"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​