Saying Goodbye To Ukraine

Alec says his final goodbyes to the people and places of Ukraine this week.

The plan is I leave on Thursday afternoon from Lutsk to head to L'viv. And then I have a train from L'viv Friday morning at 6 to Kyiv. I'll get to Kyiv around noon and then chill there for a bit. I will have a chance to go to the temple, so that'll be super cool (especially since the one in NC is down.) And then I'll have an interview with the mission president Friday evening. Saturday morning, I'll leave at 3 am to go to the airport. So it's gonna be quite the journey home--from Thursday  afternoon til Saturday afternoon, including a 7 hour time difference. 

Vika has not gotten baptized, unfortunately. The plan was to do it this Wednesday so I could baptize her before I dipped out, but she promised her mom she would think about it a little more. She still wants to get baptized and she still will, just not before I leave. 

  

Last week you asked me some questions about my thoughts as I come to the end. There are certainly lots of things I'm going to miss. There are lots of people here that it will be hard to say goodbye to, lots of friends that I've made and lots of people that I've really come to care about. That's definitely going to be a hard part for sure. However, you do eventually get to the point where you've said bye to so many different people and different things that you get kinda numb to it, so I don't think too many of the saying goodbyes will be too hard. It will be weird to leave the missionary life, knowing I'll never go back to it. At the beginning you think it'll never end, but then when the end comes it's kind of hard to believe that it's actually happening. Obviously serving a mission is hard and I'm very excited to come home, but I will always be grateful for the things I've learned and the ways I've grown out here. It's hard to list specific things, but I know for sure that I've gained a stronger testimony of our Savior Jesus Christ and his plan for our lives. I'm grateful that I made the choice to come out here and I'll always be glad that I did. 

Catch you on the flippity flip,

Alec

PS: a few pics: ask me about them on Saturday if you want.

Keeping Busy To The End

Yeah, so it was actually a pretty crazy week over here in Lutsk. I don't have a ton of time today, so we'll see how much of it I can get to. If I don't have time to write everything then just remind me in a couple weeks and I'll tell you the stories in person.

Ok, so first of all, on Wednesday we got invited by one of our investigators (Ihor, super nice, really, really loves the bible) to go out in the forest hunting for mushrooms. So we took a bus out to his village, about an hour away, met all his extended family out in their tiny little village and went out in the woods looking for mushrooms. We were out there for at least two hours, and altogether we found like 3 mushrooms. We did, however, find a ton of wild berries - mostly blueberry-ish things and raspberry-ish things. By the way, Ukrainians all know like 100 different kinds of berries and they're always surprised when you don't know what berries they're talking about, even after they translate it. We just don't have as many berries in America. The berries were pretty tasty actually. There were also some apple trees out there and after trying about 10 different super sour unripe apple trees we found one that actually had somewhat tasty fruit and so we picked a lot of those as well. It's pretty crazy how you can just walk out into a forest and find a bunch of free food just chilling out there. Anyway, on the way there this investigator told us that he met his wife during one of his many stays in a psych hospital, so I definitely made sure to keep the knife he gave me to cut mushrooms secure in my hand at all times. Just kidding. He's pretty chill - it wasn't that sketch. Afterward his grandma made some good food for us and we went back to Lutsk. He invited us to come again the very next day, but we told him we were pretty busy.

Today for P-day we went and did something we've been wanting to do for a while. In the biggest shopping mall here, there's a super sweet roller skating rink. Well, in the L'viv mission, roller skating wasn't allowed. However, we're no longer in the L'viv mission. So we went to check it out. It's been a long time since I've roller bladed, But it was still pretty fun and I was even brave enough to go up a few ramps - one of the good things about less liability and laws and stuff. We went with Larisa, a recent convert we hang out with a lot and I got a sweet video of her biffing it pretty hard, lol.

