Ostrich Eggs, Potty Humor & Attempted Bribes

Last look at Uzhhorod, then off to Khmelnitskiy.

This last week was pretty crazy actually. So you know I got transferred out of Uzhhorod to Khmelnitskiy. I'm here now, but it wasn't a totally smooth transfer. I was supposed to be leaving Uzh early Wednesday morning, but that didn't happen. We spent lots of Monday and Tuesday at some gov administration buildings (kinda like the DMV but wayyy slower) trying to get my posvidka, basically like a visa thing that proves I'm here legally. I was supposed to be getting a new one, but they messed something up and so it wasn't quite ready yet (even though they'd been working on it for a month and a half) and I couldn't leave the city without getting it. Otherwise I'd have to come back in a few days to pick it up--and the trip from Uzhhorod to Khmelnitskiy is the longest possible trip in the whole mission. So I ended up staying in Uzhhorod til early Friday morning. It was actually pretty cool, I was able to visit a few people and say goodbye to more people and have a bit more time to pack and get ready to go, so I'm pretty glad it ended up working out that way.
 I left Uzhhorod early Friday morning at 5 am on a six-hour, very uncomfortable train to L'viv. From there I had to just chill in the mission office for a few hours and wait for my train to Khmenlnistky in the afternoon. So it was about 6 hours to L'viv, and then another 4ish hours to Khmenlntskyymnitissky, but the second train was wayyyyy nicer. by far the nicest train I've seen in Ukraine. I was second class, but it still felt like I was on an airplane. They even had air conditioning and trash cans. pretty fancy.
 
I got in Friday night, went to English practice, and then I've been here ever since. The apartment here is decently nice, but none of the apartments in the whole mission are as good as the ones in Uzhhorod. The nice thing is that we're now only a 2 minute walk from the church, as opposed to 35 minutes in Uzhhorod. The branch is the second smallest one in the mission, right behind Uzhhorod. this past Sunday we actually had less people at church than we usually had in Uzhhorod. So not much has changed, but I think there's a lot of friendship and unity here, so at least there's that.

The coolest part is that I'll be spending about two days a week in Ternopil, a neighboring city a couple hours away that just opened for missionary work. So far, we're just going there in normal clothes without name tags, cause I don't think all the paperwork is completed just yet. And pretty much all we're doing there is English practice, so I'll be teaching English three times a week, which should be a lot of fun. 

OK a few stories from last week, most of them have pictures going with them:

"We bought an ostrich egg."

 We bought an ostrich egg. They sold them at the store we shopped at in Uzhhorod and it was my last time. I don't know how much they cost in America, but $12 seemed like a pretty good deal. I wasn't sure what to do with it, so we just cracked it into a big pan and tried to make a giant fried egg. Obviously, it didn't work really well. I mean it cooked all the way through (especially after I flipped it--see the video), but It just had a really weird texture. It tasted like normal egg, but I could not eat very much of it. The shell was also super hard to crack, I basically had to cut it with a bread knife. and a member (the one in the blueish dress with the red curtain behind) got mad at us for ruining the egg shell, Apparently you're supposed to keep them. Oops.

 
There's a few pictures of some members I visited during my last week in Uzhhorod. 

Alec with some of the members in Uzhhorod

And some more members

And some pictures from the week before that I got from my companion's camera from a castle in a town near Uzhhorod . . .

At a castle near Uzhhorod

And another one by the castle

 Including some Putin toilet paper . . .

Hmmm.

There's a pic of me in front of a ФАРТ store, which is pronounced "fart." Apparently it means "luck" in Russian.

Why is Alec laughing?

And there's some landscapes from the train ride from L'viv to Khmelntinsktiskmtslitiskskiy.

Ukrainian countryside . . .

. . . on the road to Khmelnitskiy.

 There's also a long video from my last game night in Uzhhorod, I'm not really sure what's there, but one of our English-goers took my camera and took the video, so have fun.
 And today was actually probably one of the craziest events of my mission. So, we were sitting here just starting to email and we get a call from this recently inactive member. He asks us to meet him at the marketplace. He's a somewhat special-needs 20-year-old kid and he's been having a lot of problems lately, so we always try to drop everything and help him out with whatever he needs. So, of course, we went right away to meet him. We get to the marketplace and it's completely empty. Apparently it's closed on Mondays, so that was kinda sketch in the first place. This is also the 3rd biggest marketplace (called a rynok) in all of Ukraine, so we had a very hard time finding him. After half an hour, we found the place he wanted us to meet him, but he wasn't there. We called him and he said to look for these guys in purple shirts. A few minutes later, a couple big guys walk out and show us the way. They kinda lead us back behind a building and this member is sitting in this super sketch old communist trailer thing, with four big guys in camouflage blocking the exit and smoking cigarettes. Supposedly, the kid was breaking into storage rooms at the marketplace and trying to steal stuff, although he claims he was just looking for a bathroom. And so, this was the security of this marketplace that apprehended him.

