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