"A Little Bit About Uzhhorod"

Yup, I got transferred last Wednesday. All together, it was about 9 hours on a train from Rivne to Uzhhorod (also spelled Uzhgorod). Luckily for the last six we had a private coupe with beds and everything. And lots of the ride was through the Carpathians so there was plenty of stuff to look at. I attached some pictures and videos of the view from the train ride.

30 seconds of Alec's 9-hour train ride

Riding through the Carpathians

Alec's trusty hammock at the Tunnel of Love in Rivne

I also attached a couple pictures from my last couple days in Rivne. For P-day we went back to the Tunnel of Love, cause Sister Morris was being transferred out and she hadn't been there yet. It hadn't bloomed yet so it wasn't super nice, and there wasn't snow or anything, so basically it was pretty ugly -- but still cool enough to take pictures. 

Right after that, we had to rush home to help a member. We talked to her on the phone and we thought she wanted help moving a desk from her apartment to her office. Apparently we misheard. When we got there, she had a giant 10 foot cactus for us to move. So we had to carry a huge cactus halfway across the town to her office. So that was fun. 

After that, we went to a member's house for a family night. He's super cool and he knows English pretty decent so it's easy going over to him. He also makes really good pizza. 

Family and homemade pizza night at a local member's home

Alec says goodbye to his companion in Rivne and boards train to Uzhhorod

I left Wednesday morning pretty early (here's a pic of me with my old companion). And then got on the train to L'viv alone. When I got there I met up with Elder Volkov, who was also coming to Uzhorrod. He's from Donetsk (which I'm pretty sure might be part of Russia now, depending on who you ask,) so he just speaks pure Russian. He was supposed to be going to England, but so far he hasn't gotten his visa, so he's here with us. The train ride was pretty uneventful, except we did have to translate for border control for this poor Libyan guy who didn't have his passport and we had to tell him he had to get off the train. A little bit later we arrived in Uzhorrod.

Uzhhorod with the river Uzh flowing through it

A little bit about Uzhhorod: It's definitely much prettier than Rivne. Some parts look pretty ugly and communistic, but a good half of the city looks very cool and old European. There's a huge river (called the Uzh) that runs right down the middle of the city. In a couple weeks, the cherry blossoms should be blooming, and apparently this becomes a huge tourist destination cause it's so pretty. The mountains around here aren't super big, but if you get a good vantage point you can definitely see some cool mountains. Our apartment is actually very nice (and we even have hot water this time--except we did have our apartment partly flooded this morning when we came back from the grocery store, not sure why but I think we got it figured out) so that's nice. Unfortunately, there are almost no buses here cause it's kind of a smaller city so we end up walking most of the place, usually a couple hours a

day just spent walking around. We are very close to the border- -- our apartment is about a 20-minute

View of the Carpathian Mountains

walk from Slovakia, and maybe a 30-minute bus ride to Hungary. Because of that, the languages here get kind of jumbled. We have one family we started teaching -- he pretty much just speaks Russian and his wife only speaks Hungarian, so things get kind of tough. From what I've noticed so far it's about a 50/50 split between Russian and Ukrainian here, so things might get a little difficult. There's also a ton of gypsies here -- it's like the gypsy capital of Ukraine, so it's nice seeing more dark-skinned people for once. We're actually teaching two different gypsy families right now, one of them is actually named Alec! I didn't believe it when I first heard it and I assumed his name was Oleg, but it's actually Alec.

The church here is very small -- on Sunday we had four people at church (I'm hoping that was mostly cause people forgot about daylight savings.) There are some strong members, and then some that are not so strong, but for the most part the members we do have are great. Basically the way it works here is that the missionaries do everything here. At least two of the four of us are pretty much expected to talk every Sunday, and we lead most of the classes and stuff like that too. It's definitely a lot of work, but it's interesting for sure. 

Uzhhorod Castle

We were planning on going to see a castle today, but since our water heater was leaking everywhere, we're going to meet up with our landlord today to get it figured out so we'll have to go to the castle next week. Hope everything is gong great back home!

Alec

Farewell to Rivne, Off To Uzhhorod

OK, so the big news this week is that I'm getting transferred to a different city. On Wednesday I leave Rivne to head to Uzhhorod. It's about as far away as you can possibly get in this mission, but it's still only about 9 hours by train total. It's about as far west in Ukraine as you can possibly go, right on the border of Slovakia (so you hear all kinds of different languages there.) It's right in the base of the Carpathian mountains, so the weather is either much warmer or much colder (I don't remember which) and the terrain is very different. The church is very small there - about 4 or 5 members and not even a branch, so it will be a very different experience. I'm excited for a change, but I've come to really like Rivne (or at least some of the people here) so it'll be a little sad to say goodbye. I'm definitely ready for something new though and supposedly it's a very pretty place in the spring time.

