Words from Elder Shad Lindsey in the Ukraine

"Hey whats up guys! Well I feel like I need to kinda explain the whole situation here a lil bit because a lot of you have asked if my mission got evacuated and that is not true! I am pretty sure I told you all about the Donetsk mission getting evacuated from their mission into ours the Kiev mission and they were here for about a month. It was awesome serving with them. They were super cool and funny guys. I was companions with one named elder Christiansen who's from Albuquerque (I dont know how to spell it). He was a super cool guy we had a lot of fun together. Anyways, we got had a conference calal with Pres Klebingat last week and he said that all of the donetsk missionaries were getting re assigned to other missions across the US. It was a sad day for all of us. I felt so sorry for all those missionaries who had to leave this beautiful country before they were supposed to. But there all studs and I'm sure they'll be fine! So my mission is still here and I really do feel like we are going to stay. Things are lookin better and I feel that we are going to stay.

Well this week I had some awesome things happen! I had to go up to Kiev with the Donetsk missionaries on tue so we took the 11 hr night train up there. Then Friday I met up with an elder named elder findlay and we took another 12 hr train back to odessa. Then when we got to odessa we jumped on another 6 hr train to a place called Kodima which is just a little village of like 200 people. There the missionaries just do service. It is not allowed to go proselyte or even where missionary clothes or name tags. And then we just did a bunch of service for the next few days! It was so awesome. It was the funnest time of my mission. Then we were supposed to take the 2:00 am train back to odessa this morning, but we slept in till 5. We were so mad cause the trains only run twice a day and we thought we weren't able to make it to odessa today. But the Lord is full of tender mercies and a train happened to come a few minutes later and we got on. It was a miracle we even got on. we just acted like "poor americans" and told the lady we needed to go to odessa because we needed to call our moms and she finally let us in. Sometimes it pays to be a foreign cause I know she never would have let a native on that train.

Life is so great! I love my mission. Its been crazy, and I'm more tired then I've ever been, but its alright! I love you and miss all you. Now I get to skype my mama and tell here how much I love her!"