December 31, 2012

Ma,

Yeah the timezone thing messes me up to. If you write on sunday nights I should get it on time. It's weird to think that I am almost on the exact opposite side of the planet. Just a couple of timezones over. I'm glad the play went well. It sounds like you had a bigger part this year. I'm sure that was fun. Ha, ha. That's so cool that Malea is going to Vegas! She'll have to talk to Krystine or something. Is that the mission that she lives in? Has she decide where she is going to go back to school? Yay baptisms! I'm really happy for Sister Rowles! Is her grandson old enough to be baptized yet? I forget. Two of the Elders in our district were supposed to have one on Saturday, too, but the guy never showed up, and he doesn't have a phone, so they still don't know what happened. Really sad. Most people here don't have phones and, or cars, which makes keeping in contact difficult. We had a pretty good week. We got a list of some former investigators that we called and got an investigator and a lot of possibles. One guy that we talked to is from Nigeria and is blessed to know the language of English. That's actually probably more of a blessing for me. He was really prepared and my companion said it's no wonder they are baptizing like crazy in Africa. Hopefully we will be able to meet with him again soon. Everybody looked like they were doing well. Kelleene looked a lot better the second day, so I hope that means she is recovering quickly. When is Jared heading off to school? Well, I think that's it for now. I need to start bringing my journal when I right emails so I can remember some of the cool experiences that happen throughout the week. There are a lot every day on a mission and I am so grateful to be able to serve. I love you all and I hope you enjoy the end of your break!

Старійшина Джолстед

December 5, 2012

Mother and the rest of you,

 

Thanks for the address. I should be able to get something to her before her birthday. I'm sure that whoever my companion is will be able to get me the right boots, and everything is extremely cheap over there so that's good. You may want to make sure I have a little money in my account though, just because i will have to pay for baggage when I leave. That's really cool about Marin. I totally forgot about her and it's a great idea to invite them to the Christmas play. I also thought that when you guys go caroling and invite people, you should ask Bishop Cox if he can give you the names of any inactive or lessactive members that you can invite. I thought about the Dachs specifically. Um, did you guys hear anything about a governmental collapse in Ukraine, cause we heard a rumor that everyone in the government except for the president had resigned and that's a little worrying since we get our travel plans tomorrow and leave in less than two weeks. If you could look into it and dear elder me tonight or tomorrow that would be awesome. Oh, and last week when we were coming back from the temple we met a missionary who had just gotten back from Ukraine and he said that they were going to open new cities in the next couple of transfers! I think it wuol be awesome to open a city. I would feel like ammon going to the lamanites or something. Anyway, I love you lots and I'll send another letter today!

 

Elder Jolstead the Younger

добре день!

 

So I'm really grateful today that so many people wrote me that I will only have time to write one email to reply to you all. Thank you for Grandma's address, Mother, and I'm glad you all had a great Thanksgiving! I hope everything is going well in Seattle. So my Thanksgiving was AMAZING. We had a devotional in the morning and ELDER HOLLAND CAME!!! He said that since we were away from our families on thanksgiving, he would adopt us into his family for the day and all of his family members who were visiting them for thanksgiving were part of the program. His wife is really awesome and not what I expected. While Elder Holland is bold and blunt, she is actually a little more shy. She bore an awesome testimony and I have an increasing love for the wives of general authorities since I have been here. That is probably a harder job then any of us who have never been in that situation can understand. Most of the details of the talk that he gave, which I will never forget, are going to be in the letter I send this week, so if those of you who don't live at home want to hear it, you'll have to ask Ma about it. Anyway, the rest of the day we were doing a humanitarian project and we also had a more lighthearted program where we had musical numbers, sang, and some of the Elders and Sisters put on a skit about the first thanksgiving that was pretty funny. We finished off the day by watching the movie 17 Miracles which is really amazing. It's kind of sad, but I liked it and it had a really awesome song in it that I had never heard before. So it was a really great day and I don't think I will ever forget it. Oh, another interesting development is that I was called as district leader this sunday, which is cool. To give you an idea of how awesome my district is, all of the callings in the branch outside of branch presidency and individual district leaders are in our district. I feel really blessed to be going to Ukraine and I already love the country, even though I've never seen it. I hope all of you are doing well and that you keep being awesome! I love you!

