A Quick Visit Back to Uzhhorod

Alec returns to Uzhhorod to help train new missionaries.

OK, as for stuff over here, we spent most of our week with our exchange in Uzhhorod. Mission leaders don't usually leave their cities to do exchanges, but the mission president made exchanges cause there's only two missionaries down there, both pretty new, who don't really understand each other cause one is Ukrainian and one is American. So we went down to Uzhhorod to help them out. It was super sweet to get to go back down there, it was kind of like a little vacation for me to go back to that city and see some people there. 

Christmas activity at the branch in Uzhhorod.

We left Thursday morning and got there in the afternoon. We helped them with their English practice (which they kind of need, it's hard to do English practice with only one English speaker). Then the next day we spent most of the time preparing for a Christmas activity we planned with them. We kinda wanted to do the same stuff we've done here in Ivano-Frankivsk, so we made some salt-dough ornaments and gingerbread houses. Not a ton of people came (a ton of people never come in Uzhhorod) but it was still a fun activity. 

The coolest part of the exchange was the next day, though. We just happened to be there the day of a baptism. It was the mother of a member that I had become good friends with when I was there, so when they found out that I was going to be there on that day, they asked me to baptize her, so that was neat. It ended up being an eventful baptism, with her almost fainting as she tried to walk out of the water, but in the end everything was OK and she was still smiling, after she took a few minutes to recover. That's the kind of thing that only happens in Uzhhorod. 

Alec performs another baptism in Uzhhorod.

 I attached a ton of pictures from our time in Uzhhorod. It was a cool little break and a great chance to go back to a familiar place.

Elder Podvodov, an area 70, was at church yesterday and he had a meeting with us and the branch mission leader about helping missionary work in the branch.

Farewell to the sister missionaries in Ivano-Frankivsk.

This morning we went to the train station to say goodbye to one of our sister missionaries who is heading home. Unfortunately, since she's leaving mid-transfer, that means we won't have any sister missionaries in the city for the next month, which is super unfortunate. But also now that she's gone home, my MTC group is now officially the most senior missionaries in the mission, so that's neat.

Not super surprised that Abbie won Fear Factor at Universal Studios. If I could do it I'm sure she could, too.

For the Skype call I still don't know exactly. The thing is on Monday the branch is doing a caroling activity in the afternoon and then we got invited for a Christmas dinner with a couple of the families in the branch, so we don't really have a ton of time. And there's only one computer in the church so we have to coordinate it with all the other missionaries. I could do it the day before or the day after if that's better for y'all. Just let me know and I'll check my email in a few days and let you know the exact details. Idk, it's all the same to me, I'll just have to try to remember my Skype password. Google might be easier.

Hope y'all have a great week and a Merry Christmas!

Alec

P.S. The pics are all mixed up but hopefully you can sort it out. They're pretty much all from Uzhhorod, I think. There are a couple pics of the Christmas video up on the big screen at the L'viv train station, which is pretty neat. We've been going pretty hard with all that stuff so that's cool.

Making the Most of Christmas in Ukraine

We've had a couple decent snow storms so far. Each time we get a few inches and then within a couple days its all melted. It seems like it's not actually all that cold, but just when it snows it snows so much that it ends up just sticking anyway.

   

The Skype call thing on Christmas Day will be tricky a little bit. It would be super cool if grandpa was there, do you know when he'll be there? We got invited somewhere for dinner Christmas night, so the latest I could do it is like 4 o'clock my time. So that would be like 9 o'clock over there. Idk, I could also do it the next day or the day before, but the timing might be weird and I don't know when grandpa will be there. Right now we'll plan on 4 o'clock my time Christmas day for now, but we can still change it.

As for housing for school next fall, I honestly have no idea. I don't really know how the whole process works. Definitely not on-campus. If the tap water is drinkable and the hot water is reliable, then it'll be a step up from what I've had here, so I'm not super picky. As for roommates, I really don't know. Ill ask a few of my friends who might still be around Chapel Hill next year and see what I can find. 

