Tuesday, November 22, 2016

First Week In Ukraine

​Alright, so we did make it safely to Ukraine, as you saw by that picture they sent. What time is it there? Like 4 o'clock in the morning now? The flight from Chicago to Vienna wasn't too bad. I had an aisle seat so I could stretch out a bit and get a little bit of sleep. It was a 9-hour flight, but it wasn't all that bad really. We landed in Vienna and for some reason the jetway wasn't working, so we took the stairs and then a bus picked us up to take us to the terminal. Then we had like a four-hour layover in Vienna. It was kind of a super boring airport - there weren't really any restaurants or anything to look at, so we just chilled and slept for a bit and walked around. 

View from the Vienna Airport

So after a few hours we boarded for the flight to L'viv. It was a pretty small twin-prop plane and I think our group was about half of the passengers on the plane. It was only like an hour and a half flight, but all of us fell asleep. 

View flying into L'viv

So we land in L'viv and it was snowing quite a bit. We went through customs and we didn't have any problems. We got our bags and then the Mission President was waiting out there for us. We loaded our luggage into a van and drove to the mission office about 20 minutes away in L'viv. It took three different cars to get everyone from the airport. We went to the mission office and did some basic paperwork stuff and put our luggage in the office. After that we went to dinner at a restaurant close to the office called Love and L'viv. It was actually a really good three-course meal and everything. The very first course was borsch, the famous beet soup here. It was actually really pretty good. I wasn't expecting to hate it, but I didn't think I would actually enjoy it.

After dinner we split up between a few different apartments in the city - some with senior couples and some with other missionaries. I actually got to stay with the Mission President and his wife. They have a really nice apartment - like even by American standards. By Ukrainian standards it is super, super, super nice. We stayed there and went to bed at like 8 o clock. 

LDS chapel in L'viv
The next day Sister R. made us breakfast and then we headed to the church (it's a giant pink building) for our full day of orientation . It was alot of presentations and spiritual thoughts about teaching and a whole lot of stuff that I'm afraid I don't all remember, because I was still so tired. But it wasn't all that bad - I'm pretty used to sitting in a classroom all day by now. 

We met our trainers. Mine is Elder Loveridge. He's from Utah and he's been out about 16 months. He's a cool guy and he's been super helpful so far. 



So we had two days of orientation/training and each night we would go out on the street and go contacting for an hour or two. That basically means we try to talk to random people on the street. We didn't have much success, but I was actually surprised with how many people kindly stopped and listened. I wasn't very good at it, mostly because I have no idea what to say and even if I did know what to say I would have no idea how to say it. But this will be part of what we do, since we don't have any investigators to teach as of right now. I'm sure I'll get used to it and get better at it.

Train station in L'viv
After the two days of orientation and two more days of eating at that Love and L'viv restaurant, we left for our individual towns on Saturday morning. My town is called Rivne, it's about a three hour train ride northeast of L'viv. A few days before I got here they had about two feet of snow. There wasn't a whole lot left by the time I got here and it's actually almost completely melted by now. So it's been a bit warmer, but it'll probably get cold again soon. I'm going shopping today for a nicer jacket and some other warm stuff. It hasn't been to bad until now, though. 



So we took the train to get here. It was kind of an old train and it was pretty crowded - especially with all of the luggage we had to bring - but somehow I managed to fall asleep for part of the train ride, so that was nice. We got to Rivne, and took a taxi to put our luggage away in the apartments. Our apartment is about a ten minute drive from the city center/church, so we'll always take the bus to leave it.
Alec and companion arriving in Rivne
The apartment is pretty interesting. Pretty much everyone lives in former Soviet housing, so it's in a big building, but it's actually not too bad. Our beds are lofted way up high in one of the rooms, so that's kind of cool.


Alec's apartment in Rivne
There's six missionaries serving in Rivne, the other elders are Elder von N. who is training Elder S. from my MTC group. The sisters are Sister S. and Sister G., who we met for dinner at a restaurant on Saturday night. They're all pretty cool people. Yesterday we had church and I tried to meet the members of the branch. There were about 25 people who came to church, which is actually a really good number. I tried introducing mysefl to as many people as I could and every single person asked if I was Ukrainian (even though they could tell as soon as I open my mouth that I'm wasn't.) So I had to explain a bunch of times that my grandfather was born here but that I'm American. People were nice about it, though, and they unders,tood that I doin't speak Ukrainian very well at all. 

The language is very hard. I felt like I was kind of decent at it in the MTC. I could understand pretty much everything that my teachers said, but it is way different here. So I still have a long, long, long long way to go before I'll be able to communicate at all in the language. It doesn't help that half the people here speak Russian and then the other half speak a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian. So, it's really hard and it's very, very strange being in a place where I don't know what everyone else is saying and everyone else doesn't know what I'm saying. I've never been somewhere like this so it will take some getting used to.

They gave us missionary debit cards, and it seems like everyone just uses cash so I think we just withdraw our money and use cash to buy everything that way. Stuff here is really pretty inexpensive from what I've seen. Our dinner Saturday night with the sisters was about 300 Hryvinia, which is about 10 dollars for six people to eat pretty well. That was a pretty expensive meal, too.

As of right now, it looks like I'll need a new camera. It started making weird noises when it was plugged into this computer and now it won't turn on. Oops. We haven't gone grocery shopping yet. We're doing that after this. We email from the church here in Rivne. It's in an old shopping center.

My companion is a zone leader, so he has a zone leader phone. I'm technically the district leader, but that's only because the two older elders in my district are both zone leaders, so it had to be one of the new guys. So, I have my own phone as a district leader, too. I haven't really used it for anything yet, though.

Please send me more details about everything!

Ok. I love you guys and hope everything is going well!

Alec

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