Hurrah for Israel

June 27, 2016

Здравствуйте!

Hi there everyone! This week has been really awesome! This last monday we were able to meet with Ilgar, and when he came in he told us he's been going on a lot of walks lately to get away from everything and really pray and think about getting baptized. He told us that he feels very strongly that this is the decision he needs to make, and told us that he wants to be baptized as soon as possible. He's still struggling with cigarettes, and nothing he's doing seems to be working for him. We've given him a blessing, and fasted for him. He seems to be really sincere about it, and he really is trying to rely on Christ. He'll get there soon enough, and as soon as he does, he'll get baptized! 

This week we received permission from our mission president, and a member of the area presidency to baptize Alexander! He won't be able to make the trip up here to Stavropol until the 23rd of July, so we have to wait just a little bit, but he's just super excited and super ready to enter into the covenant of baptism! Another cool thing with Alexander, is that me and Elder Dayton will be teaching him for the rest of our missions, just switching off every week if we get transferred. It's not too often that you get to meet with an investigator once a week or every other week for your whole mission! It'll just be really awesome to see things get started down there! 

Other than that, not a whole lot has happened here this past week! The work just keeps going forward! As always, I'm so grateful for this opportunity to give 2 years of my life to the Lord, and help so many of his children the best way we know how. I know that Christ lives, and that he is at the head of this church. We are so blessed to be living in such a unique time, with the true church of Christ on the earth, with it's accompanying blessings. We really are privileged to see the fulfilling of so many promises made to people in the scriptures. I love you all, and hope all continues to go well for all of you!

Until next time,

-Старейшина кэмптон

(Staryeshina Kempton)

A Week in Rostov

June 20, 2016

Здравствуйте!

Hello everyone! Another incredible week over here in Russia! This week we had zone conference in Rostov, and then I had a few things to get done up there, so by the time all was said and done we ended up getting back into Stavropol on around Saturday!  All is well though, zone conference was awesome! We focused a lot on improving our teaching skills, and making better use of the scriptures. We'll be applying a lot of what we learned throughout the next few weeks and we're hoping it's just what our investigators need! 

Even though we spent a lot of our time up in Rostov, we were still able to get a lot of stuff done back here in Stav. We were still able to have 4 lessons, and they were all pretty awesome! Ilgar is still doing everything he can to find out that our church is true. While we don't always understand why God holds back and waits to give people their answers, we know that He has a plan for each and every one of His children, and we just need to be still and know that He knows better. 

Church was pretty awesome this Sunday as well. We ended up having 17 people there, which is a lot for our small branch! It's exciting to finally see some growth, and see members coming back from inactivity! We're currently looking for a new building, because we only had 4 free seats during sacrament meeting, and it just doesn't leave that much room for growth! 

There just seems to be a bit more life in our ward than usual, and we're hoping to keep that going! Every day over here really is such a blessing, and I know that this truly is the Lord's work. It is only from Him that we see these miracles every day, and the change that this gospel makes in the lives of these people! 

Not much else has really happened this week, so that will probably be all for this week! I'd just like to bear my testimony again, that I know that this church is true. I know that God knows us all individually, and knows exactly what we need. He will never place before us a challenge we cannot overcome, a trial that we cannot survive. He knows our potential, and will do all that is in His power to help us achieve that. We need only trust in Him, and His plan, following the advice given us to "be still, and know that [He] is God"(D&C 101:16). I love you all and pray for you every day! Hope all is well!

Until next time,

-Старейшина кэмптон

(Staryeshina Kempton)

Another Week Down

June 13, 2016

Здравствуйте!

Hello everyone! Another week has gone by over here in Stavropol! Lot's of exciting things have happened this week! Our investigator, ilgar, wasn't able to be baptized this Saturday. He still doesn't feel super confident about the decision, and is just searching for an answer right now. We've been working with him a lot this past week, and should be having quite a few meetings this next week. We'll hopefully set up another date with him this week, and help him work towards that! I'll keep you all updated on his progress, but I think he'll get there soon enough! 

Our investigator, Alexander, that lives near Chechnia is still making great progress! We're still waiting for permission to baptize him, but as soon as our mission president clears it, we'll get a date set up! By the end of this next week he'll have received all of the lessons! He's a really awesome guy all around, and it will be interesting to see what happens in the future with him down there! 

