"Nice To Use My Knowlege of Uzhhorod"

Missionary work is like pulling the sword from the stone - it requires both strength and faith

I don't have a new companion, yet. We're just gonna stay in a tri-panionship for the next 4 weeks most likely. We all stay in the same apartment cause there's only three of us. They are Elder Fuller (he came out the same as me) from Utah and Elder Cook (he came out a few months after) from California. They're both pretty cool so everything is going well.

Last week was a pretty busy one actually. On top of getting my new companions adjusted to the new town, we had a couple visitors we had to prepare for. First, President Rizley (along with his visiting daughter, her husband, and their twin baby girls) came down for Tuesday and Wednesday. Whenever he comes here we pretty much plan out all of his time, so we set up interviews with him with a few members on Tuesday, a couple of which want to go out on missions in the next few months. We didn't really have anything planned for the evening, which turned out to work out just fine because he wanted to spend some time with his family. 

A street in Uzhhorod

So that was Tuesday, but I pretty much missed all of that. That same day a member from Ivano-Frankivsk, who works for the church doing registration and stuff, came down here to officially get the church registered here in Uzhhorod. To do that, he had to collect signatures from 9 different people, which is more than we have active members. So, we had to go find some random people, too. He doesn't know Uzhhorod at all, so one of us had to go on "exchanges" with him so there could be missionaries with President Rizley translating and stuff like that. Well, since I'm the only one that knows Uzhhorod, I was out with him all day running around trying to get signatures. It was actually pretty sweet. He's a really cool guy and he speaks clean Ukrainian, so he's easy to understand. 

We did have a bit of trouble with some of the paperwork, though. After 2-3 hours, when we had already gotten half of the signatures we needed, we were at a notary getting some stuff notarized and she told us that one of the names was spelled wrong. This person has a Hungarian name, so when they transliterated it they spelled it super weird) which meant we had to reprint the document...and get all of the signatures again. After a couple more mistakes and reprinting it a couple more times, we finally got it right. We ended up pretty much just hiring a taxi to take us all around the city so we would have enough time to meet all these people--including meeting one guy at the hospital, finding some lady in a grocery store, and hunting down a couple inactive members. But after all that we finally got it done. It was actually a lot of fun and it was nice being able to use my knowledge of Uzhhorod.

So, that was Tuesday. On Wednesday, president had another meeting with the new convert family. After that he wanted to actually go to visit them in their village. I'll take a picture next time I go there, but it's a very poor little village, and he was kind of blown away with it. He did say that it was a "spiritual highlight of the year" for him, so that was cool. Right after that we had to run back to Uzhhorod to take some welfare money to the guy in the hospital. Apparently he needed an MRI--it cost a little over $12. And that was about it for a very exhausting couple of days. 

We've been playing basketball a lot trying to meet new people, and we met a kid that knows English pretty well, so that was cool. He told us he could destroy us in monopoly, so we might have to buy that game to see.

I don't have a ton of pictures this week, but a highlight of the week was definitely what Kostya (the little 8 year old kid we baptized a few weeks ago) wore to church this week. I'm really very confused about where this shirt came from, but there is literally only one thing on the entire shirt that's correct, and that's North Carolina. 

This 2008 NCAA Final Four t-shirt Alec saw in Ukraine has everything wrong except North Carolina. (Florida and Ohio State not only didn't make the Final Four that year, they weren't even in the tournament. It was also held in San Antonio that year, and not Atlanta.

Hope y'all have a great week!

Alec​

How I Lost My Companion

Elder Martschenko doing yoga in the park

In terms of active members, we had maybe six or seven before the three baptisms last week, so it's a significant increase. Now we actually have to find a primary teacher. And they came to church on Sunday. I was super surprised, too, cause the mom called me that morning and said someone was sick and so they couldn't make it, but then they showed up a few minutes late (or at least the mom and the daughter--the son is the one that's sick.) So I was super impressed they made the trip out, even with a sick son at home. The mission president is coming here this week, and they should be meeting with him, so that'll help them a bit too.