One guy looks at me and tells us we have two options: (1) He'll call his "boss" who will come down and do something that didn't sound super good (I couldn't really understand his Russian very well) or (2) We give them 1000 hryven and they let the kid go.

So, basically, I ended up telling him we weren't gonna pay anything. (Mission rles.) After the boss came they let the kid go and we walked away with him. I'm not exactly sure what happened, I was on the phone with the mission president at this point. We didn't really ask any questions, we just left as quick as possible. So, yeah, it was pretty sketch, but don't worry it wasn't really a dangerous situation, just a pretty cool story to tell that I had some Ukrainian security guards try to extort $30 from me.

Hope y'all have a great week!

Alec

Farewell to Uzhhorod

Alec says goodbye to the family he baptized

We had a pretty busy week. The big news is that I'm getting transferred to a different city. I've been in Uzhhorod for a little over 4 months now and on Wednesday I'll be heading to Khmelnitskiy. I'll be going from one of the more beautiful cities in the mission to one not as beautiful, and from the very smallest branch in the mission to . . . the second smallest branch in the mission. So I'm sure it'll be very different there, but also probably very similar. The cool thing will be that Ternopil, another city a couple hours (by train) from Khmelnitskiy just got missionaries in it for the first time last transfer. Right now we don't have permission to live there or proselyte there, but they've started doing English practices there to get things started. So if I understand right, I'll be going to Ternopil a couple times a week to do English practice and other stuff there. Should make things pretty interesting. And it'll be cool to be there right at the start of this new city being opened.

Good crowd for Pioneer Day in L'viv

Other than that was the big Pioneer Day activity in L'viv. I think I told you a bit about it last week. Overall, it was a pretty big success. There were probably about 300 people there, and we had 21 people come from Uzhhorod, which is pretty good for only having like 6 active members. Getting there and getting back was a bit of an ordeal though. We spent a LOT of time last week going back and forth from the train station trying to get the tickets ordered. Every single time there was something wrong on the forms or they weren't ready yet or the one cashier that we needed was closed. I think we went to the train station on six consecutive days. Luckily we had our superstar member helping us out with everything, so it wasn't too hard, just time-consuming. We ended up getting all the tickets ready -- members going to L'viv through the night and us on an earlier, much less comfortable train Friday night, and all of us on the less-comfortable train on the way back by Wednesday. 

The less comfortable trains of Ukraine

On Friday we left for the activity after taking an hour bus ride to a neighboring city and getting on the train there--for some reason that shaves an hour off the travel time--and the members left in the middle of the night. On Saturday morning we woke up at 5:30 to go unlock the church building for the members who had just arrived so they could chill there and wait for the activity to start. We played basketball/volleyball/ping-pong with them waiting for it to start, and then around 11:00 everyone else started arriving. It was super cool seeing all the other members and all the missionaries. There was good food and games and stuff, and I got to meet some of the people in the new town I'm going to. 

Unfortunately, the activity went a little long, so we had to hustle to make it to the train station in time. None of us really knew L'viv very well, but we managed to find a bus that took us pretty close. Somehow by some miracle we all made it on the train with about two minutes to spare. I was definitely stressing about it pretty hard, it would have been super bad if all of our members had gotten stranded in L'viv for the night. Other than that and a couple people yelling at us cause their free train from L'viv didn't have comfy enough seats, everything seemed to go pretty well.

Oh there was also a watermelon eating contest at the activity. First they did one for members, and then for missionaries. There were definitely a few white shirts sacrificed in the process. 

Watermelon-eating contest at Pioneer Day

That was a big part of the week, Most of the rest of our time was spent getting ready for that. I have some pictures with some members (the one with the family outside at the top is our recent converts) and an investigator (the one with the illuminati shirt is the guy named Alec) since this is my last week. 

Alec & Alec

For p-day today we went out to a park and played kan jam with the kan jam set we made for our 4th of July activity, So there's a ton of pics/videos of that. 

There's also some pics of some little statues and other things around Uzhhorod.