Other than that not a whole lot has happened this week! We've found some more cool people on the streets, and we've got a couple of former investigators, and other potential investiagtor that should be free next week! It should be really awesome! The work just keeps moving forward, and it's just a blessing to be a part of it everyday! I don't have a whole lot of time to write today. Our schedule is super weird and we aren't allowed to be out on the streets proselyting past 6 tonight due to holidays, so we're getting all of our proselyting done earlier! That will probably be it for this week, but I love you all, and pray for you often! Hope life continues to go well!

Until next time,

-Старейшина кэмптон

(Staryeshina Kempton)

Meet the Mormons

Здравствуйте!

Hello everyone! It's been another great week over here in Stavropol! There's been a lot of fun stuff happening here this past week! This Saturday we had a branch activity(the first since I've been here) where we all got together and ate some pizza and watched Meet the Mormons. We ended up having more investigators and potentials there than we did members, but it all worked out! Everyone seemed to really like the film, and it was hard to get everyone to leave at the end because everyone wanted to sit around and keep talking! It was awesome to see our members helping us out, they play such a big role in the conversion of these people. It's so much easier for people to come to church, and make the decisions that they need to make, when they understand that there are people out there that used to be in their same position, faced with those exact same decisions! 

Ilgar, our investigator with a baptismal date, was even going around telling people to meet with us after the movie! He's gonna be such a strength to this branch! We really need the priesthood over here, as of right now, we only have one worthy Melchezidek in this city, and he technically doesn't even live here. It really makes me appreciate the great blessing that it was to be raised in Gilbert, where the church and the priesthood are so readily available to all those who are in need of it. We've ended up moving his baptismal date back a week, so that our zone leader can come give him a baptismal interview face to face, and so that we have more time to teach him everything! Our other baptismal date, Nikolai, didn't end up being baptized as planned this past Saturday. He's still working to make sure that this is the decision he needs to make right now. While it is sort of sad to see that he wasn't baptized last Saturday, there is still great hope with him, and we'll continue to work with him to help him make that important decision. 

We got a new elder down here this Tuesday, and when they traveled down we ended up doing a short companion exchange. We ended up getting 5 lessons that day, which was beyond incredible for us! We've had entire weeks(a few actually) where we've had less lessons than that! It's been really cool to see this area start to turn around! When we got here, there was an average of 1 to 2 lessons a week, and now we're getting anywhere from 8 to 11, and it's only going up from there! God is preparing people for us everyday and, we just get to do His work and watch him send them to us! I can't really think of much else that's happened over here this week, but rest assured that there are more tender mercies and blessings that we are blessed with every day than I can fit in this e-mails. God knows us, and is very intimately involved in our lives. 

I love you all, and pray for you often! Hope all is well!

Until next time,

-Старейшина кэмптон

(Staryeshina Kempton)

Transfers

May 30, 2016

Здравствуйте!

Hello everyone! This week has been pretty eventful! I'll just start by telling you all about my first Visa trip! Our visas here in Russia are only good for 3 months, so we have to fly out of the country every 3 months, grab our new one, and then go back into Russia and get a new migration card. We ended up flying out to Yerevan, Armenia early Thursday morning and then coming back in early Friday morning. It was a bit of an adventure, to say the least! We ended up having an 8 hour layover at the airport in Yerevan, so we had tons of time to go around and talk to people, and eat at this crazy good restaraunt! For some reason they had a random piano in the middle of the airport that anyone can play if they're just looking for a way to pass some time, so I sat down and played for a few minutes. I ended up having a few people come over and listen, and when I finished I was able to talk with some of them about the church and why we're here. It was just a really fun experience all around, and hopefully they'll run into the missionaries or some church members there someday! They also have a Cinnabon restaraunt there, so naturally I went and got some super tasty cinnamon rolls there. I had a pretty good chat with one of the employees there, and we were pretty good friends by the end of the conversation. He told me if I ever needed a place to live, I could go move in with him at his apartment. He taught me how to say what's up and a couple of other phrases in Armenian, and then gave me all of my food for free! It was pretty awesome, he even added me on facebook so we could chat when I come home! We got home at around 2 a.m., slept for about 4 hours, and then hopped on a bus back to Stavropol for the next 5 hours. I was glad to finally be out and about again after sitting around on transport for so long! Even with all of that, we were able to have 6 lessons this week, which is pretty good for us over here! 

