Building On History

We got a call from the mission president last week about an upcoming event here. Apparently in the early '30s there were actually missionaries that came here to Uzhhorod from some Czechoslovakia mission or something like that. They were coming to see if they could open this area for missionary work, and they actually made the decision to send missionaries here. Unfortunately, WWII broke out shortly after, so it never actually happened.

But, the church history department got a hold of the journal of one of the missionaries that came here and some of his Kodak pictures, and now they're wanting to do kind of a bigger history investigation into his trip. So they're sending some church historians here from Salt Lake next month to retrace their steps and do some interviews with the modern day members. So, we'll be setting up interviews for them with our members (all 6 of them) which should be pretty interesting. Some of them have some pretty interesting lives. Like a while ago we found out that one of the ladies had a husband that actually died as a first responder in Chernobyl, so I'm sure there'll be some interesting stories.

The real cool part, though, is that they want to do some kind of lecture about the missionary trip from the 1930s. So, they're asking the four of us here to arrange for all that. That means we have to find a venue, spread the word, try to get radio announcements, talk to news channels, invite mayors/governors (the other missionaries here have already been talking to them--just trying to build bridges and stuff), talk to universities and stuff like that. And the event is in less than a month. It's gonna be a lot to do but it should be a super cool event actually and a pretty unique opportunity. We'll just have to make sure we get everything done in time. 

Oh, and one other small thing, on Saturday we were doing a stand trying to advertise our English practice and this really nice guy from Belarus on a bike comes up and starts talking to us (in pretty good English). He was super nice and I thought he was super cool. About five minutes later he comes back, and says he wants to give me a gift. I forgot to get a picture of it, but it looks like a block of soap made in a cupcake tin, but in the soap there are just a bunch of pieces of scrap metal and coins and stuff like that. He told us it was to protect us from chem trails. So he was a super, super nice guy, just a little bit of a crazy conspiracy theorist. 

Fun fact: The people next to me in the Internet club are working on a school report on Michael Jordan. I'd offer my expertise, but it looks like they're just copying stuff from online, so I think they'll be OK. 

And last week for p-day we did some cool things. I attached a bunch of pictures. I guess you can try to sort them out. 

Riding the children's reailroad

So, in a few cities in Ukraine they have something called the children's railroad. It's basically just a really small railroad (like 1 km long) and the train just goes back and forth as a thing for kids to do. Well, last Monday was the opening day for the season, so there was a little event there and it was free so we decided to go for it. It was about as exciting as you'd expect (not very), but it was cool to see all the little kid getting excited for it. I feel like I remember doing something similar as a kid, but maybe I'm just thinking of the Pullen Park train. 

There's also a little botanical gardens right next to the church, so we decided to check that out. They weren't gonna let us in at first cause they were at capacity, but when we told them we were Americans they opened the gate for us. I was actually kind of impressed with it. I was expecting something really bad, but it was actually pretty normal. I didn't get any great pictures, but it was not too shabby. 

Lastly, for some reason there was a weightlifting competition going on right in the center of town. One time when we were walking by, they were doing an arm wrestling competition, so I got a little video of the finals. There's no surprise on who won.

And also yes we have Skype calls this week. Bad news is it's probably gonna be at a very inconvenient time. The only Internet club here with cameras for Skype is super, super busy in the afternoons/evenings, so it's unlikely we'd be able to get a computer then. So we were thinking of going early Saturday morning around 8 o'clock our time. That's what, 1 in the morning your time Friday night? That's probably gonna be our best bet for getting a working computer.

Hope everything is going great!

Alec ​