As for my new companion---that's a bit of a funny story. I received my train tickets last Monday to get ready to head to L'viv to pick up my new companion and go through the two-day new missionary orientation thing. So the plan was to leave Tuesday afternoon (on a six hour, private coupe all alone on the way to L'viv---that's the dream.) A couple hours before the train was supposed to leave, I got a call saying my companion had just received his visa to Germany, so he would not be coming to this mission. They told me not to take the train and to just stay in Uzhhorod for the time being. 

I was pretty disappointed I wasn't going to get to go to L'viv, but I was more disappointed in the fact that since all the other missionaries were being transferred and no one would be in Uzhhorod, it was gonna work out that I would ave to take a six hour, metal seat, train to L'viv at five o'clock Thursday morning, wait in L'viv for a couple hours, and then take another six hour, metal seat train back to Uzhhorod, getting in at midnight with the new people coming to Uzhhorod. 

Fortunately, it didn't work out like that. They called back about ten minutes later, and told me just to take the train to L'viv, hang out during the orientation thing (I had a small part to present) and then just come back with the other two that were coming to Uzhhorod Thursday evening. so everything worked out for the best and I still got my six hour train ride to myself and I still got to go to L'viv. I'm kinda bummed I didn't get to train this guy, I'm sure it would ave helped my Ukrainian a lot, but that's ok. Now I'm in a tri-panionship with a couple other missionaries here, so I've basically just been showing them around Uzhhorod, cause I could get transferred any time.

I attached a few pics/videos, one of me when I paid 30 hryven to rent a hoverboard for 10 minutes . . . 

some of my private coupe on the train . . .

 some of me being in the train station in K'viv alone at 11:00 at night (after that I had to go hire a taxi to drive me through the city) . . . 

Some of me doing yoga at a park in L'viv . . .

 and then one of the other people who served in Uzhhorod the last transfer that are now gone . . .

Anyway, glad to hear y'all survived trek and hope you had a great week!

Alec

Triple Baptism

Baptism of three new church members

It was a pretty busy week here for sure. The baptism on Saturday DID happen, thankfully. I'll copy what we sent the mission office about their conversion story: 

Alec and the newly baptized family

"Ilona and her family were found by Elder Protzman  and Elder Baxter contacting about six months ago. They were very interested in finding out more about our message and were taught weekly the missionary discussions. After a couple months of little to no contact, Elder Shuley and Martschenko started teaching them again and their progression became evident as they started to come to church. They looked forward to every visit. Since they were found, they always had a strong desire to be baptized. To provide an example for the rest of their family, Ilona, Kostya, and Anya accepted a baptismal date for June 10th and have kept all of the necessary commitments. After baptism they felt the blessings that accompany a remission of sins."

So, although we didn't find them, we picked them up after no contact with them for a while. They're super cool and the little son is a super cool kid. It's a very poor family that lives in a village outside of Uzhhorod. They've definitely had to make a lot of sacrifices to come to church, whether it's the ~$1 it costs for bus fare for all of them or the four hours they spent walking home when they didn't have the money for a bus, so they were definitely dedicated. It took a bit of work getting them ready, but they were very ready by the time the baptism came. 

Hotel sauna turned baptismal font

Originally, the baptismal interview was scheduled for Tuesday morning, but they called early that day and said they couldn't make it, so we were worried we'd have to push it back. But, then they were able to come Friday and the interviews went well (over Skype on a member's smartphone cause we don't have computers or wifi at the church) and so everything was ready for the baptism. We don't have any kind of baptismal font here of course, so we had to rent out a hotel sauna. Apparently, they've had problems before with accidentally renting an 8-foot deep pool, so we spent a bit of time at the hotel making sure we had the right place. We did all that on Monday, but then on Friday we realized that we only rented out the sauna, and we were supposed to actually get a conference hall to have the service and everything. When we went there on Friday, everything was already reserved, so we ended up just using a lounge area in the sauna room, which actually worked out pretty well (just a little hot.) Everything went pretty well with the service. My companion actually baptized them cause he didn't want to have to do the confirmations in Ukrainian the next day. Lol. But, yeah, I think everything went pretty well!

I attached a bunch of pictures of what everything looked like, the lighting was really bad and Ukrainians are really bad at taking pictures, so most of them are terrible. But, it'll give you an idea of what it was like. 