Statue in Uzhhorod

Alec saves some memories of Uzhhorod before he leaves

Oh and some pics of lunch today at the famous Varenikiy (basically pierogi) place here in Uzhhorod. I had to go since it's my last chance. 

Last chance for Uzhhorod pierogi's

Good luck sorting out all the pictures.

Goodbye Uzhhorod

Hope y'all have a good week!

Alec

Mission Conference & Exchanges

The tripanionship in Uzhhorod

No one really seemed to care about it being an American activity last week. I'm sure we'll do something bigger for Ukrainian Independence day anyway. Honestly, people here seem to be pretty neutral towards America. You gotta remember that most people dislike Russia pretty hard, so any one who's not Russia is pretty well-liked.

As for English though, technically most people learn it in school. However very few people actually know it well at all. Everyone will know a few words, but most people can't really speak or understand at all. You do find some people who know it decently, and those are the people that really want to speak English to you. That's something we've been doing in the mission for the past few weeks--focusing really hard on making contacts through English, cause that's something we have to offer that people actually want. So we try going to English schools and asking if they want native speaker help and stuff like that. The education system here seems pretty average. It's very different than in America. They start "college" when they're like 15. I think it depends a lot on the school you go to. Based on my conversations with people though . . . some of the schools are not so good. I got in a disagreement with a whole room of Ukrainians (including a history major) once cause I told them Mongolia was close to China and they just absolutely would not believe me.

A lot of our time is spent doing normal church administration work and work with the members. Even though there's only like 8 here, there are often issues we have to address. It's even harder now that there's only one companionship in the whole city. We rarely have time to teach any investigators. 

For this past week, we were pretty busy. We had Mission Conference in L'viv on Wednesday and exchanges in Ivano-Frankivsk on Thursday. So we left Tuesday afternoon for our train ride to L'viv. Got there at 11:00 Tuesday night. We went and stayed with one of the senior couples who actually just got back from a month long trip to America helping our district president from Rivne get a very needed back surgery. Then we had conference with everybody on Wednesday, and right after hopped on a train to Ivano. 

Alec on the court

In Ivano the missionaries there are getting ready to host a big 3 on 3 basketball tournament, so we spent a lot of time helping them get ready for that, including trying to play basketball with some people. Unfortunately we came at the wrong time, and ended up accidentally crashing some 9 or 10 year old basketball camp. So that was kind of awkward, but the coach was nice and let us warm up with them. I can now say that I've balled on the court of a professional Ukrainian basketball team.

After that we took our train back to Uzhhorod and got in super late as usual. Much of the last few days were spent preparing for an activity that's gonna be in L'viv this Saturday. It's basically a big pioneer day festival. It's gonna be pretty big with everyone from the whole mission, so it should be cool. While all the other branches rent out private buses, we don't have enough members to warrant that. so we've been scrambling the last couple days to get train tickets for everyone. Thanks to the help of one of our awesome members, I think we're almost all ready for it. We ended up pretty much having to have them add a whole extra car to one of the trains just for us. So that should be fun. I used my credit card to buy some of those tickets cause I didn't have enough cash on me, and I'll probably be using it again to buy more tomorrow, so don't be surprised if some charges finally show up on the mastercard. I'll get reimbursed

I've attached some pictures, mostly from L'viv. There's a chain here called L'viv Croissants, and they let you write stuff on notes on the wall, so i wrote one.

Alec leaves his mark in L'viv

I got a picture in front of the L'viv opera house, which is on the 20 gryven bill.

The L'viv opera house - also on Ukrainian currency

And a bunch of pics from the top of the tower.

View from above L'viv

Sounds like y'all are having a fun trip at the beach! I definitely miss all of you! Pass along my love to everyone. let me know if y'all do anything fun, like go to any strange stores with tons of huge taxidermized animals or something like that. And tell Evan to shave his face or he'll regret it whenever he looks back on all of his pictures. 

At Mission Conference in L'viv

 

Hope y'all have a fun week!

Alec

Celebrating the USA with Ukrainians

An American holiday in Ukraine

So I actually did end up getting your package. Thank you! We decided if there was hamburger seasoning in there then we had a justifiable reason to call the mission office and have them send it to us. Usually they just wait til someone comes to L'viv. So, it got here Friday afternoon! There was no hamburger seasoning . . . but all the America memorabilia was perfect for our activity, so it all worked out. The water bottle is very much appreciated, the last couple months have been brutal. And the t-shirts are very very cool as well. I thought about wearing them to our activity, but I figured the Go Heels Go America was more appropriate. The whole spinner craze is super interesting. It's kinda weird, but I definitely understand how it became such a big thing.

