The KGB Files

Here in Khmelnitskitsistkyiksytisytk, we had a fairly interesting week, most of which did not take place in Khemlntistkstiksytskytistyskyty.

Tuesday afternoon, we had hopped on a bus to head to Rivne for exchanges with the zone leaders. Another super fun 5-hour bus ride! Fortunately, we didn't have to stand for half the trip this time. On Wednesday on exchanges, we were able to teach a cool man from Egypt who was getting baptized the next day. He's a super cool guy, and it was pretty interesting to teach someone who actually knows Ukrainian worse than I do. We did the lesson next to a computer so we could Google translate into Arabic any words he didn't know in Ukrainian. I was also able to see some old people I knew from when I served in Rivne, so that was neat. 

We also hit up the McDonald's in Rivne to get some McFlurry's and then again in the morning for breakfast. Turns out the McRib is back all the way out to Ukraine. It's called "burger with pork in marinade."

On Thursday morning, we left Rivne and headed straight to Ternopil to do English practice. We were there for a few hours before, so we went out and threw a football and handed out cards to get people to come to English. One guy got mad at us for having our backpacks on the ground cause they could be bombs. And then he got even more mad at us when we didn't come over to his house for dinner, even though we had told him we wouldn't be able to. He was apparently preoccupied showing us videos of his rope magic to listen to what we were saying.

 .

And then finally, late Thursday night, our train got in and we were back home in Khlmentisntkstysky.

Also, last Monday we had a somewhat interesting experience. There was a member here on assignment with the US army who was born in L'viv, but lived in America for the past 20 years or so. He asked us to head to the archives to pick up some documents that he had waiting for him. I think it was some family history stuff. Anyway, we went to the archives, which is this huuuuge soviet looking building on the outskirts of town, end up waiting about 45 minutes for someone to get off their lunch break and help us, and then finally (after having to walk to a bank to pay for the stuff) we got the documents. The cool part of the story is that the documents ended up being old KGB interrogation files. Soooo, if I tell the story and just say that I had to go to a former soviet archive to find KGB interrogation documents for a man on assignment with the US military, it sounds pretty cool. 

We also found a pretty sweet plaza and statue and building on this adventure that we had no idea existed, so that was pretty cool. 

That's about it for the week here in Khmelnitskiy.

Hope y'all have a great week!

Alec​

One Year Down, One To Go

Alec celebrates one year with a well-deserved steak dinner.

So last Thursday was the one year mark. Pretty crazy that I've already been out here one year. Also pretty crazy that I've only been out here one year. Time goes super fast and super slow at the same time. I'd say I've probably grown quite a bit over the past year, but I'd also say I have a lot more growing and learning left to do. 

One year down, one to go.

It's weird being out for a year, and it definitely feels like a bit of a turning point. It's like the point where you start counting down instead of counting up. There's definitely still a lot to learn. I mean I know a lot more than I did a year ago, about the gospel and about Ukrainian and about people and about coooking and all that stuff. Definitely gonna contineu to learn throughout the entire mission, though. You never really stop learning, if you do that's pretty bad. I wouldn't say that I feel too different than I did a year ago, but I'm sure I am. Most of the changes are very gradual, so it's hard to notice them when they happen.

We tried a couple different things to celebrate this week, and only one of them really worked out. The actual year mark was on Thursday. We spent the entire morning (and most of Tuesday morning) waiting at the equivalent of the Ukrainian DMV to do registration stuff, and then the other elders, including Elder Hill who entered the MTC the same time as me, had to go to Ternopil, so we decided to wait until the next day to go out to dinner to celebrate. 

Desperate for homemade cookies.

I did, however, finally use the brown sugar y'all sent to try to make some cookies for Thursday. I don't know what happened, but something didn't work quite right. The dough didn't have quite the right consistency and it was more like bread dough than cookie dough. I don't know if you have any suggestions on what to do next time, cause I'm not totally sure what happened. It might have been the fact that I didn't have an electronic mixer, so I had to do it by hand. Or maybe there just wasn't enough flour, but I ended up with a total of over 3 cups of flour, so I don't know how much more you can really add. 