Baptismal reception in the hotel sauna lounge

 

Uzhhorod church members with their newest converts

Most of our week was spent getting ready for all that. Other news though, last week Elder Volkov got reassigned to the Romania Moldova mission. He was assigned to England originally, but his visa got denied so he got reassigned there. He left early Wednesday morning, so I've been in a trio companionship for the past week or so. This week is transfers though, and I will be staying in Uzhhorod. Everyone else is leaving though, so we'll have some new people here. My new companion is going to be a brand new visa waiter from Kiev named Elder Rudenko. Apparently, he doesn't speak any English, so this should be a lot of fun. No idea what to expect, but I guess we'll find out this week. I'll be heading to L'viv this week for new missionary synthesis and then I'll meet him there. Should be interesting for sure.

Alec and fellow miossionaries in Uzhhorod, Ukraine

Halfway through emailing all the lights went out in the computer club and all the computers turned off. The computer club is in like an old abandoned sewer or something like that underground so it was very dark. So we had to go to the other one all the way across town. Apparently, it happens fairly often. 

Hope y'all have a great week!

Alec

The History Event

Alec and the other missionaries in Uzhhorod

This past week was actually pretty busy. We had zone conference on Wednesday in L'viv, so lots of our time this week was spent traveling--half of it was good, half was pretty terrible. Our train to L'viv from Uzhhorod was by far the nicest one I've been on so far. It was a coupe, so the four of us were in a private room with four beds, which is always pretty nice. On top of that though, it was just a much newer, nicer train than usual. I mean it was still kinda old looking, but the number one best part was that it actually had air conditioning. Usually we just kind of sweat to death for 6 hours, but the a/c made it pretty comfortable actually. and it was a faster train so it only took about 4.5 hours, so we didn't get into L'viv around midnight like usual.

So while that train was nice, the train back to Uzhhorod was bad enough to make up for it. First of all we had to leave straight after conference on Wednesday and take the train back. Usually we stay the night and leave in the morning. The real bad part was that it was just a normal open-seating train without air conditioning. So pretty much we were crammed into the train car with 100 other people for 6 hours . . . so it was a less than comfortable train ride. But it's ok, we all survived. We were just all pretty gross and sweaty by the time we made it to Uzhhorod at midnight. Oh well, it happens.

History Event

The real big news from this past week was the history event we had. Two historians from Salt Lake City -- one of which was a missionary in Kiev a long time ago -- came with a couple senior missionaries from Kiev and a member from L'viv. They were just coming to do some interviews and gather the history of the church here, but President Rizley asked them to do a kind of lecture thing here that would be open to the public. Sooo, we got a venue for that at the nicest hotel in town and invited a bunch of people (mayor, governor, professors, other officials, etc). and after all that had . . . one person show up. Oops. 

It's ok. It wasn't a total failure because we had members there and then four missionaries and then the 8 or so people that were here to do the interviews and stuff. So at least it looked like a successful event. Oh well, you win some, you lose some. I thought it was a cool event, at least. 

Outside the church

So that was on Friday and then they were here conducting interviews on Saturday and Sunday. Pretty much all we did for that was open the church building for them and set up times for the members to be interviewed. They all came to church on Sunday though, which was super nice. We shattered our record for church attendance with 21 people there. There were enough people there that I didn't even have to testify for fast and testimony meeting. After church on Sunday they also wanted to do a group interview with the missionaries. They said they might try to get us a copy of that once it's all indexed and everything, So be on the lookout for that. 

The other news this week is that we should have a baptism on Saturday if everything goes right. It's a mother and two of her kids. After I finish emailing, we have to go to a hotel to rent out their swimming pool for a baptismal font, so I'll let you know how that goes next week.

Panoramic shot of the Uzh River

There's some old castle ruins a bit north of the city. We took a bus up there today, walked about 3km up the mountain and looked around for a bit. 

Old castle north of Uzhhorod

It was pretty cool, but I thought the most interesting part was how it was kind of just an old abandoned castle from the middle ages, and that's about it. We kind of just walked up the hill and we were there. No kind of people monitoring it or gate to get in or anything like that. It's just kind of interesting how there just isn't that kind of infrastructure here lots of times. It's just interesting

At the castle on p-day

View from the castle

Hope y'all are having a great week!

Alec