Also today we got invited over to a member's house for a little Family Home Evening. We went there with a few of the members and an investigator and she taught us how to make cheburekiy (honestly I have no idea how to transliterate that). They're basically just meat pies, so you just make dough and then put meat inside and fry it. They're pretty ok. It was fun though. and then afterward I tried leading a little spiritual thought object lesson real quick. The idea was you're supposed to take an egg and hold it in a cupped hand and try to break it, without using your thumb. The idea is that it's not possible without your thumb but with your thumb it's possible and the thumb represents Jesus, etc. Well everyone tried breaking it without their thumb and no one could do it (it really doesn't work, you should try it) until I gave it to Larisa, and she somehow immediately was able to crush it. I had a bag to catch any yolk in case something went wrong, but the egg kinda exploded and yolk got everywhere, including on our investigator, lol. Even worse though, was that when I tried to break the egg using my thumb, I absolutely could not break it. It's supposed to be easy with your thumb but I could not do it, and no one else could either (until I let Larisa try, of course). So, yeah, that object lesson was super ruined, but it was funny so it's all good. 

The coolest part of this week was probably on Sunday when we had 4 girls (including 2 recent converts and 1 investigator) come back from the countrywide YSA conference that happened last week. They go pretty hard with these YSA conferences--basically rent out an entire ski resort out in the mountains and basically try to fit in all the different parts of EFY and youth conference and trek and all those things they do in America. So everyone really loves these conferences (I would too, they look super super cool) and everyone always comes back super excited from them and everything. So, essentially our sacrament meeting was these four girls telling about their experience at the conference and it was pretty neat. The last one to go was the investigator, Vika. She had been planning on getting baptized, but she told us last week that after talking with her mom they both kinda agreed that it's a little too early, and that she needs to wait a bit longer before making a decision like that. Well after the conference she got up and told the whole branch that she's gonna get baptized "right now" so that was pretty neat. Hopefully "right now" will be in the next week and a half before I head out to Kiev. 

So yeah that's probs enough for now. In a couple weeks don't forget to ask me about the wedding story and about the "20 dollars" story and I'll tell you what happened.

I have some pics of when we did an activity on the street "sign up to receive a free Book of Mormon"  and one where we made quiche.

Alec

NOTE: Pictures did not come through this week.

18 Hours Of Bus Rides

There's a pretty cool word in Ukrainian, байдуже. It doesn't translate super well into English, but the best translation is "indifferent". It basically just gives a sense of not-caring and a lack of concern. Anyway, it describes my attitude towards writing these emails pretty well at this point. So I'll try to make this as good as I can. I still like getting emails though...

To answer a couple questions:

The new mission president is very nice. President Rizley was a successful businessman, so he was somewhat serious (not necessarily strict, but serious) and Pres. Kumferman is more of a Rob Mikkelsen kinda type, very smiley and friendly. I can't say which kind is better for a mission president, but I'm happy with the mission presidents I've had.

The new apartment is nice, but it's not too much bigger. it's definitely much newer though so I'm happy with it. 

L'viv has almost a million people. It's a very old European-style city (really the only one like that in Ukraine) so there's no big sky scrapers or anything. It's a decently big tourist destination (there was a huge Jehovah's Witness convention with about 30,000 people there last week from all over the world) and it's definitely one of the hidden gems of Europe. We didn't really have much time to do anything fun besides go to a couple restaurants and do a bit of souvenir shopping. 

We did eat some of the cherries we picked. They're not super sweet, honestly, but I guess they were ok. The more of them you eat the more tolerant you get to the sourness

Last week was pretty busy. Real quick rundown of the days:

Tuesday: took a 4-hour bus to L'viv in the morning, met two American girls who have Ukrainian parents who were visiting Ukraine. Pretty weird to hear people with perfect American accents and Ukrainian accents, but they were super nice. Got to L'viv, had interviews with the new mission president, went out to dinner at the rib place I've been to tons of times before. and then took a bus back to Lutsk and got back around 11:30.

Wednesday: one of our only days in Lutsk, so we decided to throw a fourth of July party, just like I did last year. We bought some ground beef, cooked up some burgers, and baked some cookies with brown sugar. Invited some members and people from English practice, everyone seemed to enjoy it. It was funny watching our branch president and district president try to play basketball, cause neither of them really can.

Thursday: had a couple lessons with some investigators, and then took another 4 hour bus back to L'viv to head to mission conference. Went to McDonald's, saw the new mission president there getting  a McFlurry, lol. Did a little bit of souvenir shopping.

