Ukrainian Independence Day

Alec returned to the city where he started for a quick Zone Conference.

This week in Khmelnitskiy was taken up mostly by a couple different things. First, we had Zone Conference in Rivne. That was on Wednesday, but we also had English practice in Ternopil on Tuesday night. So we took our usual train to Ternopil Tuesday morning, and then right after English practice we ran to the bus station to get on a 4-hour bus to Rivne. It ended up actually being the nicest bus I've been on in Ukraine. The roads most of the way were still pretty terrible, but at least the seats were pretty ok. (It's ok, the bus back to Khmelnitskiy made up for it.) Then on Wednesday we had Zone Conference. It was someone's birthday, so all the eleven missionaries went out to the famous pizza place in Rivne for dinner afterwards. 

A missionary's birthday is a great time for pizza.

We stayed in Rivne that night, then took the 5-hour bus ride back (we stood for the first 2 and a half hours) the next morning. 

As soon as we got back from Rivne, we started planning for our activity on Saturday. Wednesday was Independence Day, so we wanted to do some kind of big activity for it. Turns out, some Ukrainians don't really care about Ukrainian Independence Day. They only really made it an actual holiday like 5 or 6 years ago and no one really cared about it at all until Russia invaded. There's definitely some people who care a lot about it, but there's about an equal number of people who are anti-Ukrainian independence. 

Anyway, we threw an activity, and I'd say it was moderately successful. A decent number of people came, and it seems like they had a good time. We pretty much just had some activities, it was planned by Americans, so it was more like an American party with a Ukrainian theme, but it was still pretty good. 

Celebrating Ukrainian Independence Day

We made a pinata with Ukrainian colors--Ukrainians have no idea what pinatas are, but they love candy and they love beating things with sticks so it worked out pretty well. It eventually devolved into throwing the pinata and swinging at it like a baseball. Definitely not the safest activity but no windows were broken. 

Alec takes a swing at the pinata.

We also made some air rockets just for fun, and we did the game where you tie balloons to your ankles and try to pop other people's balloons. 

Balloon-poppoing game.

My favorite thing we did was "pin the moustache on Taras Shevchenko." Shevchenko is a national hero--mostly cause he's the only somewhat successful writer who wrote in Ukrainian, so he's on the money and there's statues of him all over the place. He had a gnarly moustache, so we made a game out of it. I don't know if they really understood what was going on, but I enjoyed it at least. 

Pin the mustache on Taras Shevchenko.

It was a fun activity and a decent number of people came, so I'd call it a success. 

That was most of our week up until Saturday night. On Sunday we had church, and then afterwards we visited some less-active/inactive members with our branch president. He's a taxi driver, so he has a car which made things wayyy easier. All of these meetings were pure Russian, so we let him do most of the talking.

Most of the pics are from the activity, but there's a few others:

Independence Day celebration in downtown Khlemitskiy

Sunset from my apartment.

Huge memorial in I had visited while in Rivne - it looks different in the summertime!

A ton of videos that I didn't bother to look through, some of them might be super lame - I honestly have no idea. I know there's one of a bunch of Ukrainians trying to sing happy birthday to Ukraine, it sounds exceptionally terrible. 

Happy birthday to Ukraine!

See if you can tell it apart from the one singing the national anthem.

Ukrainian national anthem - "Shche ne vmerla Ukraina"

There's also one of a huge rainbow from last night. 

Rainbow over Ukraine.

And the one of me with a moustache is my impression of the Taras Shevchenko statues. They all look the same and he's always mad and staring down. You can google them if you want.

Watching the US eclipse on a member's phone.

I was definitely pretty bummed about missing the eclipse, it sounds like it was quite the nationwide event. I definitely would have driven to somewhere with a total eclipse. That's a pretty rare opportunity. I actually did kind of get to watch it a little bit. We do a family home evening activity at the church every Monday night, and asomeone there was super interested in the whole solar eclipse thing. So, she turned on the NASA YouTube broadcast on her phone and we watched it live right as it reached totality in Oregon and Idaho. They definitely made a pretty huge deal about it, which is fair it is a pretty huge deal. I wonder what the planetarium did. I would assume they sent some people down to South Carolina to help with whatever events they were doing in Charleston.

All those pictures of grandpa's birthday are pretty funny--it's just very typical Ukrainian to not smile like that. I guess I never really noticed that before I came here. 

Hope everything is going well! Love you guys!

Alec

First Missionaries To Hold LDS Sunday Service in Ternopil

Alec and his companion become the first-ever missionaries to attend a sacrament meeting in Ternopil, Ukraine.

A trip back to Rivne - Alec's first city.