Cooking burgers for the 4th of July picnic

As for the activity, it was actually a pretty big success. We spent a whole lot of time over the past week preparing for it, and it kind of paid off actually. I'll attach a ton of pictures, but we actually had about 20 people come from church or from or English practice or just from people we've met on the street, which is by far the most successful activity I've seen here in Uzhhorod and people seemed to have a good time. We tried to get the food we made as close to American food as possible, and it actually kind of worked out. We made some burgers with the best ground beef we could find, and they turned out pretty OK. We didn't want to run out of food, so we made 40 hamburger patties, cooked them all right before the activity at home, and brought them to the river side in aluminum pie tins. Somehow they stayed warm and actually tasted pretty good.

The mac and cheese arrives

We also made some homemade cole slaw--which really sounds much more Ukrainian than American--basically cabbage, carrots, and cole slaw. But it turned out pretty good. The mac and cheese wasn't quite as good, but it wasn't as bad as I was expecting with weak Ukrainian cheese. and I was going entirely without a recipe, So it worked out ok. And it looked pretty good after we baked it. The biggest hit though was definitely banana bread. Ukrainians love banana bread, but I'm sure if we told them how much sugar was in it they would freak out. 

Homemade Kan Jam

My favorite part of the activity, though, was the Kan Jam. We went to a home depot type store and bought two big buckets, then we cut out slots in them and used them to play Kan Jam. I don't know if the Ukrainians really understood it and I didn't get a chance to play, but I think it worked out pretty well. 

That was really the big focus of the week. Most of the time was spent preparing for that. This week we'll be in L'viv for mission conference, and then right after to Ivano-Frankivsk for exchanges, so we'll be doing lots of traveling. Unfortunately we got like the worst possible train tickets, but I'm sure it'll be ok. 

I attached a bunch of pictures, mostly from the activity, but also a few random ones. Keep an eye out for my world series champs hat. There's also a nasty picture of a cucumber we found in the fridge of the vacant apartment here where the other elders used to live. Since this \city is gettingT closed down to two missionaries after this transfer, we had to go over to their apartment to clean it up and pay rent. Apparently they forgot some stuff there, so it was pretty gross. Also just a few other random pictures.

At the picnic

Celebrating America in Ukraine

Getting into the spirit

I hope everything is going great with y'all and hope you have fun at the beach next week! Tell everyone I said hi!

Alec

Ukrainian Pad Thai

Ukrainian pad thai

We're planning our own fourth of July party here actually as a branch activity. It won't be on the fourth, unfortunately, but we'll have it on Saturday. We're planning on just doing a typical fourth of July cookout. It's gonna be a rough approximation cause you can't quite replicate it perfectly, but we're gonna do the best we can. We're planning burgers (with Ukrainian ground beef) and mac and cheese (with Ukrainian cheese) so we'll see how that goes. We're also gonna make some coleslaw (they love cabbage here, so it should be a hit). We're also gonna buy some good old Lay's chips (they have a special "American ribs" flavor so we'll try that). Unfortunately they don't have watermelon anywhere yet, so we'll have to settle for some other fruit. I would do strawberries, but apparently the crop of strawberries this year got contaminated and everyone is getting super sick from them. Which is a bummer cause they were really cheap and super tasty. If you have any other ideas let me know. I think we're gonna make our own kan jam set and have a football there to throw around too. Should be fun, We just gotta hope that people show up.

Last week was a pretty normal week. The only out of the ordinary thing was we had some visitors from Kiev here Friday evening for a seminary/institute activity. The guy that came is a counselor in the Kiev stake presidency (so he's like a pretty big deal here) and he came and did a little fireside (for our two active seminary/institute students) so that was neat. We went to buy refreshments for it, but apparently there was some kind of cyber attack in a bunch of countries that shut down all kinds of services, so we ended waiting like half an hour in line at the grocery store and were almost late to the fireside. Oops. 

A highlight of the week was a cool new outdoor restaurant opening a couple minutes from the church building. It's not just any restaurant though, It's a hip pad thai restaurant. Asian food is like not a thing here so it's very rare to get any kind of Asian food, so we were pretty pumped. We got it on Saturday night as we were walking home (I attached a pic) and it was without a doubt the worst pad thai I've ever had in my life. That being said, it was still pretty good and we went back again for lunch today. 

Hope everything is going well for y'all and hope you have a good fourth of July!

Alec