The Actual Ukrainian Christmas

It's been pretty chilly here. One night it was forecasted to get down to about -20 F. Not sure if it ever did (I was asleep and definitely not outside,) but we spent a fair amount of time outside when it was well below zero. I was talking to someone and he said (if I understood him right, I probably didn't) that it hasn't been this cold in Ukraine in like 20 years. And the hard part is that it really doesn't warm up very much. We spend a lot of time outside talking to people and just walking everywhere, so it gets pretty chilly. After a certain point though your face just kind of goes numb so any temperature below zero pretty much just feels the same. My water bottle always freezes, and my companion actually had a tear freeze to his face while we were walking across a bridge once. So, yeah, it's a little cold. There actually was hardly any snow until yesterday - there's probably about four inches now. 

This past week we actually did a few different things. On Monday night, a member of the church invited us over to his house for dinner. He had us stop by a store on the way and pick up a chicken. After drinking some chunky carrot juice and two glasses of tomato juice (I really don't like tomatoes) he started cooking the chicken. He's a doctor here in Ukraine, and for being a doctor he seemed very unconcerned about salmonella poisoning. Either way the chicken was fully cooked (after like an hour and a half) and it was actually super tasty. While we were there, we tried playing a card game with him (called Saboteur, idk if you've heard of it) and I don't really think he understood the rules. Either way it was still fun and the chicken was good so all was well.

On Thursday night all of the missionaries decided to go caroling to a few of the church members around town. It was super, super cold, probably about -5, but still pretty fun. I think a lot of the people really appreciated it. Lots of them tried to give us money (apparently tons of people go caroling and then ask for money here, so everyone was surprised when we told them it was free) and one grandma even gave us some dinner, which was great cause I hadn't eaten yet. 

On Friday night (Christmas Eve in Ukraine) a member invited all of the missionaries over to their apartment for a little Christmas party. It's a super cool couple with a very cute two-year old son, so it was a lot of fun. We were actually supposed to have English practice that night, but it was a holiday and it was freezing cold outside, so we just decided to cancel it because no one was going to come. So we all go over to their apartment and she's prepared a huge Ukrainian meal for us with all kinds of stuff (most of it was pretty good, some of it - like the pieces of bread with dried anchovies and a lemon slice - were not my favorite). We just hung out there and talked to the family for a little bit, and with all six of the missionaries, it was pretty entertaining. 

On Christmas night we went caroling again to some other members. It was very fun again and I think a lot of the families really, really appreciated it. I'm getting pretty good at singing Christmas hymns in Ukrainian. 

Right now we have one investigator rand he's getting baptized on the 21st. He seems pretty excited about it, so hopefully it works out. He lives about a 30-minute bus ride from Rivne so we've started just meeting with him over Skype, which seems to work surprisingly well, and it's much easier than having him come here or us go there. 

And then on Sunday the branch did like a little lunch after church.

Finally, here's a video, you can't see much, but it was cold enough to do the thing where you throw boiling water out the window and it creates a lot of fog. So here's a pretty bad video of that. I was getting frustrated with people's misunderstanding of basic phase changes.

Love you guys!

Alec