Elder Dupre

I was going through some files and I ran across one of the more interesting situations that happened in our mission. Elder Dupre was called to be the mission’s Membership Records clerk – not one of the glamour positions to hold in the mission office. Elder Dupre attacked this job with all the fervor of a seasoned genealogist. His mission – to find every baptism record in the mission – even if he had to look in every missionary apartment and find where the records were stashed. He bothered district and zone leaders like no other MSR clerk had dared to do in the past to get records done and done correctly and done on time. At the end of 2000 and the beginning of 2001, he found numerous baptism records which had not been processed and sent to the Kiev Service Center. The missionaries thought the branch president had taken care of the records and visa versa. We quickly sent the records forward and received credit on the next months report. I remember our baptism count being 80 baptisms for that month and when that number was put on the monthly report that went to all mission presidents, I started receiving calls asking what we were doing to get all those baptisms. I told everyone to get a dedicated MSR clerk and let him start spreading the “get-your-records-straight-news.” What was fascinating was the effect this had on the baptism momentum for the mission. This “paper success” instigated “real” success and for the next year and a half we never looked back. Baptism pools grew, contacting increased, teaching opportunities opened up, new teaching techniques were thought of like computer classes to three on three basketball. Zone leaders, district leaders, individual companionships caught the fever and action happened. Sister McQueen and I just sat back and watched this incredible experience happen. We were simply cheerleaders standing on the sidelines watching the game play out. When proven leaders went home, others were waiting to take up the challenge. The bar was constantly being raised. You could feel the intensity growing day by day. No one wanted to miss out on the “spiritual high” we were achieving. We found missionaries were reluctant to go home and those coming into the mission could feel the excitement. They knew they were part of something special. Zone conferences got more spiritual; missionaries seemed more obedient; love and concern for companions, members, investigators became more important; we were getting close to “thy will be done” and we all loved it. When we left for home, Sister McQueen and I didn’t come off of our “cloud” for many months.

Crimea

The Crimea played an important role in helping to keep the intensity level high in the mission. We were really excited when President Trythall called and asked us if we would be willing to take responsibility for the Crimea and Kherson. We did not hesitate to accept this challenge. We liked the idea of having more branches where missionaries could be branch presidents and we thought missionaries would enjoy the challenge of living in some of the most beautiful parts of Ukraine. We also realized that it would require us to change our pattern of zone conferences and our visiting branches which were under the mission district. We had been meeting with the missionaries on a monthly basis. The process of adding the Crimea changed our zone conference rotation schedule from a monthly basis to a five or sometimes six week interval. This was difficult for some missionaries who wanted to see us often but we were able to work the telephone lines well enough to keep everyone happy. The drive from Donetsk to the Crimea took most of the day. We left Donetsk and traveled towards Mariupol and then turned West towards Militopol and then South towards Simferopol. There were times on the drive where you could see both the Sea of Azov and the Black sea. There were also some small mountains around Simferopol which were a welcome change of scenery. Yalta and the Southern coastline of the Crimean peninsula are beautiful. Sevestopol and Evpatoria are equally scenic. Kherson is right on the Dneper river and is a beautiful city. We felt sorry for the missionaries who labored in Evpatoria in the summer time because of all the beaches in the city. We had to emphasize the need to look up or down because of all the swim suits being worn in the city. During the winter months, the Crimea was fun because of the mild weather. The branches in Evpatoria, Semferopol, Kherson, and Bogota were functioning well when we took over this area. Sevestopol had been closed but we opened it again just before leaving the mission. It would surprise us very much if there wasn’t a missionary who didn’t want to serve some period of their mission in this area. The first missionaries we sent to the Crimea were some of the best in the mission. We needed people who were going to set high standards of missionary work and member cooperation that only Donetsk Missionaries could set. After a few months, it was apparent that the members liked our standards and the emphasis we place on them. We had a couple of Crimea Conferences where we got all the members together so they could see they were part of a large organization. We made a big deal out to the dedication of the Chapel in Semferopol and we had some wonderful young adult conferences. We also spent a wonderful Christmas with the members and missionaries in 2001. One of the most spiritual zone conferences we ever held was on the 25th of December 2001. We held the conference in our hotel room and for about four hours we studied the scriptures discussing the life of the Savior. We also had a fun dinner at the hotel. We liked our hotel room because it looked like a small apartment and was very reasonable. We had a large room with a big table that could seat all the missionaries in the zone. They also had a nice sitting room and large bathroom. We didn’t eat many places in Semferopol except at the hotel and the McDonalds. We only stayed one time in Evpatoria and that was at a resort hotel that was very nice. The church rentals in Evpatoria were adequate but really hot in the summer time. We understand that we are building a chapel or one has already been built. This should really help the growth of the church in this area. Bogata was a beautiful little town to the East of Semferopol. There was a small but functioning branch in this town that was set up in the mountains. We went there a couple of times and had nice meetings. We spent time in Kherson learning to love the branch in that town. The hotel we stayed in was right on the Dneper river and the scenery was beautiful. We ate at a restaurant we found in the center of the city. It was fairly good and we had some fun times with the missionaries in this place. The branch really liked our missionaries and the work seemed to get better and better as time moved along. We started with just two missionaries in each location in the Crimea and we tried to up the number to four in each location. We always felt it was healthy to have at least four missionaries in each city. We were fairly liberal on companionship exchanges in these situations. We were able to take a day with the one of the area presidency to travel to Yalta and go through some of the museums in the area. It was probably the only day during our entire mission that we had a full preparation day. We drove from Semferopol through the mountains to Yalta and then along the coast to Sevestopol and then back to Semferopol. It took all day. We certainly saw some wonderful scenery. The greatest thing about gaining the Crimea in the mission was to watch the growth of the missionaries who served in that area. We loved watching the branch presidents fall in love with their branches. We loved watching them build their own portion of the kingdom. We loved watching the zone leaders take care of missionaries and members alike. We loved watching the missionaries taking care of their investigators and members. All in all there was a special spirit in the Crimea. The missionaries felt they were part of something special which can do more than anything else in keeping the missionary zeal burning in the soul. There are times when we think it would be nice to be able to get in the car and head to Semferopol to stay in the Moscow hotel, but only if the assistants were with us and we could discuss the developments taking place in the Ukraine Donetsk Mission.

