Villages, Castles & Kittens

From the castle looking down on Uzhhorod

There's this very strange, very big, pink castle right next to our apartment. It looks like something out of Disney World, if Disney World had been abandoned for 15 years. Apparently no missionaries really knew what was inside it. Well, we decided to finally venture in. According to the signs on the outside, it's a family restaurant, but when we went inside it was completely empty. There were a few employees walking around, but they just completely ignored us. It was kind of like a Chuck E Cheese kind of place with rides and games and then a little eating area, but it was one of the spookiest places I've ever been. It was just so empty. And spooky. I didn't take a lot of pictures cause it was so scary. 

Inside the pink castle next door

Last p-day we also went to a cool museum by the church. It's basically a re-creation of an old Ukrainian village. The neat part is that all of the buildings are taken from actual Ukrainian villages, they just took them and moved them to this museum. They all kind of looked the same, but it was still pretty neat.

Alec & companions in old restored Ukrainian village

Inside a restored Ukrainian village home

And we finally went to the castle here in Uzhhorod. It was quite a bit smaller than the one in Mukachevo we went to about a month ago, but it was still pretty cool.

Outside the castle walls in Uzhhorod

There was a nice little courtyard inside the walls . . .

The castle courtyard

. . . and a pretty cool view over the whole city . . .

Castle's view of the city

There's also a sweet Hercules statue . . .

Alec & Hercules

The castle is the main tourist attraction here, and there have been A LOT of tourists this past week, so it's pretty cool that we walk past it every day on our way to the church. The church is about a 2-minute walk from the castle, so we have a pretty nice location.

The daily walk

We went to a member's house for dinner last night and her cat just barely had kittens this past week. So, of course I got a picture. ​

Kittens at a church member's home

Other than that everything was pretty much just a normal week. We made a couple attempts to go out to the village to visit our investigator, but he wasn't there both times. The second time, though, we found out he was in the hospital with his daughter who is apparently sick. Unfortunately, he doesn't have a phone so we couldn't really find out where he was. After some detective work, we figured out which hospital he was in, but we didn't know his daughter's name or even his last name, so we couldnt' actually find him. We'll probably try again tomorrow, and hopefully it works out. And, hopefully, his daughter is okay. 

Alec answers some Q&A from the family:

Q: How are your allergies holding up?

A: The allergies actually haven't been a problem at all so far. I was worried cause Uzhhorod has tons of trees and flowers and stuff so I thought it would be bad, but nothing has gotten bad at all yet. I haven't really seen much pollen yet, but I'm hoping it doesn't get bad. I'm thinking it's just NC springtime that I'm allergic to.

Q: Maya wants to know if you think Justin Jackson is cute? (She thinks he’s cute.)

A: We always said that Justin Jackson looked like a witch. I'm not sure why, but I think it's the nose. 

Q: Mom wants to know if you guys are doing formal discussions or if the lessons there are less structured than they are here?

A: It's not like formal discussions like it was 30 years ago. We use Preach My Gospel and everything like they do there, so I assume it's the same. The lessons aren't supposed to be structured at least--you're supposed to teach according to the needs of the person you're teaching. We kinda just teach whatever we think we should teach.

Q: Justin wants to know if you’re seeing any first hand evidence of the war with Russia?

A: I'm about as far away from Russia as I could possibly get, but yeah, you still see quite a bit. We went to a museum in the castle this week and they had a bunch of pictures on the wall from the war and stuff like that. People don't really talk about it a lot, at least not to us, but you can definitely see it. One of the other missionaries in Uzhhorod is actually from Donetsk which is right in the middle of the war.

Q: Maya wants to know if you think you have a good mission president?

A: Yeah I have a good mission president. I don't exactly have anything to compare him too, but he does a pretty good job.

Q: Maya wants to know if you feel like you are getting more fit with all the walking?

A: Yeah I think so. It's a lot of walking, so it's definitely lots of exercise. Just gotta be careful not to eat too much cause the food is so cheap here.

Q: Evan wants to know if they have any cool coins in their currency?

A: No nothing too special, really. They all just have 5/10/25, etc. on one side and then the other side the Ukrainian trident. I have started keeping a coin collection though. I figure that the country has only really existed for 25 years or so, so it's actually possible that I'd be able to collect all of the coins they've had. So far I've got most of the 2000s, anything before that is pretty hard to find though. 

Q: Do they mostly deal in cash there, or do you guys use your debit card a lot?

A: Yeah, it's almost entirely in cash. I think I've only used my debit card once when I really wanted a water bottle and the store didn't have change for a big bill. Most places don't even accept credit cards. Another reason collecting coins is so easy (even they don't  actually always give you change since the coins are so worthless.) So yeah, I haven't actually used that credit card y'all got me a single time, 

Q: Is it too early to start coordinating times for our Skype call with you on Mother’s Day?

A: Yeah, Mother's Day is in a couple weeks right? It's gonna be pretty tricky here since we don't have computers at the church. The Internet club with cameras here is usually very loud and busy in the afternoon/evenings, so we might have to do it in the morning, which would be like very late at night your time.

  

And I was very sorry to hear about Cocoa, but it's great that she's not in so much pain anymore.

Hope everything is going well back home.

Alec