This week was pretty busy with a lot of traveling. On Tuesday we left for Rivne for exchanges with the zone leaders. It was kinda weird going back to my first city that I haven't been to in almost six months, but not as weird as I thought. It's definitely a much nicer place in the summertime, which is pretty much true of all of Ukraine. It was still nice to see some people that I remember (even though one or two of them didn't remember me) so it was fun. Unfortunately, though, we had to take a bus there and back (about 5 hours each way) which was very much not fun at all. And we have to do it again this week to go back to Rivne for Zone Conference. I attached a couple pictures from Rivne, but I'll try to get some better ones this week.

Sunday was pretty interesting. Things are just getting started up in Ternopil in terms of missionary work--our mission president had a meeting with some government officials last week to get us officially registered there, so we decided to hold a sacrament meeting there on Sunday with missionaries.

Basically, the way it works is right now we have four elders living in Khmelnitsky, but two of them (the other companionship) are technically assigned to Ternopil. 

The four elders in Khmelnitskiy

Site of the first-ever meeting.

So, those two elders make the 4-hour round trip journey out there almost every day to get stuff ready until they can find an apartment to live in. So, I won't usually be going to sacrament meeting there since I'm assigned to Khmelntiskiy But, as of right now, the only member in the city is a guy from Africa who speaks English, so the sacrament meetings will be in English. And since the other Ternopil elder doesn't speak English, I went on splits out there with the American Ternopil elder that does. So, I don't know if that makes any sense, but, basically I was there in Ternopil on Sunday for the first-ever sacrament meeting with missionaries in that city. So, that was pretty neat. The member there, Samuel, is a super nice guy and he did a great job leading the meeting (with all three of us--which is three times as many as he usually has.) We met in a conference room at a hotel ($8 an hour) and had a nice short sacrament meeting. It was a cool experience being there for that. He also dropped some serious dough on some "American Sandwich Bread" and I forgot how good bread tastes in America. There's a huge difference for sure. I attached a couple pictures of the hotel room we met in, it was pretty neat for sure. 

Alec gives thumbs down to Russian billiards

Also, last p-day we went to a billiard hall to play some pool. It would have been super fun, but our native Ukrainian missionary convinced us to play Russian billiards instead of American billiards, which was  huge mistake. I don't know if you know the difference, but basically American is fun and Russian isn't. The Russian balls are more like bowling balls than pool balls, so it's super difficult to hit them hard. Also the table is wayyy bigger (you can see the American table in the background for comparison) and the worst part of all is that the pockets are tiny, so you have to hit the ball in perfectly to get it in. So, basically, it's super, super, super hard, and unless you're super good at it, it's not a ton of fun. We played for an hour and only got like six balls in. Fortunately, we had a bit of time left to go play some American pool, so it wasn't a total loss. 

Well happy birthday, Mom and Evan! Sounds like y'all had fun--except for that shark movie, that sounds extremely lame. I'm finally gonna be sending a package home today, so you can make sure Evan and Mom get an extra share of the candy when it gets there. 

There's an escape room here in Khmelntnistksy that we're probably gonna check out sometime, too. Unfortunately, it's all in Russian, so we'll have to make sure to have a native with us. Think you could have solved it if all the directions were in a different language?

Being first counselor in the branch presidency will be very interesting. Since there's no stake here, there aren't any high priests in this mission at all, except possibly some people from America or from Kiev. I imagine I'll actually end up doing a lot less here than I had to do in Uzhhorod, just cause there's an actual branch president here to handle all of the hard stuff, whereas in Uzhhorod we did everything. 

 

Anyway, hope y'all have a great week! (Shouldn't the kids be starting school this week lol?)

Alec

Spreading Good Will Through Sports & English Classes

This week we were pretty busy with Ternopil stuff. So far we've been doing two English practices a week (Tues and Thurs) and they wanted to get a sports day going too. Basically, whatever to meet folks and make connections for when we can start doing missionary work there. So, we went there Tuesday and Thursday, and then on Saturday again for sports day. We spent a couple hours advertising for English and sports day by throwing a football around in center. We had to special order the football from an online importer in Ukraine. We also invited a bunch of people from English practice to come play with us. We ended up having about 15 people show up, which was pretty successful. We just played volleyball the whole time. I'm definitely a little rusty, but it was still pretty fun. 

Playing volleyball with the locals in Ternopil

 So, we kinda spent more time in Ternopil than Khmelnitskiy this past week, so mostly all we did was English and sports day. There's about 50-60 people (as opposed to 5-6 in Uzhhorod) who show up to English in Ternopil, and I teach the advanced group, so it's always pretty fun. Last week they started asking me about American football, So I spent like 20 minutes trying to explain to them how football works--it's very difficult to explain to non-native speakers, but I think they got the basic gist. They also enjoy games like Catchphrase and Pictionary, and they think mad libs are hilarious. If you've got ideas for any other games or activities, I'd appreciate it. I have to plan three different English practices a week, so I'm kinda running out of ideas. 