Friday: zone conference in L'viv. This time it was for sure my last one, so I had to say bye to everyone and also bear my final testimony. pretty sad to say goodbye, but I already did it like a month ago, so not that sad. Took another 4-hour bus ride back to Lutsk, got home at 11:30 again.

Saturday: the branch had a picnic activity in the park, so we were in the park for a lot of the day eating food and playing volleyball with some random people who showed up. I forgot how fun volleyball is when you play with people who actually kinda know how to play.

Sunday: church. New senior couple that just moved to L'viv from Kiev came to visit. Good thing they did cause two of our three talks bailed out and they were able to fill up the time introducing themselves to everyone. 

Today: went to the \Tunnel of Love (again). about an hour away by bus. (That's a total of 18 hours on buses this week.)

Anyway, it was a good week full of lots of stuff. Hope y'all have a good one!

Alec

Officially Now In The Kiev Mission

We are now officially part of the Ukraine Kyiv/Moldova Mission. Not as catchy of a name but I guess it's ok. Our new mission president is president Kumferman, a Russian professor from BYU-Idaho. I haven't met him yet, but I will tomorrow when he comes to L'viv for interviews. It doesn't seem like there's gonna be a whole lot of drastic changes, at least while I'm here. We're still allowed to wear backpacks (for now, at least) which is good news. One thing that did change is that our district here in Lutsk got combined with the one in the neighboring city (rivne) which means I won't be district leader anymore. We'll do our weekly district meetings over skype from now on, which is much better than trying to do a meeting like that with only two people.

There also seems to be different focuses in general in this new mission. Before there were big pushes to share brief, concise messages with people on the street and stuff to get them interested, but now they're not pushing towards that kinda stuff as much. Also the amount of numbers that we report (lessons, investigators, etc.) went from like 20 to 4, so that's definitely a big change I'm a supporter of. 

Tomorrow I'll meet President Kumfermann in L'viv and then on Friday we'll have a zone conference in L'viv with what was the former L'viv mission. So I assume we'll find out a lot more about what is supposed to change in the coming week. Either way though I'm not too worried about, it's not gonna affect me too much.

OK enough about the future, as for the past week, there is not a ton to report. We spent literally three entire days moving from our old apartment to the apartment that the sisters used to live in (it's way nicer). Missionaries had lived in the old apartment for like 6 years, so there was just so much junk piled up (old clothes, books, etc) and it took forever to sort through it all and throw stuff away and bring stuff to the church and find out what belonged to the mission and what belonged to the apartment and basically it took forever, but we finally got it done. We're all moved in to the new apartment and we even got it mostly organized so it all looks nice. Now we're just trying to keep it that way. The pictures I attached don't really do it justice, There's a lot more stuff than you can see in those pictures. but that was most of our week. 

We also made a trip out to a member that lives decently far away in the middle of nowhere (this is the second time I've been out to him, you might remember the guy who lived absolutely in the middle of nowhere). He asked us to help him pick his cherries, so for the 3rd time in less than a week we picked cherries for a member. It's not too bad, and it's always fun doing service for people. 

Since the sisters left we picked up a few of their investigators, one of which is supposed to get baptized on Saturday. She was supposed to talk to her mom on Saturday, So we're meeting with her tonight to see how that actually went. Hopefully things went well. 

We'll be in L'viv half of this week, Tuesday, Thursday night, and Friday, so it should be interesting. Let me know asap if there's any souvenirs you want me to pick up for y'all (btw if you noticed a big charge on my card that was me buying a new suit so don't get too worried--it's a pretty nice suit). 

Good to hear that Aunt Gail is doing better. We'll keep praying about her and hope she keeps making progress.

I saw the Book of Mormon promo video when I was looking for a Mormon Message for a lesson and decided to look through it on the off chance I could see Abbie. She was in there a ton actually. Pretty neat.

I don't know what Dominion is, but I've played so much uno here on my mission that I'm ready for just about anything more advanced than uno. For some reasons Ukrainians really like uno.

