Biking To Slovakia & Other Spiritual Adventures

Taking a break from the work to bike the countryside.

This past week was pretty interesting. For p-day on Monday we rented bikes from a place in Uzhhorod. They weren't the best bikes, and the roads here definitely aren't the best roads, so we had a few malfunctions along the way. One time my whole back tire got misaligned and I couldn't fix it without a wrench, but we managed to ask a guy in an electronics store if he had a wrench or something and their security guard came out and fixed it for me. He was super, super nice so I went and bought him some cookies afterward. Other than all that though the bikes were super fun. It's amazing how much faster you can get around the city when you have bikes. We actually kind of ran out of stuff to do with like three hours left. We rode all up and down the river, we rode to the top of a mountain with a cool view of the city and back down on gravel roads without very effective brakes, we rode to Slovakia, took some pictures at the border after asking permission from the guard, saw a cool monument, and went through a park on some dirt roads next to the river. It was a lot of fun, next time we'll just have to find somewhere outside of the city to go to.

Take a short ride with Alec and his companions through the Ukrainian countryside in the video below.

Most of the rest of the week was spent preparing for the mission president to come. He was here on Saturday and Sunday. We had interviews with him, and then he had interviews with some members of the church. The only super noteworthy thing that happened was on Sunday. after church President Rizley went back to the office to get something out of his backpack, and it was gone. Apparently at some point during the second hour of church, someone walked in and went and grabbed his bag and dipped. That was pretty bad. We spent the rest of the afternoon looking in dumpsters around the church trying to find something, but all we found was his backpack in the closest dumpster. Luckily he had his passport and everything on him, but he did lose his Bose headphones, nice sunglasses, and worst of all, his journal from the past year. So we felt pretty bad about that. He didn't seem to be too upset about the whole thing, though.

Other than that, we had a fun experience on Friday with our investigator. I don't know if I've told you about him, but his name is Alec (seriously) and we've been teaching him for a few weeks now. He lives in a village about 15 minutes from Uzhhorod. It's a pretty poor village, and he invited us to come to church with him on Friday. We had already met his pastor a couple weeks ago. At the end of our previous meeting with him, he started to pray and then he started to yell and touch our heads and chests in the middle of the prayer and he was speaking some strange language I've never heard before, so we figured it would be fun to go back. So we went to this little building in the middle of the village, and honestly it was about what you'd expect. Kind of like Southern Baptist evangelical, but also like new age churches with VERY loud music about Jesus and stuff like that. It was very interesting for sure and there was even a lady there who was nice enough to translate whatever gypsy language they were speaking into Ukrainian for us. It was strange for sure, but it was definitely a sweet experience. I got a recording of the music, but I can't figure out how to get it off our phone just yet. Anyway, after all of that, Alec agreed to come to our church on Sunday, so at least we had that!

It's actually started getting a lot colder again this past week. Today was supposed to get down below freezing, luckily it didn't happen though. The only good news is that I got a chance to wear the scarf that Abbie made! It's super nice actually and way better than any scarf I could find here. 

That's about all the exciting stuff that happened this week. We spent a lot of time getting ready for apartment checks . . . if you want to know anything just ask questions and I'll try to remember to reply. Love you all!

Alec

Easter in Uzhhorod

Alec on a hill overlooking Uzhhorod.  

This past week we had mission conference in L'viv, so we left Uzhhorod Tuesday afternoon for our 6-hour train ride. By the time we got to the apartment we were staying at (on the opposite side of L'viv from the train station) it was almost midnight, so waking up at 6:30 the next day was especially hard.

Here I am at a sweet big memorial in L'viv to some guy named Stepan Bandera:

Stepan Bandera (political activist) memorial in L'viv

Then we had mission conference til the afternoon, and right after that we got on another train at 5 to go to Ivano-Frankivsk (the same city I had to take a 9 hour bus to a few months ago) for exchanges with the zone leaders on Thursday. On Thursday I was with Elder Mund from Germany all day. It was pretty fun. We hung out in a village about an hour and a half from the city visiting a member in his village home. The only thing we didn' tknow was that the buses only come 3 times a day. So we got there and visited this guy, and then still had to wait an hour and a half for the bus. So while we waited we walked around and checked out the village. 

The next day we had to wake up at about 3:30 to catch a train to L'viv, and then another back to Uzhorrod. Luckily, we had private coupes for both trains, so we just slept (or tried to) most of the way. The only unfortunate thing is that my camera ran out of batteries the day before we left for L'viv and I didn't realize soon enough to charge it. But, I took pictures on other people's cameras. 

