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