There is also tons of opportunities to eat pizza here for sure. Pretty much every single restaurant sells pizza. Most of it's not very good, but a lot of it is pretty decent. At the beginning of my mission I didn't really like the thin crust European style and I really missed American pizza, but now in the last couple months I've really come to like it and I'm super worried I'm gonna go back to America and miss this kind of pizza. For a homecoming party all I can think of is some chocolate chip cookies, Chick-Fil-a lemonade maybe, root beer, and for sure some mac and cheese.

  

Hope y'all have a great week!

Alec

Goodbye, Sisters

This past week was a pretty interesting one. It was our sisters' last week before they went home (we put them on a train to L'viv at 6 am this morning) so we were trying to make it a good one. We wanted to do some kind of big activity on the street, so what we came up with was making one of those fishing booths where you put a fishing line over a bed sheet or something and someone on the other side of the bed sheet attaches candy to it and then you catch some candy. The idea is that we would attach candy, a pass-along card, and then a little fish that kids could color-in and then attach to the board. While the kids were doing that we would be talking with the parents and giving them Family: Proclamations and stuff like that. 

Translated: "Come follow men and I will make you fishers of men."

So we spent all of Saturday pretty much making these boards. It took a heck of a long time, honestly. We used the boards that we made for our Easter activity a couple months ago, so all we had to do was cover them with blue paper and decorate them. It didn't seem like it would take a long time, but it sure did. But they actually looked decent so it was worth the time, at least in my opinion. 

Unfortunately, the weather was not quite cooperating. It's been raining pretty consistently and it's been pretty chilly. Rain would totally ruin the boards we made and the success of the activity was very much dependent on people actually being in the park. It looked like there might have been a patch of clear weather, so Sunday afternoon we got all the stuff ready and left the church, But just as we were walking out it started to rain. So, obviously, we weren't meant to do it this weekend, so we had to move it back to another time. Unforunately, now my companionship is the only one here, so it'll be much more difficult to do it with only two people. Oh well, it'll work out some how, we're not gonna let all that preparation go to waste.

On Tuesday for our activity night we did a "surprise talent show." Basically people showed up and we gave them a random talent (say the alphabet backwards, juggle, play the piano) and they had to pretend that they could do this thing. It was pretty fun. I had to walk across the room with 5 books on my head, super easy. 

Also on Wednesday (and Thursday, cause we didn't finish on Wednesday) we went out to visit a member who needed help picking the cherries off of her cherry tree. So we spent a few hours up in the tree picking cherries. they weren't even all that good, I'm not sure what one person can do with so many cherries.

We also went to the castle (again) last week for the sisters' last P-day in Ukraine. It was just as cool as it was last the three times, but this time a thunderstorm started right as we got on top of the tower, so that was exciting.

But yeah now there's only gonna be one companionship here in Lutsk. Kinda a bummer, cause everything is always more fun with more people, but it's only a month or so, so I'm not too worried about it. 

That's about it from this past week, I'll try to attach some more pics from this past week later if they ever upload, the internet is super slow here. 

Hope everything is going ok there, Y'all are all in my prayers.

Alec​

Back To The Beginning

The biggest thing from this past week was probably the exchanges we had in Rivne on Wednesday. I've been back there plenty of times, but it's always super weird going back to that city cause I just feel like I'm all the way back at the beginning of my mission cause that's where I started out. It's always fun to see some people that remember me though. Honestly though, I'm not sure why they remember me, it's not like I could even talk to them back when I was there.

Of course while I was in Rivne, I made sure to hit up McDonald's (twice). Mostly cause of the convenience of it, but also cause it's the best burger you'll ever find in Ukraine. 

We also did a sports day this past Saturday, which was luckily a bit more successful than the last one. We had enough people to get a somewhat decent game of volleyball going, and that's all that really matters. None of the members were able to come cause almost the entire branch was in Kiev visiting the temple (a decent excuse, I guess). They rented out a bus, left Lutsk at 3 am Saturday morning, drove through Rivne to pick up some members from there, and then got to Kiev by like 10 o clock. They went to the temple for a few hours, then made it back to Lutsk by 11pm the same day. Pretty cool that they were able to organize that for people who can't afford to miss work or can't afford their own tickets to Kiev. If they had planned it for just two weeks later we might have been able to go with them because we'll be part of the Kiev mission at that point. Oh well, I'll be there in like a month and a half anyway. 