I do have some pictures from yesterday of a little Easter celebration in town. They paint these wooden eggs and hang them up on something like a Christmas tree. 

Easter decorations in Uzhhorod

We also took a few more pictures of the blooming Sakura trees. 

The blooming Sakura trees

Alec wields the scythe for a good cause

We were mostly busy with conference and stuff this weekend, but we also on Saturday went to a member's house out in the village. Pretty much everyone here has an apartment in the city and a little hut in a village somewhere where they have huge gardens. We helped her get it ready for planting. Most of the time I was pulling up weeds, but I also got to use a scythe to cut the grass. It's very inefficient, in case you were wondering. 

And then coming home from service on Saturday, we were waiting at the bus stop and a taxi drove up and asked if we wanted a ride to Uzhhorod. We said yes, but there were six of us, and it was a very small old Soviet car with only four seats, but we still managed to all cram in there. I got the front so it wasn't bad at all, and we took the 20 minute drive into town. All of that saved us 11 gryven (about 40 cents.)

Six missionaries in a four-seat taxi

On Sunday after church we went to visit a member who didn't come to church cause she was sick. When we got there she had a huuuuge Easter meal set out for us. It was a bunch of traditional Ukrainian food, and none if it is really terrible, it was just sooo much food. And she's very insistent on having us eat a lot of food. So I'm pretty sick, but we're going there tonight for FHE and I'm 100% sure she's gonna give us leftovers again, So that'll be fun.

I got the package you sent! (I actually got it a few weeks ago, but I didn't take any pictures so I was gonna wait til I could do that...but I still haven't taken pictures of it yet so sorry!) The Reese's and peanut butter are very much appreciated and that scarf that Abbie made is super, super awesome. For some reason I could not find a nice scarf here at all, so I was using a pretty bad one all winter. Luckily, I don't think I'll need to use it til next winter, but it will be much nicer than the one I had last winter.

By the way, that ground beef we used last week was not so great. I didn't actually buy it, but they told me it was called "ground meat in assortment," so I don't think that's really the highest quality stuff. They do have real ground beef here, it's just a little more expensive. So next time I'll have to go for that. 

Painting Easter eggs with local church members

Sounds like y'all had fun for Easter, even without doing the traditional clues. Very nice eggs. We actually did the same thing for our branch activity here on Friday. Since we pretty much run everything church-wise here we were totally in charge of the activity, and that's all we could come up with. We watched the Easter video and then painted eggs. 

 Today we're planning on renting bikes and riding around town for a little bit. It's a great bike-riding city, so it should be a lot of fun. I'll try to take some videos and pictures and send them next week.

Alec and his companions in Uzhhorod

Ok, hope y'all had a good Easter! Love you all!

Alec

Spring Comes to Ukraine

Springtime in Ukraine

This week we spent a lot of time getting ready for General Conference (cleaning the church, figuring out a way to actually watch it and download it since we don't have a computer or anything at the church, and getting snacks and stuff for between sessions). We ended up using a projector and had a member download it onto her laptop. For the Saturday sessions, we had three people show up in the morning, but two of them left before the second session. When that one started, the other missionaries had to leave with the one member that stayed cause they lost their phone on the bus and had to go all across town to find the person who found it. It ended up working out pretty great cause my companion and I were able to watch it in English, which was much much better. You might remember the talk by Elder Christofferson about the Seventy, Bruce Porter, that died recently. He was the area president of the East Europe Area, so all the members here were really connected to him. Unfortunately, there were no members there to actually hear that talk.

For the Sunday session, we had a few more people come -- about 10 in total. Almost all of them left before the second session, but at least a few stuck around. After four hours of straight Ukrainian (with a little bit of Russian mixed in by the translators) it was super hard to stay awake and focus. and if I don't focus really hard I can't get mch out of it. So I didn't pick much up from the Sunday sessions at all. Hopefully we'll be able to find some time to watch them in English at some point.

On Friday we also had a chance to go over to a member for dinner. All the people I've been fed by in this city don't actually eat with you. They feed you dinner and then watch you eat. At least it was pretty good food. She made soup for the first course, and then fried chicken and potatoes, and then these donut type things with jam for dinner. It was kind of awkward cause she didn't eat and I didn't really know how to make conversation with her, but she talked to the Ukrainian missionary in pure Russian so I didn't feel too bad about not participating cause I didn't really know what was going on.

