in the word of god in order to become spiritually minded. This week i asked our recent convert Ludmila about this and this is what she shared with me "when we come to this earth we forget our eternal nature and our eternal destiny. When we are reminded of this knowledge we live our lives differently. God gave us the scriptures and the gospel to remind us of the ultimate gift that we can receive. It is impossible to be reminded of this celestial gift through science or studies of the world - they can open our eyes but cannot remind us of our Godly potential." That is exactly what we are doing here as missionaries, reminding these people of their eternal nature and inviting them to accept this gift through baptism in the restored church of God. Im so grateful for this knowledge and that i can bring it to these people.

I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week! 

С любовью,

Сестра Дэйнс 

Pictures: 

1.  Sister Hillebrant and I 

2. Moldova zone conference

3. Zone conference

4. Getting smartphones!