Other news: I was called as first counselor in the branch presidency yesterday. I'm not sure exactly what I'll be doing, but I'm excited to work with the branch president here--he's been branch president for 7 years already and he's a real good guy. We're just hoping he doesn't move to Russia to be closer to his girlfriend he met thru a Mormon dating site though. We don't really have anyone else who could take his spot yet.

I'll be headed to Rivne tomorrow for some exchanges, It'll be very interesting going back to my first city. I'm sure it'll look totally different in the summertime, and I'm also sure it'll feel totally different after being more used to the country and everything. Should be interesting, I'm just not looking forward to the 5 hour bus ride there and back. We were talking about this the other day, and I don't ever want to hear anyone complain about how uncomfortable flying on an airplane is. It's just interesting how people here take these buses (standing up if they have to) and just accept it as part of life, but people in other parts of the world complain about the inconvenience of flying in an airplane. At least airplanes have AC. Here old grandmas yell at you if you open a window cause they think the cross-breeze will make you sick. So, I'm totally used to it now, it's just a very big difference.

Speaking of buses, I attached a couple pics from one of our 2.5 hour bus rides back from Ternopil. We thought it would be a good idea to try to play chess, but the heat combined with the bumpy Ukrainian roads and the swerving bus driver meant that we felt super car sick before we could even get the pieces set up. So that didn't last long. 

Trying to play chess on the bus

I also attached a ton of other pictures, basically, all of the pictures that look nice (except with the burgers) are from Ternopil. 

Nice views in Ternopil

All the ones that don't look so nice are from Khkmelntisnyi. 

Burgers in Khleminitsky

There's some of the Dr. Pepper we found in Ternopil. 

A welcome taste of home in Ternopil

There's some cool graffiti here in Khlenitjsktyh.

Grafitti in Khleminitsky

There's pics from sports day.

Sports day in Ternopil

A little rusty on the volleyball skills

There's pics from the really pretty lake in the middle of Ternopil.

At Ternopil Lake

And there's a video of us throwing a football in center.

Hope y'all have a great week!

Alec

First Full Week in Khleminitksy

This was my first full week in Khmelnitksiy. A few impressions:

The city is not as pretty as others, but not as ugly as everyone says. Most of the buildings are old communist style, but there's also a pretty nice walking street downtown with some good restaurants and stuff, so it's not too bad. I'd say it's about the same as Rivne.

The branch here is also very small, at least as far as I've seen so far. The only reason it's a branch and Uzhhorod is a group is because Uzhhorod doesn't have any Melchezidek priesthood holders. There was also a huge YSA conference last week, so all of our YSAs have been gone for a little while. But also the branch president has been out of town the past couple of weeks and he apparently brings like half of the people to church, so I guess that's why it's been so small recently. I actually had to preside over and conduct church yesterday, cause he was gone--so that was an interesting experience. 

We do have an American member here which is pretty neat. He's here teaching English and he just recently became active in the church again. He's a really nice guy and it's always super fun talking with Americans. That doesn't happen too often. 

Ternopil is a very cool city. Last week we went there Tuesday and Thursday, but in the future we might go a little less and have missionaries from other cities go. I don't know how it's gonna work out. But, basically we go there in normal clothes without name tags and advertise for our English class. I always feel like I'm going undercover when we go there. Tons of people come to English there and they're all super cool so I've definitely enjoyed doing English there. Most parts of Ternopil are actually really nice, and the best part of it all is that you can find Dr. Pepper there. They sell Dr. Pepper (imported from Poland) in eastern parts of Ukraine, but for some reason none of the cities in our mission have it, except Ternopil. I'm gonna have to buy a ton next time I go and take them back to Khmelnitskiy. The only bad part is the train rides over are super, super hot and it gets super gross when it comes to hot trains, so there's lots of nastiness going on on those trains. And Ukrainians are afraid of open windows, too, so that just makes it even worse. 

Also in Ternopil, on Thursday we were planning on advertising our English class by taking a football and throwing it around in the center of town with a sign that says "Free English." We managed to find an American football somehow, but it was deflated when we bought it of course. So we were gonna go to this Home Depot type store and buy an air pump, but we weren't exactly sure where it was cause none of us know Ternopil very well. Anyway, turns out it was like an hour walk away, so by the time we got back to the center with an inflated ball it was time for English to start. The worst part is that this entire past week has been super, super hot so we had to walk all the way across the town in about 100 degree weather. And then after all that we forgot the football in the library where we teach English. 

Regarding last week's story about the security guards, it didn't really seem like a dangerous situation at the time. These guys could have definitely beat me up, but I definitely could have outrun them. I had called the mission president while we were there and he just said don't give them any money and tell them to call the police and then leave. So that's pretty much what we did.

I don't think either of us were really scared. I've been out about 3 months longer than my new companion, so I guess I'm the senior companion. He's from Utah. He's a nice guy, into drama and music and stuff like that, and we get along just fine. 

Anyway that's my week so far, hope y'all had a good one!

Alec