Elder Callister

Elder Callister and his wife had an extremely important impact on our mission. We believe our second mission tour set the stage for a number of our successes. We will never forget Elder Callister’s talks – the best in our mission. We marveled at his mastery of his subject material. We couldn’t believe his ability to recite scriptures and poetry with equal passion. We loved his wife’s sound judgment and willingness to get involved with our lives and the lives of our missionaries. Being with a general authority and his wife for a solid week can be very stressful. The Callister’s were so down to earth that we simply relaxed and tried to feast on the wisdom of their guidance. We can not find a missionary in the mission who heard their talks who were not duly impressed. We had a wonderful thanksgiving dinner with them in Poltova. The missionaries had killed some turkeys out in Golovach and they had taught the lady at the University kitchen how to cook a turkey dinner. We all sat around a beautiful table after our conference and ate an excellent turkey dinner. The missionaries were able to mingle with the Callister’s and we feel fun was had by everyone present. Elder Callister provided us with the best direction of any general authority. He provided advice that helped us deal better with missionaries and members as well as our own relationship. He probably knows more about us than our parents. I loved our PPI’s because he always wanted to know how I was treating Sister McQueen. What’s fun is he still reminds me about treating her well when we talk on the phone. We don’t think there was another couple involved with our mission who truly loved the missionaries or members as much as the Callister’s. Their leadership style caused a great deal of growth for the church in the Europe East Area. Can you imagine being responsible for an area that covered something like 13 or 15 time zones? Just the travel time would have been a trial for me. I wonder how I would have dealt with all the idiosyncrasies of the different mission presidents and hundreds of missionaries. He also had to deal with the district presidents, members, and government officials. Just think of the job of trying to get us rentals that had heat let alone land on which we could build chapels. He did such a good job in these areas that we now have some real nice properties all over the Donetsk Mission. I remember during the mission tour that Elder Callister emphasized knowing your material when you speak. Many of you will remember he never referred to notes while he was talking. I remember Sister McQueen standing up after his talk and she did not use her notes. When Elder Callister asked her if she normally used notes while she talked she replied that she normally did use them. He wanted to know why she didn’t use them this time and she explained that she was trying to follow his example. Throughout the mission tour the Callister’s were able to see how efficient Sister McQueen was in teaching missionaries and members. When the tour was completed, Elder Callister complimented her on her abilities to teach. In just a short time, he was able to see what we all knew which was that Sister McQueen was an exceptional mission mother, teacher, and scriptorian. The only part of Elder Callister’s visit that caused us some consternation was when he kept referring to the Samara Mission as the best mission in the Europe East Area and he kept emphasizing that they were a “one language” mission meaning that they only spoke Russian. He talked a little about a factory which had a foreman who would write a number on the floor as a challenge for his people to produce an ever increasing amount of what-evers. The foreman for the next shift would erase the number and put his own in and so there started to be a little competition between the shifts. He wrapped this nicely into our mission and the Samara Mission. In Kharkov, after hearing this comparison for the third time, I stood up and told him and the missionaries I was tired of hearing about Samara being so good. I told him to just wait. The line in the sand had been drawn, the gauntlet thrown down, the challenge given and the challenge accepted. Throughout the entire tour as he talked about Samara being better then any other mission in the Europe East Area, no missionary stood up and challenged him. In Kharkov, Elder Day, in a rather forceful manner, explained to him that the Ukraine Donetsk Mission was in fact the best mission in the Europe East Area and then proceeded to list a few reason why. I don’t think I ever told Elder Day how much his support meant to me. I was so thankful for his comments and the impact they had on Elder Callister and us. Elder Callister’s challenge did cause a great deal of thought and thought lead to commitment, and commitment lead to action and for the next fifteen months our mission really shined. So, thanks to President Callister for the challenge.