 

Старійшина Jolstead

November 21, 2012

Dear Family,

 

I spent a lot of time sending letters to everyone else so you'll just have to look at each others letters and put my week together like a puzzle. I'll write a really long letter this week to make up for it. I got the package and the pictures and was very grateful. I hit ten pounds this week which was cool and we have a special program tomorrow for thanksgiving. That's awesome that sister rowell is getting baptized. Sorry this was so short. Love you Mommy!

 

Elder Jolstead the Younger

November 14, 2012

добре день!

 

Those pictures were awesome! Braeden's Aragorn costume turned out really well, and I finally got to see what Shantewa looks like under all that foundation. Just kidding. Yeah, we've had snow all week. My companion has two coats, so he has been letting me borrow one because he is amazing. That is really nice of the Nalders, Please thank them for me. I'll be gone just before Luke gets here, but you can tell him that he will have an awesome time at the MTC, especially since I don't think he has to worry about learning a language. We had our first day of only being able to speak out language, which went better than I expected. I can teach the gospel pretty well, but thats pretty much it and my grammar is horrible, but I think that will some with time.There are a couple of other things I would like you to send if you could. you probably feel like I'm asking for something every week, but just remember that when I get to Ukraine, I'll be lucky to even get a letter. My companion wants to maybe sing one of the forgotten carols, but they don't have any music here, so I was wondering if you could copy the songs Joseph, Homeless, and the Three wisemen and send them ASAP. I would also like it if you could send me a copy of my farewell talk, it should be in all of the papers that were in my room. Anyway, I love you and I hope you have an awesome week!

 

Elder Jolstead the Younger

 

PS. Jared should write me about how the roadshow went

November 7, 2012

добре ден!

 

I'm glad everyone's birthday went well and I hope everything went well with Kelleene's appointment. Don't worry about the pictures being late, we have a temple walk every Sunday afternoon, which is really cool. I usually take that time to write in my journal or read my Patriarchal Blessing. Elder Zwick of the Seventy spoke to us yesterday and gave an awesome talk on being desciples of Jesus Christ. He didn't really say anything that I didn't know, but the spirit that i felt was amazing and I really learned a lot just by feeling the Holy Ghost. I'm starting to get a little worried about being able to see an apostle here, because I realized that the Apostles are probably more busy than usual with the amount of mission applications that are coming in. Elder Zwick told us that the amount of applications they have received from sisters between the announcement and now is more than the amount of sisters currently serving worldwide! That just blows my mind! The work is being hastened. One of my Teachers also told us that one of his friends got a mission call to serve in Taiwan, until China was opened, so that makes me wonder if that is going to happen very soon. I got really mad when I heard this morning about the election. How did our state vote about the gay marriage and marajuana issues? I'd hate to come home and see gay couples smoking pot on every street corner. Anyway. I've gained about two more pounds this week, which is incredible. I actually lost half a pound from fasting on Sunday, but then I weighed myself on Tuesday and had gained twice that back! It just shows that you will be blessed for fasting. I have to go, but I love you and am working hard!

 

Старійшина Jolstead

October 31, 2012

Dear Family,

 

I only have fifteen minutes so this email will also be a reply to Kelleene's, just so you know. I really love the MTC, and that may because I have such an awesome companion and an amazing district. I've gained about five and a half punds since I've gotten here, so that is a good thing, although most of it is probably just my muscles getting back into shape after not being able to do much because of the ear infection. Oh, I an going to need a few things from home that I hope you will be able to send quickly. I realized when I got here that I had forgotten to bring any pictures from home! Our district wanted to show some pictures to each other on our temple walk this week, so I was hoping you could mail them tomorrow? Just some recent pictures of you guys and the family pictures and maybe the one of me and Brother Lee, because I talk about him all the time here. I would also appreciate it if you would mail me a package with one of those coats, because I totally forgot that it would also be cold here, so waiting to buy one in Ukraine wouldn't help me much, although I will probably buy one when I get there too, because they are supposed to be really nice and really cheap. There isn't snow here yet but it is getting pretty cold in the morning. Also, I got my ballot, but there are a few people and things that I'm not sure about and I can't really research them here, so could you have Mikey write me a letter as quickly as possible about what he thinks, because I trust his judgement. So, I heard about a huge hurricane going on on the east coast, and something about new