Things are really starting to pick up, and it's just awesome to see! We ended up having 5 investigators at church on Sunday, and 17 people in all which is the most we've had at church in a LONG time! The members did a really good job getting to know them, and hopefully it'll be easier for them to come back! Our investigator, ilgar, is still on track for being baptized on the 11th, and he's just progressing like crazy! He's already read a good amount of the Book of Mormon, and he just really wants to change his life, and he understands that baptism is something that he needs right now!  It'll be awesome to finally have some more priesthood in this branch, for the past year or two the only worthy priesthood holders have been the branch president and his son who is 14. It's going to be such a blessing for our branch to have someone else that can take some of the responsibilities off of the branch president! 

In other news we have a church headquarters referal, Alexander, that we've been teaching over Skype (he lives about 5 hours south of Stavropol) and he's also on track to be baptized! We have to get some of the logistics figured out, because the church just isn't in that area of Russia yet, but we're looking into getting a group organized down there! He's got quite a few friends that have read some of the Book of Mormon that we'll probably be teaching soon. We're sending down a few more copies of the book of mormon so they can all have their own! Apparently they've got a group of friends down there that meet and discuss the bible, and a baptist preacher came down not too long ago and preached out of the book of mormon. They were all super interested, but didn't know where to find more info after he had left, so their group leader (Alexander) searched for a bit and found our website, and requested a book of mormon and to start meeting with us! It'll be interesting to see how it plays out over the next few weeks! That's about it for this week! I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting, but that's about all I have time for! 

I love you all, and pray for you often! Hope all is well!

Until next time,

-Старейшина кэмптон

(Staryeshina Kempton)

PS.  Even thought this email is titled "Transfers" , Dustin didn't even mention transfers in the entire email!  He must've forgotten, haha.   But he is staying in Stavropol for at least another 6 weeks! 

Off to Yerevan

May 23, 016

Здравствуйте!

Hey everyone! This week has been super awesome and just full of blessings! We ended up having 11 teaching appointments this week, which is way more than usual! Things are really starting to get moving over here in Stav! We've been seeing a pretty steady increase in the number of lessons we're teaching, and hopefully it keeps going that way! 

We also have another baptismal date for the 11th of June, which is super exciting! His name is Илгар(ilgar) and he's just one of those people that the Lord has been preparing for a while.  We had to mail a book of Mormon to a church heardquarters referall that lives down near Chechnia, and we were just sort of waiting in line at the post office with the other 2 elders(because we had no idea how to send a package and they were helping us, haha), and we just decided to go on a split and contact for a few minutes while we were waiting! We ended up meeting Илгар pretty much as soon as we went outside, and he told us he would come to church on Sunday, but he didn't give us his phone number or any way to contact him, which usually means they aren't actually going to show up! When Sunday came though he was there, and we were able to get a lesson with him right after church. 

He told us that we had a light in our eyes, and that all of the doctrine we were teaching seemed true to him, he even started backing it up with bible references, it was awesome! We've met with him a few more times after that, and he's just continuing to progress and learn more! 

We also were able to meet with an inactive member this week named Сергей(Sergei). He's actually a former missionary that served in this mission back when it was still relatively young. When he got home though, he ended up marrying one of his investigators and going inactive. It was sad to see that he's fallen away, but there's still a lot of hope for him and his family! We made him some brownies(just to soften him up a little bit, haha, american desserts are key to missionary work over here!) and were able to share the message of the Restoration with him and his wife! The spirit bore powerful testimony of the truthfulness of what we were saying, and hopefully touched their hearts. Two of his old missionary friends are actually from Arizona, and he said that one of them actually lives in Gilbert, which is insane! If any of you back home know a Michael Wilcox, or a Julia Brooks, let me know.  I'd like to get in contact with them and see if they could reach out to him somehow! 

All around though, this week has just been incredible. We've seen the Lord's hand in our lives pretty much every minute of every day! It really is a privilege to be here doing this work, and share this message with these wonderful people! 