Anyway, they actually turned out to taste pretty good. Probably cause I haven't had any cookies with brown sugar in a year. But the texture was definitely way off. 

Celebrating a year at the local steakhouse.

Our second attempt at celebrating went better. On Friday we went to a restaurant called "Beef and Cake." I figured it was a pretty big occasion so I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, the t-bone steak. It ended up costing about $22 and for $22 it was a pretty decent steak. The pictures don't look super great but it was actually pretty tasty. And the burned corn was not bad either. I was a little salty that they cut it up before they brought it to me (isn't that like the #1 thing to not do with steak?) and they cooked it medium instead of medium rare like I ordered, but it was still pretty good. 

The other highlight of the week was when we were sitting in a restaurant and Taylor Swift's new music video showed up. I was pretty excited to watch it, but tbh I was not very impressed. I don't know, I just didn't like the actual song all that much. I heard the other one she released was better, so I'll have to chill in some more restaurants until I see it.

We had some interesting people at church. A member came who was born in L'viv and lived in America for the last 20 years. He is here on some military assignment for a couple weeks. He told me that the per diem for American military on assignment in Ukraine is $93. That's so insane. That's almost as much as we get a month. You would have a seriously difficult time spending 93 dollars a day here. And then there was also a member here yesterday named Sasha. He works on cruise ships and he brought his Guatamalan girlfriend, who was pretty nice. Neither of them really know English that fantastic, so I wonder how that works out. But, yeah there was a lot of English speaking at church yesterday.

One other story, we were standing out in the center of the city with a table with a bunch of Books of Mormon and stuff. And this old drunk guy has been talking to us for like 20 minutes (a pretty regular occurence) and then the police show up and escort him to their car cause apparently he's been bothering people all day in center. So that was fun.

Hope y'all have a great week!

Alec

Another Baptism

The church in Ukraine grows one baptism at a time.

Faith and love.

This week here was a good one. There was a baptism here in Khmelnitsky on Saturday. She was investigating the church for several months, but things really started taking off when she started dating the returned missionary who first started teaching her while he was serving his mission. They're a cute couple, and he came back from Kiev for the baptism. She'll probably be moving to Kiev shortly to marry him (and then to America, most likely) which is only bad because this branch could use the extra members. But we're real happy for them. I attached a few pics of the baptism for you. We had to do it in a sauna again, and since she's afraid of water we asked them to drain half of the pool so it wouldn't be too much for her. I'm sure y'all all know how frustrating it is to drain and refill a pool, but they were pretty nice about it. Just made us pay them $20. 

Not only were they at church yesterday, but we had another returned missionary/church member couple. Another former missionary that lives in Dnepr (opposite side of the country) showed up and completely surprised the girl at church on Sunday. They've basically just been Skyping since he got home from his mission a couple months ago, so this was one of the first times they've seen each other in person. It was cute and all, but then they were super cuddly the rest of the day. I thought I escaped that kind of pda when I left a YSA ward, so it felt like I was back at home. This girl (this is the one who's been a member for almost a year now) actually just barely submitted her mission papers . . . but yeah I don't think that's gonna happen now . . . as long as he moves here instead of her moving there, then it will be ok.

Saying goodbye to Elder K. at 5:30am.

Other than that, the biggest thing this week was transfers. Elder Hill (he was in my MTC group) came here and Elder Kovaliov, the Ukrainian went down to Uzhhorod. I'm still with Elder Devey. Elder Devey and Elder Hill actually were friends in high school, so it's a pretty crazy coincidence that they ended up together way out here. So, we went to Ternopil on Thursday for English practice and to show Elder Hill the city. With all these train rides we've been taking, we've started playing a lot of chess. I just started a game with grandpa over email, so we'll see how much I've improved since the last time I played him when I was like 6.

OK and then pictures: We made corn bread this week and it actually turned out pretty dang good.

Making bread - a Ukrainian tradition.

 FYI, if you don't have any corn meal and you don't want to walk 3 minutes to the grocery store, you can substitute ground corn flakes and it works pretty well, 

Some pics from the Ukranian Independence Day activity that I'm not sure if I ever sent. 