Elder Jolstead the Younger

Oh, and we learned about some weird superstitions that they have in Ukraine and there's one that I thought Jared might find cool. Apparently you can't leave two windows open accross from each other because they believe that a demon that travels on the wind will go through your house and make eveyone sick. I though that would be a pretty cool episode of supernatural.

Elder Jolstead the Younger

October 24, 2012

Dear Family,

 

So I wrote to Nathan and Mark first today and didn't leave myself too much time to e-mail you, but I sent a two and a half page letter off today that has more details about my week. In the field I was told that Presiden Klebingat gives us ninety minutes to write e-mails so I should be able to send you a lot longer emails from the field. So yesterday at the devotional Elder Larry Echo Hawk of the Seventy spoke to us and gave an awesome talk. His wife told us that the number of missionary applications turned in since the announcement has gone 471% up. That's crazy! Oh, and is that Kate that used to like Mark on a mission because I thought I heard her name on the intercom yesterday. Mother, could I get father's shirt size? I want to send him something for his birthday. Well the computer is giving me angry warnings so I better get off. I love you all and I'll talk to you next week.

 

Elder Jolstead the Younger

Mother (and the rest of you too, I guess),

Well, I made it here. You haven't gotten a letter yet, because I couldn't find the stamps and I didn't have the time to go and buy any until today, which is my P day. So a lot has happened and I feel like I have been here for a lot more than one week. My companion's name is Elder Schindler and he is a pretty awesome guy. We kind of have similar personalities, so I don't think that I will have any trouble with this companion at least. My district has eight people (three companionships of Elders and one of sisters) and we're the only ones in the whole MTC who are Ukraine, Ukrainian speaking elders, because they only ever have one district of Ukrainian speakers at a time. We've already gotten pretty close and all of them are pretty cool. Yesterday, I went to my first Tuesday devotional and the speaker was Elder Shayne M. Bowan of the Seventy. He gave a really awesome talk about finding people to teach and I was taking notes pretty much the whole time, because it was that awesome. I kind of wish that I had been here a weak earlier, because Elder Bednar came last week and when we got here everyone was raving about how awesome his talk was. He talked a lot about the announcement that was made about lowering the age. I heard that when the announcement was made during conference, the whole MTC cheered, which, while normally irreverent during conference, would have been awesome to hear. I also heard that there was something like 4,000 new missionary applications in by last Friday, but that may have been just a rumor so don't quote me on that. Oh, and my departure date for Ukraine has been moved up to the 18th. We are the first Ukrainian missionaries to go for less than twelve weeks. I think it's something like ten weeks? All I know is, I'm leaving on that day. A lot of details from my first weekend are in my letter which should get to you Friday or Saturday. I'm doing a little better with the language and way better than I normally would be if I wasn't a missionary. I can already say a simple prayer and bare my testimony which is cool. We started off teaching a mock investigator in Ukrainian on our second day, which was pretty scary. She's actually from Ukraine so that was cool. It didn't go very well, because neither one of us remembered very much Ukrainian when we got in there, but we were able to pray, so that's good. We've taught her twice since then and it has gotten a lot better now that we can at least use simple words and we know the words for a lot of gospel topics. The food here is a lot better than I was expecting, although I don't think they give us enough time to eat enough food to get fat (not that I could anyway) and I also discovered that my lungs are severely out of shape, which is something I have to change in the next few weeks. Well, I better go so that I have enough time to write the other Elder Jolstead. I love you and I hope to hear from you soon.

Love,

Elder Jolstead the Younger