Night of the Pumpkin

The Pumpkin Party. Not the Halloween Party.

We were pretty busy this past week. We had five different activities over the week, so lots of stuff going on. Tuesday was normal English practice and a self-reliance seminar at the same time, Friday was a special art night we did as missionaries, Saturday was our "Pumpkin Night" (cause we can't do Halloween-themed activities) and then on Sunday the whole branch went to L'viv for the district conference. 

Making another pinata.

Soo we were very busy preparing for all of that. We also as zone leaders have had to start prepping for the mission leadership council on Wednesday, so we've been pretty busy lately. Lots of the time was spent making our pumpkin pinata. I swear all I've done on my mission is make pinatas. This one actually turned out pretty ok, but then the bottom was still a little wet and we ended up having to duct tape it. And I guess we did a few too many layers and it was kinda hard to break it. But that's ok, it let everyone get a chance to beat it. 

I thought it was pretty funny how much work we did for our activity, considering they told us the branch would take care of everything and especially considering the fact that we weren't really supposed to take part in any Halloweeny things (can't have the orthodox people thinking we're devil-worshippers or anything). We pretty much ended up doing everything. I'm not complaining, it's just funny how those things always work out. 

It was a pretty good activity though, a good amount of people came and we did some good classic activities, like bobbing for apples and toilet paper mummy wraps. I attached a ton of pictures from it, so have fun looking through.

Bobbing for apples at the Pumpkin Party.

The pinata!

The other things that took up a lot of time this week was service. On Tuesday our member from Canada, (I wrote to you a while ago about him, he has some interesting conspiracy theories) asked us to come help him put some plastic on his greenhouse. It ended up taking a super long time in the cold rain to do it, but at least his plants will be protected from the wind when the second sun shows up in the sky sometime next year. And his wife made some pretty good spaghetti and meatballs for us after so that's cool

We also spent a ton of time on Friday doing some service. after doing registration stuff for three hours with him, We went to our branch president's home to help his mother translate some applications for her to go to England to be with her husband. We didn't think it would take super long, but turns out British bureaucracy is awful and their online application system is awful, So we ended up sitting there for about 6 hours trying to figure it out. There's a picture of elder Lukach sitting at the computer that i attached. It just makes me glad to be an American that speaks English and never really has to deal with that kind of stuff. But we got it done and she brought us huge chocolate bars to the activity the next night to figure it out. so that's cool.

And then Sunday was the big district conference with all the members in the whole mission in L'viv. We woke up early Sunday (but we also moved our clocks back Sunday night so it wasn't too bad) to get on our bus with the rest of the members to L'viv. i tried teaching the kid sitting next to me how to do a rubik's cube, but he wasn't quite getting it.

It was kind of a disaster once we got there, cause there was a big marathon or something in L'viv, so half the roads were shut down and none of the branches were actually able to get to the church. We ended up starting about an hour late once everyone got there. It was a good conference and it was super cool to see all the members from all the previous branches I've served in. I attached a picture with my homie from Uzhhorod who will be serving in Pittsburgh in a couple weeks. 

This week will probably be pretty busy too, I'll be in L'viv on Wednesday for missionary leadership council, so that should be fun. Probably hit up McDonald's or something for a birthday dinner afterward.

Oh i also attached a picture of a burger I made . . .

 . . . and some weird looking pizza I got at a restaurant last week . . .

Hope you have a great week!

Alec​