Since everyone was just at the temple, everyone wanted to share their experiences during sacrament meeting, so for once we had plenty of people speak. Probably the first time I've ever actually been supposed to give a talk but didn't get to cause there wasn't enough time (not a bad thing at all). 

This is the last week for our sisters here in Lutsk, and then all three of them are going home next Tuesday. So for the last five or so weeks it'll just be me and elder Abraham here in Lutsk all alone. Kinda unfortunate, but the good news is we get to move into their apartment which is closer and nicer than ours. Bad news is that means we have to close our apartment and deal with our landlady complaining about all the damages that missionaries have done over the past 6 years. Super bad news is that I have to pack up all my stuff, again. I thought for sure I was never gonna have to do that again. Oh well, at least the other apartment has real beds.

An interesting meeting we had last week: we met with this guy named Dima. He was pretty drunk and he started telling us about how he was at Maidan in Kiev (the big protest that started the Ukrainian revolution in like 2013 and basically led to all the stuff that's going on now). He says he got shot 39 times (I don't believe that) and that he prayed to God to protect him the whole time and he survived (obviously) but God didn't do anything to help him so he doesn't believe in God. Not super sure how to argue with that logic, so we probably won't try to meet with him again. 

I've got some pics of a cool hot air balloon festival that was going on right in the middle of town. That's not the kind of thing you see very often in Ukraine, so it was pretty neat to see. 

I remember that the weeks of graduation parties were definitely a ton of fun, but super exhausting. It's definitely an exciting time. The computers at the library we're writing at don't have any sound, so we might just have to wait to watch all those videos til I get home. I'll make sure to keep Aunt Gail in my prayers, too.

Anyway, hope y'all have a great week!

Alec​

New Companion & Old Forts

We had our mid-transfer transfers, so my old companion Elder Frehner went down to Uzhhorod and was replaced by Elder Abraham from St George. So far things are going pretty well, we've known each other for the past two years so it should be pretty fun.

 Before my old companion got transferred, we hit up a couple museums. There was a little science museum we went to, and it was actually pretty cool. It reminded me a lot of the kind of things you'd find at Morehead or some other little hands on science museum, so I was pretty impressed. Even though half of the exhibits weren't working. That's where the pictures of me in the gas masks come from, those were pretty sketch.

And then we went to an old military museum too. It's basically just a whole bunch of tanks and other military vehicles parked out in a big lot that you can go out and climb on and look at. I guess we went during field trip time, so there were tons and tons of kids running around, so we didn't quite get to climb on as many tanks as we would have liked, but it was still pretty cool. There must just be a huge excess of leftover military hardware from WWII in estern Europe cause tanks seem to be in much higher supply for memorials and museums and stuff like that then you would ever see in America.

And then today for p-day we took a lil trip out to a town called Dubno. They have a castle there (it was pretty ok) but then about 5 kilometers out of the city there is an old fort, from I think WWI or maybe even earlier than that. It's completely abandoned and just out in the middle of the forest, so a super cool place to explore. There may have been no trespassing signs . . . but we figured if anyone asks we would just say that we don't know Ukrainian and pretend to be dumb Americans. anyway, though it was honestly pretty sweet. You could tell which parts were original and which parts had been added on for like WWII and stuff like that and it was just crazy how many tunnels and sketchy rooms there were. Here's a quick lil youtube video I found about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88zqBbpKqI8. The tunnels were pretty sketch (there were absolutely no lights and I feel like it would be pretty easy to get lost in them, but climbing up to the roof of the old center structure was pretty sweet. To get to the very top we had to basically shimmy up an old chimney. anyway it was pretty sweet, my pictures don't really do it justice, but you get the idea. It really looked like something straight out of a horror movie. it was kinda hard to find, but definitely a place worth visiting if you ever find yourself in western Ukraine. 

