A Ukrainian Valentines Day

On Wednesday we had a branch activity for Valentine's Day (I didn't even realize they celebrated it.) Pretty much all they do for activities here is sing a few songs, have a spiritual thought, maybe watch a video or two, and then have refreshments afterwards. So that's what we did. The missionaries sang "Love is Spoken Here" (in Ukrainian it's not really about love, so it didn't actually fit the theme too well--oops) and we watched a couple Mormon Messages and that was about it. They're nice little activities, but there just aren't enough members here just yet to reach that critical mass where people can just hang out and have fun. It's ok, at least people still come to them so they're still successful. 

Other than that this week was very non-eventful. We had English practice on Friday. I teach in the advanced group, so we decided to have a spelling bee. Most of the people in the advanced group know English very, very well (better than I do...at least on a technical/grammatical level) but spelling is something they are not good at, so it was great to be able to prove them wrong for once. I actually knew the word "settee" too! Just cause mom always called the couch in the dining room a settee. when really it was just a couch. There's no difference. 

Then on Saturday we went to that English-speaking club, where really they just ask us about life in America. The girl in charge of it followed me on Instagram, so even out here I'm still racking up the Insta followers. 

The new missionaries seem to be doing well here! There were actually a few changes, and one of the pairs of sisters (Jones and Dishlanyan) got transferred to a different city today. So now we're back down to two sisters. It's kinda sad cause it would have been a lot of fun having eight missionaries here. 

We went to Mcdonald's today cause Sister Morris really wanted Mcdonalds (you can only get it in two cities in this part of Ukraine, so it's pretty special.) From left to right, there is Elder Aslanyan (you can barely see him), Sister Jones, Sister Dishlanyan, Sister Fedotova, Sister Morris, Elder Jones, me, and Elder von Niederhausern. Sister Dishlanyan and Sister Fedotova should be going to America once they get their visas, so if you're ever at Temple Square and you see them, say hello.

I found an old Liahona magazine from 6 or 7 years ago. There's always a message from area authorities in the Ukraine section of the magazine, and apparently there used to be a Martschenko who was an Area Seventy (of course he spelled it differently in English--Marchenko.) 

I also attached a picture of a cool monument I stumbled upon walking around one day. The plaque for it was frozen over with ice so we couldn't really figure out exactly what it was about, but it was still pretty interesting. There's big statues and stuff like that all over the place.

I think I mentioned this a long time ago, but I finally uploaded the video of us singing in the middle of the woods by the Tunnel of Love with a French couple from an island off the coast of Madagascar. So that was cool.

That video of grandma was very nice to see. It's great to be able to look back on her great life.

This week we have zone conference on Thursday, exchanges on Wednesday, and district conference with all of the members from the whole mission in L'viv on Sunday. So it will hopefully be a more interesting letter next week. Love you guys and hope all is well!

Alec