A day at the Rivne Zoo

Last Monday we did have a sweet chance to go to the zoo in Rivne. I've been wanting to go for a while but we waited until it warmed up a bit. It was actually a whole lot better than I was expecting out of a Ukrainian zoo. It doesn't really compare to Asheboro zoo, but it was definitely much better than that wildlife reserve we went to in Florida. I attached a ton of pictures from that and the sketchy playground that was there. They didn't have elephants or rhinos, but they did have tigers and lions and some cool monkeys. I also love when they try to write things in english and then spell it wrong, so I attached a picture of a "Madagaskar" sign.

At the zoo

Llama, llama, llama

At the zoo

Ths Rivne Zoo measures up

Alec and King Louie

Because mom would have wanted him to

The "sketchy" playground at the zoo

Spelled right or no?

Now that it's warmer we've started doing our sports day every weekend. On Saturday we went out to a caged in soccer field (just dirt really) and played field hockey. Not a ton of people came (lol )but it was still fun playing field hockey. I don't know why but I've been super sore since then. I guess cause you have to bend over the whole time.

Field hockey with some of the locals

We had exchanges on Thursday and we decided to go out and visit some members and sing to them, so we did that Thursday night. We've been trying to get in touch with universities to ask them to advertise our English practice, but we've had a hard time getting in touch with the right people.

Alec prepares to say farewell to the people of Rivne

I'm sure I'll have a lot to talk about next week with all of the transfers and everything. I hope everything is going great and I miss everyone!

Alec

"Hard To Believe It's Been Six Months"

The people here are the same as people everywhere else. They might be a little more forward than in America, but you'll find all types of people all over the world. There's no difference. People are definitely more friendly now that it's started to warm up a bit. As for my companion, things are going fine. He's super nice so we get along just fine. He has some interesting quirks from being home schooled in a big Mormon family his whole life, but nothing bad at all. He's quiet, which is nice, cause I would much rather be with someone quiet than with someone who wants to talk with me every minute of every day. 

I heard about the ACC Tournament. Not too upset I wasn't there for that one.

On Monday night we went over to the same guy's house who made us chicken for him to make us lasagna. It was pretty good, but it ended up taking a very, very long time to make. Every time I thought he was almost ready to put it in the oven, he added another ingredient or started making a whole new kind of sauce. It was tasty, but it made us a little bit late getting home. And apparently we didn't buy enough mozzarella either, oops. Mozzarella is kinda hard to find and a little expensive, so we got the best we could.

The sun comes out in Ukraine

The rest of the week was actually pretty busy. Wednesday was the eighth of March, which in all of Europe is a pretty big deal. It's Women's Day, so everyone buys flowers and presents for all of the women in their life. On that day we went with the sisters to one of their investigators to do some service raking leaves in her yard. We don't get many opportunities to do service like that, so it was nice to do something. For the holiday, there were lots of street vendors and stuff like that out in the center, so we went and bought some kind of fried potato chips on a stick. it was really just potato chips on a stick, but still tasty.

Making the pinata

The ward wanted to do an activity, and as missionaries we had a lot of responsibilities for the activity. First of all we made a pinata--which was a little messy but actually turned out pretty well. We had missionaries from Lutsk here on exchanges so we had them help us a bit. We ended up printing off pictures of the missionaries and letting everyone beat us with a stick.

We were also in charge of a few games for the activity. They were mostly games just to embarass the men. so we did the one where you roll a coin down your forehead and try to get it to land on a piece of paper on the ground. The trick though, is that everytime it lands on the ground, you trace a circle where it landed with a pencil, so that the next time they roll it down their forehead they get a black line going down their face without even realizing it. We had a bunch of the men and boys come up and try it, and they had no idea why everyone in the audience was laughing. 

The coin game leaves its mark

We also had some of the women put makeup on people (some of them look pretty good.)

Making up a little fun

One of the other games we did was when you put a cookie on your forehead and have to use your face muscles to get it into your mouth. The branch president just put the cookie on his head and looked around. Here's a video of that one.

Bobbing for candy buried in sour cream

The last game we did was where you have to use your mouth to find a candy or something buried in whipped cream. Unfortunately, we couldn't find any whipped cream, so we just got yogurt. Except a couple of the bowls weren't yogurt--they were just sour cream. Sister M. got one of the bowls with sour cream, but it took her a while to realize it wasn't yogurt. The kid in the background just drank the entire bowl of sour cream to get to the candy. That's a pure Ukrainian.