Other than that, the grind is just still going on. We have probably the most experienced district in the whole mission, all five of us (3 sisters and 2 elders) are going home in the next 2 and a half months (the sisters are leaving in like 2 weeks), so we should be able to get some good work done.  I got a ton of pics, most of them are from the museums and the castle and the fortress, so have fun sorting those out! 

Have a great week! Alec

The Last L'viv Mission Conference

 This past week here was pretty eventful. Tuesday afternoon we headed out for L'viv for what would be the last ever Mission Conference of the Ukraine L'viv Mission. There was an event Tuesday night, so we made sure to get to L'viv with enough time to get some dinner at the famous ribs place before 7 o clock. Brother Tad R. Calister, the General Sunday School President was here in Ukraine and he was doing an instruction segment about how to teach and ask good questions and stuff like that. They invited all of the members, but there were about 4 times as many missionaries as members that showed up. And there are only like 30 missionaries in the mission. So it wasn't a huge turnout, but it was still good. 

And then Wednesday was the Missionary Conference. Bro. Calister and Elder Martino, the Area President, spoke in the morning time, but then they left after lunch to go catch a plane. Bro Calister is apparently a pretty big deal, he's written lots of books and was in the presidency of the seventy, so it was cool being able to hear from him and Elder Martino. So between them and the patriarch last week, there was a lot going on here recently. 

And then in the afternoon, President Rizley and his wife took some time to talk to us, since it'll be their last conference before they go home at the end of the month. They talked about some good lifelong advice stuff and then gave everyone some cool Ukraine Lviv Mission commemorative coins that are pretty neat. 

Since we don't really know what exactly is going to happen after the missions merge, I wasn't sure if I was going to see most of the people again before I go home, so I had to say bye to lots of people. It's pretty weird, mostly cause the mission really has barely changed at all since we got here, in terms of people going home and stuff. So there haven't been a lot of goodbyes and we've all pretty much known the same people and spent the last two years with all the same people. So it was pretty weird to think that this might be the last time I'll see a lot of them. Crazy stuff, two years is a long time.

So yeah, fun time in L'viv. We also tried to do a big activity in a park in L'viv promoting our English practice. about an hour and a half in a guy gets super mad at us and starts standing up on a little statue thing and yelling (super super loud) about how Americans are the worst and about glory to Ukraine and about how we need to go back to America. It was quite the scene. We were getting ready to leave anyway, so all 20+ missionaries that were there just grabbed all of our stuff and dipped out. Crazy stuff.

And then we got back to Lutsk and just did normal stuff. We tried doing a sports day activity on Saturday. It took us forever to figure out how to get a volleyball net set up here at the church but we finally got it and then only two people showed up, lol.

though. 

On saturday we were also invited to a little block party that our apartment building was throwing. It was pretty neat, I've enver really seen anything like that in Ukraine. Everyone that lives there knows who we are of course, so we were just there to try to show them that we're normal people. I joined a little chess tournament, but then I found out I had to play 5 different games and so I had to dip out early to make it to our sports day. It was still fun though.

I also found out this week that my companion is getting transferred, even though it's right in the middle of the transfer. Something to do with getting ready for when people start going home after the merge and stuff like that. My new companion will be Elder Abraham from St. George who was in the MTC with me, so that'll be fun.

I attached a few pics from L'viv and then a ton with people from conference that I had to say bye to cause I don't know if I'll see them again (but I'm thinking I most likely will at some zone conference or something before I go home.)

Have a good week!

Alec

The Patriarch Visits

The big thing here this past week was the visit of the traveling patriarch. Since there's no stake here, there's no patriarch, so there's one patriarch called for pretty much the entire Europe East Area, and he just visits different places every couple years or so. His name is Elder Neuschwander. He was in the presidency of the seventy for a while and he was the president of the Europe East Area two different times, so he knows this area pretty well. He was also a mission president in Vienna in the late 80s and early 90s, so he was actually the one who first got missionaries into the former Soviet Union. So basically he's kinda a big deal so it was cool to get to talk to him for a little bit while he was here in Lutsk, especially since he only visited two cities, L'viv and Lutsk. 