Another picture from the Ukranian Independence Day celebration.

A Ukrainian Escape Room

Oh, last week we did one of those escape rooms that got really popular in America over the past few years. Considering the fact that this is Ukraine, I was actually pretty impressed with the escape room. Almost everything actually functioned properly and it was fairly entertaining. It was a little rough cause everything was in Russian, but we had a native there to translate into Ukrainian for us, so we managed to escape. It was fun, especially considering the fact that it only cost a few bucks.

I did hear a bit about all the hurricanes. I get most of my news from lds.org . . . so I know if something shows up there it must be a pretty big deal. Good thing it's gonna miss North Carolina, but that's crazy how many natural disasters there have been recently. The weather here has been pretty nice recently, too. It got a little cold, which definitely worried me cause getting this cold this early is definitely a bad sign. But, this week is gonna warm up and it should be pretty nice for a little bit longer at least. 

Happy anniversary! I don't remember if I said it last week or not, but I meant to. Glad y'all enjoyed the candy. Do they not have white chocolate Snickers in America? I figured it was just a thing they introduced recently, is it only a Europe thing? I can try to get some more of those. if you have any wrappers left of the candy you liked you could send me a pic and I could try to hook you up with some more. I don't remember exactly what I sent, so some more description might be necessary to remember what to get. If you're looking for a L'viv Chocolate thing you'd probably have to open it in Seattle or Canada, somewhere with a big Ukrainian population to get things started. Honestly, though, it would be super popular anywhere. Americans would lose their minds for drinkable melted chocolate. 

I didn't get a chance to watch the Worldwide Devotional with Elder Bednar yet, but I looked through it and there's tonnsss of people I recognized. Zach Connor and Andrew Roberts were sitting right behind him and my friend Sean from UNC was right next to them. Also, like 80% of the clips from the beginning and the end are from the institute at UNC, definitely tons of people I recognize. And a lot more people I've never seen before. It was pretty cool to see all that. And now I know they have a new ping pong table there

Anyway, hope everything is going great! I'll give you a report on the one year mark when we actually get there.

Alec

A Baptism & A Birthday

Sorry, this week I don't have a ton of time, but that's ok, not a ton happened anyway! We went to Ternopil on Tuesday for English practice there. Right before English practice we had a lesson with a friend of the only member there, an African named Kaiser. He wants to get baptized, so that's neat. He's a real cool guy. That branch is gonna be just full of Africans soon. 

We'll also be having a baptism here in Khlmentisty on Saturday. Unfortunately, she'll get baptized and then pretty quickly move to Kiev to be closer to her boyfriend (the missionary who first started teaching here lol,) but that's also pretty neat. So some of our time was spent looking for places to do this baptism. We finally found a sauna that has a little swimming pool. Unfortunately, it was kind of deep and the girl getting baptized is scared of water, ha ha, so we had to ask them to drain the pool a little bit (and we'll probably have to have them take down some of the inappropriate pictures on the wall) but everything should turn out ok. So it should be a pretty good week. 

Other than that, we did a big English activity where we basically just stood out on the street and handed out cards advertising our English practice. It was actually pretty successful and we had some new people at English that night. There were tons of people on the street that day (Friday) cause it was the first day of school here in Ukraine. 

I attached a bunch more pictures from that Independence Day activity we had last week and some videos, I didn't take the videos and I haven't watched them lol so I hope they're good videos.

There's also a pic of the Kraft mac and cheese we made. 

And one of a t-shirt we found in a second hand store here. No idea how that made it here to Ukraine, but everyone thought it was pretty funny. 

And a pic from a birthday video we made for one of the senior missionaries here (at top.)

Glad y'all got the package, It got there pretty quick then. Sorry that it was packed in a grocery bag, the lady at the post office wouldn't let me pack my own package, and she just put the grocery bag in the box with all the candy. It was super weird. She thought I was sending drugs or something. It's a good bit cheaper to send from Ukraine to America than the other way around though. Hope y'all enjoyed the candy!

OK that's really all I got for you this week, sorry! Hope y'all had fun in New York and hope everything is going well!

Alec