Non-Stop Snowing

Last week was pretty interesting. We had our zone conference here in Rivne, so all the missionaries from the northern cities (Ivano-Frankivsk, Rivne, and Lutsk) were here on Tuesday. It was pretty cool to see a bunch of the other missionaries from the MTC again. A couple of them stayed a couple nights here in Rivne to do exchanges the next day (since my companion here is a zone leader) so we all stayed at the other apartment here in Rivne and basically had a big slumber party. Only problem was that the next day, my companion and the other new missionary Elder Sanders' companion were both on exchanges, so I spent the whole day with Elder Sanders. And neither of us can speak the language very well, so that was a little bit of a disaster. And there's more exchanges in L'viv this week, including the sisters, which means me and Elder Sanders will be the only missionaries in this city for three days. So, I'll let you know how that goes. It's pretty weird not knowing the language, though. People will ask me a question and I just have no idea what to say. Luckily, I have my companion with me all the time to help me out, but it's still a little weird not knowing what's going on. It doesn't really bother me, I just don't like not knowing what's happening.

So it's been pretty chilly the past week or so. It's been almost non-stop snowing here. I'm definitely not used to this much snow at all, but it hasn't actually gotten all that miserably cold. 

Alec in snowy Rivne

I've attached a couple pictures of the snow. This was on our way back to the apartment. We usually take the bus, but we decided to make the 35 minute walk that day. That was a mistake, because it started snowing super hard. It wasn't the hardest I've ever seen it snow, but it was the hardest I've seen it snow while I was walking outside for 2 miles. This picture is on a bridge that goes over the trainyard. You can't really tell, but it was snowing very hard, I promise. 

I've also attached a picture of the view from outside our apartment. I think I sent one before the snow. Honestly, it looks pretty nice.

View of the snow from Alec's apartment

The only problem is that it's this cold, and it's only barely December. so it's gonna be getting a lot colder. We hardly ever go into anyone's home, but for the most part it's pretty warm when we do. When we did service a week or two ago out in the villages though, this guy's house was not warm at all. But, everyone in the city lives in huge apartment buildings and they keep those pretty warm.

You can definitely find cheap clothes here. There's tons of second hand stores and we actually went to a couple today looking for ugly Christmas sweaters. We didn't have much success with that, but I did find a pretty interesting t-shirt from a restaurant in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Not sure at all how it found it's way to Ukraine, but I thought it was pretty cool.

So, I was wrong. It sounds like we'll be Skyping on American Christmas after all, instead of Ukrainian Christmas. So it'll hopefully be sometime in the middle of the day your time. I'll try to find out exactly when in the next couple weeks because we'll have to coordinate it with the other missionaries here because there's only a couple computers we can use.

There are a handful of active members here, and they are super helpful and willing to help out with whatever. We've had members come in and help us with every lesson that we've been teaching the two investigators at the hospital.

We've been listening to Christmas music, and the speakers you sent are working perfectly so far. Thanks a ton for that. It's been very awesome to have.

P-day is technically over at 6 o clock, so it's just about over. It was a somewhat interesting day though. We went to Second Hand looking for Christmas sweaters or whatever, and then we went to a православний church (eastern orthodox, the main religion here) to see what it was like inside. It was pretty interesting. They are very ornately decorated and they have tons of pictures of saints and people (called icons) around the church that they go up to and pray to (and kiss.) It was cool to see. Most interesting thing was that they don't have any seats there, so people go to church and stand for the whole service.

After that, we met up with the sisters and went to a place called L'viv Chocolate. It's like a sit-down restaurant, but all they have is chocolate. All I got was a little tea cup of hot chocolate. except hot chocolate here is not like in America.  It's litereally just melted chocolate. It's super good, but it's kinda hard to drink just pure chocolate.

Ok a couple pictures and some stories from this week.

So we were staying at the other apartment on Thursday and we were doing our studies in the morning. We were in the kitchen, and we started to smell something strange. We got up to check it out and it turns out there's a pretty huge gas leak from one of the gas lines in the kitchen. We had to call their landlord and they sent an emergency gas leak company out to fix it. Everyone else just wanted to stay in a different room of the apartment to wait for them, but I had to convince everyone to get out of their ASAP. No one wanted to wait outside in the -2 C weather and falling snow. But we got out and they came quickly to fix it. Just a regular day in Ukraine.

Last Wednesday, there were a ton of missionaries here because of the zone conference, so we went Christmas caroling in the center of town. Lots of people gave us weird looks at first (because Christmas isn't for another month and half here) but, I think a lot of people actually really liked it.

Christmas caroling in the center of town

 Okay, I have to go now, but I love you guys and hope all is going well.

Alec