I'll leave you all with a spiritual thought as usual! I was reading through D&C the other day, and I found a verse that one of my teachers shared with us, and it really stuck out to me for some reason. Verse 17 of Section 123 says, "Therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed." That really rings true to me, especially as a missionary. Often times when people don't keep commitments, or show up to church, or just do the things that are necessary to progress and come closer to God in general, you sort of feel like it's something you may have done poorly, or that you could have done better. In reality though, for the most part it's just because people have free agency, and unfortunately, are not perfect and choose poorly sometimes. We, though, can still do all that is in our power to help them make those decisions, and then take a step back and feel the peace associated with knowing that we have done all that we can. I know that Christ lives, and that He is ever present in our lives if we so much as look for him. I know that God loves each and every one of us, and knows us perfectly. I know that this church is true, and I, as always, am so humbled to be a part of this work. I love you all, and pray for you often! Hope all is well!

Until next time,

-Старейшина кэмптон

(Staryeshina Kempton)

PS.  Also, regarding the title of this email, we have our first Visa trip this week!  We're heading off to Armenia on Thursday to grab some new visas.   It should be interesting.

Where is the Time going?

May 5, 2016

Здравствуйте!

Hello everyone! Another week is gone and I'm still just as surprised as last week that it's already Monday again! This week has been full of a bunch of just really awesome experiences! We ended up having Zone Training up in Rostov this Tuesday, and it turns out that the Marshrutkas that we usually take aren't in operation on Mondays. All four of us elders here in Stavropol ended up taking a train on Monday night and getting in on Tuesday Morning. I don't understand how, but the trip is about 3 hours longer by train than it is by bus, so we left at 9 at night and rolled in at around 5 a.m. the next morning! The compartments have 4 beds in them, and pretty much no space for anything else, but it was still super cool! 

Zone training was super awesome, like always, and we got some good advice on how to contact families, so hopefully we'll see some more families in the coming weeks! Even though we did lose a few days, we were still able to get a lot done this week! We've been doing a lot more small shop contacting this week, and it's been pretty effective and pretty fun at the same time! There's a clothing store named White Brothers that we've gone to a few times, and have given the owner, Pavel, a Book of Mormon. We stopped by this week and he gave me a book from his personal collection of antique Russian books, and even though I can't read it right now, I'm excited to give it a read when I come home. We're pretty good friends with him now, and he even started following me on Instagram so I could follow him back and stay in touch when I get home, haha! He's a pretty awesome dude, and hopefully we'll be able to teach him some more! 

One of our other investigators, Ali, asked us to make him some pizza this week because he wanted to try "authentic American pizza". It was a pretty good time, and afterwards we were able to have a really awesome lesson with him. This week we decided to focus on some of the poorer areas of Stavropol, and we've been seeing a lot of success there! We met this really cool family that was working on their car, and they told us to come by anytime and share our message with them, so we'll be stopping by sometime tomorrow! I also had the opportunity to speak in Church again this week, which was pretty awesome! I think it went way better than when I first came, and while there were definitely still grammatical mistakes, there were way less! All around this week has just been super awesome, just like every week over here! 

I'll just leave you with a spiritual thought! I was reading in Alma 5 the other day, and verses 7-9 really just sort of hit me. This particular passage is Alma's words that he preached to the people throughout the land in an attempt to bring people back to the church.

 7 Behold, he changed their hearts; yea, he awakened them out of a deep sleep, and they awoke unto God. Behold, they were in the midst of darkness; nevertheless, their souls were illuminated by the light of the everlasting word; yea, they were encircled about by the bands of death, and the chains of hell, and an everlasting destruction did await them.

8 And now I ask of you, my brethren, were they destroyed? Behold, I say unto you, Nay, they were not.

 9 And again I ask, were the bands of death broken, and the chains of hell which encircled them about, were they loosed? I say unto you, Yea, they were loosed, and their souls did expand, and they did sing redeeming love. And I say unto you that they are saved.

As a missionary, I'm priviliged to see this every day in my work. It's really incredible to watch my investigators as they are awakened from that "deep sleep" and come to recognize and rely on Christ as their Savior and Redeemer. I know that I testify of Christ and his Atonement often in these e-mails, but that is just because it is so central to all that we do here on this earth. I know that this church is true, and I know that Christ is at the head of it. I know that through the infinite atonement of Christ, the bands of death have been broken, and if we only humble ourselves enough to accept it, we can receive the greatest gift of all, Eternal Life. I love you all, and pray for you! Hope all is well!

Until next time,

-Старейшина кэмптон

(Staryeshina Kempton)


(Pictures of Zone training in Rostov)