Poltava

This city was one of our favorite places to visit. The members were happy, the missionaries were happy, and the people in the city seemed happy. For the first year and a half, the branch met at the Chess building which provided us with a large room for sacrament meting and smaller rooms for class rooms. We enjoyed zone meetings in this place because no one bothered us and it was close to our hotel. We initially stayed at the Hotel Kiev which was old but adequate. Later on, a new hotel was built down by the University and we stayed there. We also got a new rental which was constructed to look like a chapel. It really turned out nice except for the lack of heat in the winter. We had a number of different rooms and the members were very happy with the facility. There is supposed to be a chapel built very soon just in front of the rental. We always thought the missionaries had nice big apartments in Poltava. The one apartment in the center of town was really nice and roomy with a great kitchen. We actually held a zone conference in the apartment out by the police station and the apartment was big enough to accommodate all of us. You can’t talk about Poltava without talking about Golovach, a small village outside of Poltava, where a number of members resided. One family was the center of church activity in the village, Brother Valodia and Sister Nadezhda, and they made sure the missionaries had a great time when they visited Golovach. The missionaries usually spent all day Saturday in Golovach. They helped Brother Valodia plant and harvest his garden. We had a great dinner that sister Nadezhda prepared with things from the garden and things she had bottled. This was before we could not eat in members homes. I tried to pay her for the food for all of us and she got very angry at me. I was able to return the kindness by getting some Army colored garments for her husband. He worked on the railroad and she could not get his white garments clean so she asked if I could help. I called my son, and told him to go to the distribution center in Bountiful and get the garments. The one lady would not give the Army garments to him because he did not have an Army ID card. Finally, another lady interrupted her and said, “his father is a mission president and has asked for the garments – give them to him”! Sister Nadezhda wanted to pay for the garments and I just smiled and told her this was payment for the feast we had months previous. She got mad at me again. Some of our most tender moments were in this village: we held meetings, gave temple recommend interviews, gave blessings, and held the hands of one of our members who was very sick and was ready to pass on. They had the best, I mean the all time best, baptism site in Ukraine just outside of the village on the bend of a small river. We tired to get to as many baptisms as possible in this area. It was so peaceful and picturesque. We remember the story of one older lady who had been captured during WW II and had been sent to Germany as a prisoner. When the war was over she and her sister were freed by the Americans but were given to the Russians, she said the Americans were good to them but the Russains took all the gifts the Americans gave them and made them walk back to Ukraine. She cried and asked “why would they do that to us”. She said very few people survived the walk back to Ukraine. One day on our way out of Poltava, we stopped in Golovach to give temple recommend interviews to an older couple who had joined the church a year earlier. We attended his baptism in the river. The wife told about how they had prayed that morning asking that the electricity would stay on so that “President McQueen could conduct his interviews with the lights on.” The electricity often went off in the morning and she knew we were coming about nine o’clock. My wife looked up and noticed that the one light bulb in the hall was burning brightly as was the lamp in the room where I was interviewing. The wife went on to say that during the spring time they were worried that the late frost would kill all the fruit blossoms so they prayed that the Lord would “spare every other blossom”. She went on to bear testimony that they did have a good fruit crop and that the Lord indeed spared every other blossom. We were so glad we stopped and had this wonderful spiritual experience. The most interesting place to eat in Poltava was the University cafeteria. One of the companionships made friends with the lady who ran the cafeteria and the missionaries taught her how to make hamburgers and all the fixings. We had Thanksgiving at the cafeteria in November 2000 and the food was great. Turkeys were killed in Golovach and given to the cafeteria lady who proceeded to make a traditional Thanksgiving feast. Elder Callister and his wife were doing their mission tour at the time and were able to eat Thanksgiving dinner with us. Zone conferences were always a treat because the missionaries from Sumy would prepare some sort to play or production for all to observe. The play where everyone was dressed up in the armor of God outfits was particularly good. The spirit at our zone conferences in Poltava was always strong and I think it was because everyone was so happy serving in Poltava and Sumy. The missionaries in Poltava felt they were in the choicest city in the mission and the missionaries from Sumy felt they were all “Top Gun” candidates. After zone conference, we would often go to dinner at a Chinese place that served a cabbage salad with a real strong garlic sauce. The salad was huge. We liked our last hotel because the room was nice. It had air conditioning and heat and its own hot water source so they never ran out of hot water. The people were nice and actually remembered who we were from month to month. We would walk in the door and they would have our key ready. They didn’t ask us for passports or anything. It was kind of nice. The members in Poltava made the city enjoyable. They loved the missionaries and were extremely supportive. When we called a member to be the branch president, he accepted the calling and did a wonderful job from the very start. In fact, he is still doing well. The church in Poltava is in very good hands because of the caliber of members who attend church. We would drive from Kharkov to Poltava, a two hour drive, and then stay there for a couple of days and then drive on to Dneper or Donetsk. It took three hours to get to Dneper and seven to get to Donetsk from Poltava. The drive to Dneper was really a pretty drive through little villages and over a few rivers. In the winter time, the road could get very icy and at times it was hard to see where the roadside ended because there was so much snow. We would love to build our Dacha on the bend of the river in Golovach. The air is clean, the river clear, the sky blue, the soil dark and deep, and the memories good – Oh, so good.