After that we went and broke the pinata. It took a lot of hits and a few swings from a crazy lady, but they finally got it open.

It was a fun activity, and a lot better than most of the activities here where you don't do much.

Alec with one of the Rivne branch youth at the Women's Day activity

The whack-a-missionary pinata

So lots of the week was spent preparing for that activity. But we also found time on Tuesday to go to Zdolbuniv, a smaller town about 30 minutes from Rivne to visit a member (the guy we baptized a couple months ago actually.) He had a heart attack last week and he didn't come to church and wasn't picking up his phone, so we went to go check on him. When we got there, he was out working in his garden, so he seems like he was doing just fine. He said he had to help his sister with something last Tuesday, so that's why he couldn't make it. He came yesterday, so all is well. When we got there he called us "heroes of Ukraine" cause we were able to find his house. All we did was look on Google maps before we left, but we didn't tell him that.

Oh, also, I made a pretty good quiche this week. In a cake pan, of course, cause we don't have any pie tins. 

Quiche in a cake pan

That's about all the exciting things that happened this week. It's kind of hard to believe it's been 6 months already. Lots of times it seems like time moves pretty slowly, but when you look back on it, things start to go fast. I think I've more or less adjusted to it all by now and I'm starting to have fun. I definitely don't get bored, we're usually very busy. As soon as March Madness is over, everything will be fine. 

Alec and his fellow missionaries in Rivne

I miss y'all a lot and hope everything is going well.

The Ukrainian thaw

Alec​

Member Involvement

We're trying to make a lot of changes in the mission, which means less talking to people on the street, and more visiting with church members and other people. We're trying to be as creative as we can with activities and service opportunities, so if you have any ideas, pass them along. This past week we tried to visit as many members as we could. 

On Monday night, we went to one member and he made us a rotisserie chicken (we've been to his house before and he made us the same chicken) and it was super good. We found out he actually used to be a chef in Italy. He grows all his own spices at his house out in the village. Tonight, he wants to make us his homemade lasagna, should be tasty. Of course, we'll be buying all the ingredients, but as long as he cooks it that's fine with me.

On Tuesday of last week, we went to another member. He knows English well enough to communicate with and he loves getting the practice. He actually requested that we be his home teachers so we can help with his English. He's working on the Pathway program with BYU-I, so he asks for our help every once in a while. He's a super awesome guy and he's always willing to help us out, so it's fun hanging out with him. He even made us pizza. It was kind of different (no tomato sauce, chicken, tomato slices, and mayonaisse,) but it actually turned out really, really tasty. He makes homemade pizza dough and he's very proud of it. 

On Thursday we visited an inactive member to try to talk to him a bit. I was on exchanges with the missionary from Armenia, and so he and the member pretty much spoke Russian the entire time, so I really had no idea what was going on. All I know is that he really, really, really loves green tea and doesn't really want to come to church. Last time we went there I tried sharing a spiritual thought in broken Ukrainian and he got kind of mad at me. So I pretty much just let them speak Russian.

On Saturday, our member meeting was just coming to the church and helping a member clean. We've started helping them clean as a way to get to know them better. This member just so happens to be the guy that's in charge of the building maintenence for this part of Ukraine, so he wanted the building really, really clean. So we spent a while doing that and talking with him. He's a really cool guy with a cool family. 

Then on Sunday, we stopped by an inactive member and talked for about fifteen minutes. He's a really nice guy that knows good English (it's always nice when that happens--it rarely does) so we just asked about his work and his family. Hopefully, we'll be able to meet with him a bit more. 

So, it's a very different kind of work than what we've been doing before. Before, we would never ever have this many meetings with members of the church, and I definitely like it this way a lot more. Hopefully, it will work.

On Saturday we also went to an English-speaking club to teach them how to order at restaurants in America. My companion apparently never went to a restaurant in his whole life, so I did it mostly by myself. Luckily there were some Ukrainians there who knew pretty good English and could help me with everything I didn't know how to say in Ukrainian. 

Easter-Island-head-looking-thing

It's getting warmer here -- it was up to like 50 degrees this past week! So there's a lot more people outside and everything just seems a lot happier. We walked through a park the other day and found a really sweet ropes course that we might have to check out when it opens up. At this park there was also a huge Easter Island head looking thing--no idea why but I thought it was interesting.

Oh, also can you send me some pictures of grandpa and great-grandpa? One of the Ukrainians here says I look like a pure Ukrainian and she wants to see what they look like.

Hope everything is going well and I miss all of you!

Alec​