It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Church was fairly interesting this week. They had some sort of primary program, so all of the primary children (all 6 of them) gave talks in sacrament meeting. It was nice because I can actually kind of understand when little kids talk because they speak so simply, so I somewhat had an idea of what was going on. After church there was a member that came who spoke pretty decent English, so I spoke with him for a while after church and helped him with some English questions he had. 

So mom is gonna be pretty jealous of this, but after the New Year all of the branches in this mission are moving to a 2-hour church block schedule instead of 3. We're not sure exactly how it's going to work, but that was a decision made by our mission president, since so many of the wards are so small I guess. So we're just gonna try it out and see how it goes.

Alec and the snow in Rivne

Up until yesterday, it actually looked a lot like Christmas. There was snow everywhere, but then it warmed up yesterday and all of the snow melted, so now it's just wet and muddy everywhere. Today, though, (literally in the last few hours) it's gotten super cold again, so maybe it'll start snowing again and look more like winter time. It's interesting--they don't really celebrate Christmas here very much. They do, however, celebrate New Years like we celebrate Christmas in America. I forgot to get any pictures, but at one of the big shopping centers and the movie theater they put up giant New Years trees and lights and stuff, so it does look a bit like Christmas time. In lots of the stores they play American Christmas music, too, so I hear a lot of that also.

We haven't done much for P-day yet and I don't think we'll have time for much today. We're going to visit a couple of our investigators who are in the hospital (two different hospitals on opposite sides of town) and we have to do some paperwork for my visa. Tomorrow actually, to finish the paperwork, we have to go to another town called Ivano-Frankivsk to finish the paperwork (apparently that's where I was originally supposed to go so all of my documents are there or something). It's a 9-hour bus ride to get there that leaves at 6 am tomorrow. And then the next day we'll take a 9-hour bus ride back.

This week was also interesting because both of the trainers in Rivne had to go to L'viv for a conference, so I was here with another new missionary in the city all alone for almost three days. We had a few lessons we scheduled (which went pretty horribly because we can't understand much) and we spent the rest of the time trying to contact people on the streets (which also went pretty bad,) but at the end of the day we did manage to survive in the city all alone. We bought food and we rode busses and we didn't die, so that's good to know.

We had a branch activity on Saturday night. We watched 17 Miracles. Unfortunately, it's only available in Russian, so I couldn't understand much (and it was a really tough translation, with just one guy doing all of the voices, even the women.) Luckily, I had watched it a month or two ago in the MTC, so I knew what was going on. 

As for the people we've been teaching, one of them was able to leave the hospital and go home, but then we got a call Friday night that he had to take an ambulance to another hospital for an emergency surgery. so we visited him Saturday and he seems to be doing ok. But, he still has to stay there to recover for another week or so. so since neither of them have been able to come to church, we pushed the baptismal date back to sometime in January when both of them are feeling better and out of the hospital. 

Alec at one of the "imposing" statues

I attached a few pictures from this week of stuff around town. There are a ton of really big, imposing statues here. There's a ton more around town so I'll try to get more pictures as times goes on. They're all super interesting.

Something weird that I found out a couple weeks ago. There were missionaries here from another town on exchanges and I was talking to one of them who's been out for almost two years. He was talking about how he played a TON of foosball in college before his mission. Well, I remembered when I was at BYU that summer, people in my dorm would play foosball until like 4 in the morning. So, I asked him where he went to school, and it was BYU (of course) and it turns out he was there at the same time I was. Not only that, but we lived in the same building, on the same floor, and on the same hall. He lived a couple doors down from me that whole summer. I didn't remember him at all, But, we had a lot of the same memories about stuff that happened that summer. It's kind of a crazy coincidence that I ran into him here in Ukraine like three years later. 

Hope everything is going great at home and that everyone is in the Christmas spirit! Love you guys and I'll talk to you next week!

Alec