Mariupol

Mariupol was a steel town just a two hour drive South of Donetsk. When we first got to Ukraine the members were meeting in an old Naval Building. The Sunday school classes were held in various classrooms that had Navy type training materials on the wall. The spirit in the meetings was great and the members really pulled together. We also had some of the most spirited discussions because of a couple of the women who were really out spoken - never a dull moment. President Manzhos was in charge of physical facilities for the church in Ukraine. He made sure that Mariupol had a chapel built. It turned out to be a beautiful little chapel with all the good stuff – rooms, kitchen, heating and air conditioning. It was without a doubt the best building in Mariupol. Mariupol is right above the Sea of Azov and therefore was usually humid making it seem much colder in the winter time and much hotter in the summer. The missionaries loved Mariupol. They had the best of all worlds. They were far enough away from the mission office so no one could bother them but close enough to get everything they wanted. One cold foggy night the sisters had a very interesting experience involving the police. They called us and asked us what to do and we told them to get home and stay low for a while and let the incident pass. Another time we had a funny incident happen with the Elders. I think the incident was blown out of proportion but it was a good reality check for all of us. When the chapel was dedicated, we had a lot of members come from Donetsk to support the branch. Elder Orton dedicated the building.

Lugansk

Lugansk was a three hour drive East of Donetsk. It was one of the branches that fell under the mission president and therefore we visited there fairly often. At times, it seemed like we were there twice a month because of all the activity going on in this branch. The branch president, President Letvidov, was just about the nicest and most humble man we had ever met (I wrote an article about him blessing Elder Eyring). He was so worried about how to tend for his little flock. He would often call me on Mondays and talk about questions which had been raised by members the previous day. We always had interesting discussions. The missionaries loved working in Lugansk. They had a number of programs going and the branch seemed to grow. English classes were productive and lots of young people were joining the church. Some of them eventually went on missions. I remember one day during a zone conference in Donetsk, all the missionaries arrived with new rabbit fur shopkas. Apparently for Thanksgiving they wanted to have rabbit, they decided to buy rabbits, kill them, eat them, and then have their furs made into shopkas and they did this all on their own. The missionaries came to the zone conferences with an “official” church driver. The taxi driver drove them so often that he had a sign made that he would put up in the window of his van – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He loved the missionaries but didn’t seem interested in getting baptized. We met in two different buildings while we were there and both of the sites were old, big, and cold. It was not hard to pay attention in meetings because we were freezing in the wintertime. The members seemed oblivious to this discomfort and just took it in stride. We marveled at their faithfulness and desire to come to church. We have been told they are meeting in a nice facility at this time and we hope that is true. They really deserve it. When we first started going to Lugansk, we would leave on a Saturday afternoon and stay over night in the Druzbah Hotel. The rooms were old initially and then they decided to renovate the second floor and make some nicer accommodations. This made staying there much more pleasant. The hotel had a good restaurant and there was a good Ukrainian restaurant near the church rental. We remember eating one night in the hotel restaurant and they were playing some music that was not on the approved music list. The Elders were getting worried until I told them to relax because they were playing some country music that we hadn’t heard for months. Later in the mission, we would just get up early on Sunday and drive to Lugansk stay all day and drive back. I don’t recall a missionary ever saying they disliked serving in Lugansk. The missionaries had good apartments and seemed really involved with the branch. We also let them hold open houses and sponsor city concerts in our rentals. The city seemed to be supportive of all our activities. We even rented the Children’s Theatre one night for our jump rope program which was a huge success. Elder Cunningham was a seven time world jump rope champion who took over the stop smoking puppet show program and added a little twist which included his jump rope skills. The puppet show plus the jump rope program made for a very entertaining night. The missionaries from Lugansk attended zone conferences in Donetsk. It was always nice to see them and hear about their experiences.

McQueen Soccer

We spent Saturday 25 October 2008 watching the McQueen children playing soccer. It was the last matches of the soccer year.