Alec's attempt at chicken pot pie

For p-day today we hung out at the other elders' apartment and relaxed. I made cheeseburgers (they turned out ok, but the ground beef here isn't quite the same so they weren't quite as tasty as in America.) I also tried making chicken pot pie last night. The picture I sent makes it look a lot better than it was. I put dough on the top and bottom, but the dough on top cooked a lot faster than the dough on the bottom. So it basically turned into a soupy, doughy, mess. It still tasted ok, just mostly uncooked. 

Riverside language study

I also attached some pictures of some trees we walk past every day on the way home (see above.) There's lots of these colorful trees all around town. Also we did our language study by the river one day, so there's a couple pictures of that. The weather has been super nice lately, so there have been tons of people outside and it's just much nicer than the winter time in general.

There's a shortage of piano players here. I don't think I've ever actually seen a member that can play the piano, It's pretty much always missionaries doing it, and we don't even have that many missionaries that can play either. Definitely glad I didn't continue with piano though, cause that would mean that I would have had to play piano and I'm glad I don't have to.

Alec and his companions in Uzhhorod

Tomorrow I'll be headed to L'viv for a mission conference, and then right after that I'll go straight to Ivano-Frankivsk for exchanges with the zone leaders, so it should be a more exciting week. 

 And yes I heard about the game on Monday. Just be sure to get me a t-shirt and a bunch of other stuff please.

Alec

Exploring Churches & Castles

The trees and everything here are just starting to bloom. I don't have any pictures just yet, but in the next couple weeks there should be some pretty cool stuff. Apparently there are thousands and thousands of tourists that will be here to see the blooming trees, so it must look pretty cool. 

We haven't watched General Conference yet. They usually do it the week after because of the time delay. Since so many people don't really have reliable internet connections (or internet at all) everyone comes to the church to watch it together. Usually what happens is that all the members will watch it at the church and all the missionaries will go to a different room and watch it in English. But since this branch is so small and we don't  have a TV or a computer at the branch (we have to borrow a laptop from a member,) we'll all just watch it together in Ukrainian. But we'll see how it goes. Maybe I'll be able to understand more than I think.

Have they finally finished all that stuff in downtown Cary? I feel like they've been doing construction there for like 20 years. It looks pretty nice though from the pictures you sent.

  

As for basketball. At this point I have no choice but to cheer for the Tar Heels. Can't have them losing back to back years. That's all I'll say about that.

Here's a bunch of pictures and a bit about my week. 

Cool church in Uzhorrod

There's a few just from around Uzhorrod. there's lots of really cool churches and stuff here. The yellow one that I have a few pictures of is really cool. We wanted to go inside, but it was actually closed. We walked around the side and saw someone there that we had actually talked to on the street a few days ago. He lived at the seminary there and is like a priest or something but he's super super nice and he invited us in and gave us a little tour. It was a very cool, very old, very orthodox church. I didn't want to take any pictures of the inside but they are very elaborately decorated. 

There's also a picture of a piece of paper with what looks like scribbles all over it. We talked to this old guy selling his (really cool, actually) paintings out of his car (that he was clearly living out of.) We just wanted to know how much his paintings cost, but he ended up asking what church we were from, and then he told us all about his theory about the earth and the calendar system and the lunar cycle and all kinds of stuff about things that prove that God exists (Facebook post kind of logic.) He drew the schematic for us and told us that we need to share it with everyone, because it would be able to stop all wars all over the world. So this is my part I guess in fulfilling his request.

A Ukrainian artist's expression of faith

There's also a pic of my favorite lunch spot with a view of the river. People really like schwarma in this country for some reason, and it's the closest thing you can get to a burrito so we eat it all the time.

Alec's favorite lunch spot on the banks of the river Uzh

Overlooking Uzhorrod

The rest of the pictures I think are from today. 

At the castle in Mukacheve

For p-day we took a bus outside of Uzhorrod to another town nearby called Mukacheve. They have a pretty sweet castle there, it's way up on top a hill, and it's actually pretty big. So we went there and walked around for a bit. I was actually pretty impressed with how cool it was. They had little museums and gift shops in the castle and a bunch of statues all around (I think I put a picture of the torture chamber, too). There were some pretty cool views from the terraces of the castles, too; there's actually some pretty big mountains nearby. 

Statues at the Mukacheve castle

Alec at Mukacheve Castle

The view of the Carpathian Mountains from Mukacheve Castle

Alec's E.T. moment with statue at Mukacheve Castle

Mukacheve Castle courtyard

Alec with statuesque friends at Mukacheve

One thing about the pic of the keys: Those are two old castle keys next to the key we have for the church building here. I feel like a dungeon master every time I have to open the church building. 

Alec's church key compared to castle dungeon keys

-Alec