Trip To Tунель Kохання

We got about 8 or 9 inches of snow here last week and the city was just as busy as always. If it makes you feel any better though, every kid in the whole country has been out of school for the past two months or so because of a flu quarantine or something like that, so they like to cancel school here too, it's not just in NC.

Alec at тунель кохання

Last Monday we decided to take a little trip to a village outside of Rivne (that's why I emailed earlier). There's a place called тунель кохання (Tunnel of Love) and we went to go have a bonfire and take some pictures. It's pretty cool. The pictures I took don't do it justice, but if you google it you'll find some pretty cool pictures. It's like pinterest famous or something. It was pretty cool to see with all the snow and everything. We also met a couple people from Reunion Island. It's a tiny French island off the coast of Madagascar. They spoke decent English so we invited them to hang out with us at our bonfire. They were in the middle of a two-year trip around the entire world, and I think they were pretty surprised to see Americans in the middle of Ukraine. They definitely weren't at all prepared for the cold though, it was probably about 10 F, so they were grateful to take some of our hot chocolate and we gave them some handwarmers (which apparently don't exist outside of America cause no one has even heard of them). One of them was super into music so he asked us to sing a hymn with him. I have a video of it but it's taking forever to upload so maybe I'll send it another time. I did attach some pictures of the whole trip, including a picture of a wild dog that followed us for about a mile. There are TONS of wild dogs here for some reason. 

Sharing a bonfire and hot chocolate with tourists from Reunion Island

The wild dogs of Ukraine

We had an interesting experience on Wednesday. There was this kid (about 22 years old) that had come to the church a few times, so we were talking with him a bit. He was a super nice kid and everything. When we said we were about to leave the church, he said he'd come with us. He said he had to go to the bathroom, but then he just kind of disappeared. We didn't really think much of it and left, but a couple hours later a member asked us if we had seen his phone, which apparently he had left at the church. Well turns out the kid had stolen the phone and just left the church building. I felt super super super bad, especially cause it was actually a pretty nice phone, and electronics are very, very expensive here. And to make it worse, he had a bunch of pictures of his 2-year-old son on the phone. He asked us to help him find the phone and/or the kid. We were gonna go check out some pawn shops, but we decided to go check out an internet club that we knew the kid liked to hang out. We went there and looked around but didn't see him. While we were talking to the lady at the front desk, we heard footsteps and the front door slam. Somehow he snuck past us and was running away. Well the member started booking it after him. It turned into a high-speed chase through the back alleys of Ukraine. It only lasted about 15 seconds, but it was still pretty sweet. He did end up catching the kid and getting his phone back, which was a pretty big relief because I felt pretty terrible about the whole thing. (This guy was the member who invited us over on Ukrainian Christmas Eve, so I definitely didn't want to make him hate us for losing his phone.

Banana bread in a frying pan

We made the banana bread recipe you sent the other day. I attached a picture. We don't have bread pans, so we just put it in a frying pan in the oven. It actually turned out pretty well. I want to try to make the chicken pot pie, but you can't buy Pillsbury pie crusts here (lol), so I'll have to figure out how to make that from scratch. 

The jacket I bought here seems to be holding up just fine through all the freezing weather, even though it was only $60. I lost one of my gloves a couple weeks ago, so I went to the renok (farmer's market) in the center of town and bought a nice pair of leather gloves (~$12) and those have been super great to have. As long as I'm smart and layer up it's usually not so cold. Except for my toes. no matter how many pairs of socks I put on, my toes always get cold.

Our first baptism should be happening this weekend. The investigator is super excited about it. We'll be pretty busy getting stuff ready for that this week. Baptisms don't happen very often here. It's the first one in well over a year in Rivne, so the whole branch is pretty excited about it.   

Hope you have a good week!

Alec