The branch here is good. It's by far the biggest one I've served in with about 45 people at church each week. There's some really cool members and 2 or 3 really great families, which are pretty hard to come by in the church in Ukraine. It's definitely not quite a fully-staffed branch, but there are presidents for most of the auxiliary organizations and stuff, so we do have a pretty good branch council (which basically consists of all the really active members.)

The whole mission is still on the 2-hour block. That'll probably be a permanent change cause if you ask my mission president, the whole church will be moving over to 2-hour blocks soon. 

As for my last week, the biggest thing was going to L'viv for Mission Leadership Council on Wednesday. There, we found out that we as zone leaders are going to be going down to Uzhhorod for exchanges this week (that's why I was buying train tickets). There's only one companionship in that city, with one Ukrainian who barely knows English and one new missionary who barely knows Ukrainian. So we're headed down there to make sure that everything is going well with them. I'm super excited to head back to Uzhhorod and see all the people down there, and if everything goes according to plan we should be there for a baptism on Saturday of a woman that I taught while I was there. so that should be pretty neat. It's about a 10-hour trip to get there, so that'll be half of our week. Should be a lot of fun.

Other than that, this past week we had another Christmas activity. We got permission to show It's a Wonderful Life. It ended up being the biggest hassle in the entire world, literally nothing worked. It took us forever just to find a way that we could legally buy it. And then forever to figure out a way to get subtitles to work with Amazon. And then all the technology to actually show it wouldn't work. First the computer didn't have an HDMI port, then it didn't even have a wi-fi adapter, and then the Amazon app on the TV didn't work, and then the projector couldn't connect with the computer. It was the biggest disaster ever, but we finally just played it on the computer. So, yeah, it was kind of a disaster, But it's a super good movie and people seemed to enjoy it so that's good.

Also, we had a little lesson with a recent convert. He works as a security guard at a museum, so he invited us to just stop by at his work. He showed us around the museum and made us take pictures of every little thing, so I attached a couple of those. I did get a cool pic with a classic Ukrainian instrument though, called a bandura. 

That's about it for the week. We finally got Ukrainian #lighttheworld calendars from Kev, only 9 days too late. so now we can start doing a bit more with that. This next week should be a lot of fun with exchanges in Uzhhorod. So hopefully I'll have some cool pics next week.

Alec

Road Trip to Yaremche

Alec and his companions slide into Yaremche, Ukraine.

We actually got real snow for the first time this past week. Last year there was tons of snow in mid-November, so we had a couple more weeks of no snow this year. We got about 5 inches of snow, pretty much all in one morning. Judging by the weather forecast it looks like it's not gonna stick around too long.

Winter returns to Ukraine.

 The big thing this week was transfers. We lost our native Ukrainian missionary and one of the sisters and picked up a couple American missionaries. All of the members were super super sad to see the Ukrainian go, They definitely much prefer working with natives than with Americans. But, oh well, we're all they got. 

On Friday we did a kick-off activity for #lighttheworld (super crazy that Abbie auditioned for the video, I've seen it like a million times by now so that would have been super weird.) We basically invited everyone from English practice and the members -- and did some Christmas stuff. One of the ideas for service for the first day was to write a thank you note (or something like that) so we had everyone come and write thank you notes and then we made some salt-dough ornaments and got some paint so everyone could paint an ornament and give it to the person they wanted to thank. I left my SD card at home so I don't have any pics of this, sorry.

Anyway I don't think anyone actually gave the thank you cards to anyone, but it was fun and a lot of people came so it was a success. We also made some pretty good hot chocolate (thank you Martha Stewart) and we have tons of leftover, so I'll be able to use that insulated cup y'all got me. Thanks again for the package, by the way, lots of good stuff in there.

And then today for p-day we made a pretty good trip to a town called Yaremche, about an hour and a half away. It's basically a little touristy town right in the middle of the mountains with like skiing and other stuff like that. We're not allowed to go skiing but we did do some souvenir shopping and walked around a bit into some nature. There's some decent views and with the snow it all looked pretty cool. We also had a super cool dog follow us around. and of course I got a pic in my hammock. I just had to walk through a semi-frozen creek to get to the spot.

Anyway that's about it for this past week (there's probably more stuff that happened but I don't have my camera so I don't remember it, lol.) Hope y'all have a good week!

Scene from Yaremche.

Alec