We had to do a good bit of work getting ready for him to come though. They essentially wanted us to transform the church building into a nice, cozy home, so we had to move a bunch of furniture and paintings and carpet and buy flowers and clean super well to make sure everything looked nice and inviting. It ended up looking pretty good, and all the members that came to get their patriarchal blessings seemed to enjoy it. 

One of the people that came was actually the member from Rivne who I taught and baptized my first couple transfers in Ukraine, so that was pretty neat to talk to him and to see him again. I attached a picture of him (above) if you're interested.

Other than that, on Monday last week, we took a tour of some catacombs beneath a super old church here. They didn't allow any pictures, but I snagged a couple anyway... oops. It was actually super cool, a good amount of skeletons and just crazy to think that people were building stuff like that under ground hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Probably one of the cooler things I've done. I also went second-hand shopping last week, got some Levi's and a pair of dockers for $3, not too bad.

On Saturday, as we were walking out of the church building, we heard a screech and super loud crash noise. We ran out to the street and there was a pretty gnarly car accident, right in front of the church. We heard a little girl crying, which was pretty scary at first but no one was hurt, I think she was just scared. You can read more about it here if you want, lol.

https://www.volynnews.com/news/society/u-lutsku-ne-rozmynulysia-dvi-avtivky-na-yevrobliakhakh-foto/

We'll definitely have to be more careful walking through that intersection every single day from now on.

Yesterday was some big holiday celebrating the Pentecost, I guess. We saw tons of people this whole past week carrying around what looks like long green onions, and we had no idea why. It's a super weird feeling when the entire city seems to be in on some big secret or everyone is invited to some party but you're not invited. It's just weird to see literally everyone do something and have no idea why. Anyway we found out that it's basically a celebration of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem before the Crucifixion when people put palm leaves down on the ground. Since there's no palm trees here, they just use these green onion things instead. Real cool and all, I just don't think that Ukrainians know their bible chronology very well. I got a pic of a driveway with these things laid out on them.

That's about it from this past week, I've got some pics of a chalk drawing we did in center . . .

. . . and a few pics from a village we spent 2 hours walking through trying to find a less active member only to realize we had the wrong address. And maybe some other stuff.

Have a good week!

Rough Week (Too Much Rain, No Georgian Food)

Church on Sunday was not too bad yesterday. I taught a lesson, but luckily I didn't have to give a talk. I thought I might have to when the first two speakers left us with a half hour left, but our closing speaker came in clutch and took up the rest of the time. But all in all, it was a fairly normal Sunday, just lots of other branch business to do. We have the traveling Patriarch coming this week, so we had to get everything ready for that with interviews and printing recommends and scheduling everything. Lots of fun.

Other than that, this week was just a whole lot of rain. So that was unfortunate. And to make matters worse, I had to go a whole week without any Georgian food because my favorite Georgian restaurant is still closed. Rough week.

On Tuesday, for our activity night, we did a sweet egg drop activity. We basically just gave the people that came a bunch of trash and had them build things to protect their eggs when we dropped them off a flight of stairs. It was pretty fun and it reminded me a lot of doing science camps with Morehead, haha.

On Monday, a former missionary, Elder Von Niederhausern, stopped by with his parents. He was in Rivne when I first got to Ukraine and he's a super nice guy, so it was good to see him. We just went to dinner and talked for a bit, but it was fun.

We also did a bit of service Monday night, digging up dirt behind this one member's apartment building. Ukrainians will use any little bit of land they can find to plant potatoes. So we were basically just digging up the lawn by her building so she could plant potatoes there. It was actually pretty hard work, the dirt was rock hard. 

That's about it for last week, hopefully the weather will be better this week and more exciting stuff will happen. Also I got no pics for you, sorry, just this one with the former elder Von Niederhausern (at top).

Hope you have a great week!

Alec

Happy Mother's Day!

Well yeah we just talked so I don't really have a lot to say, haha. The biggest things from this past week were probably the zone leaders coming here for exchanges on Thursday and then President Rizley coming Saturday and the branch conference on Sunday. So we had lots of visitors this week.

For exchanges on Thursday, mostly all we did was visit that investigator I told you about with all the orthodox icons on her walls. We brought Larisa (the girl that said hi during the Skype call) as a member present, not really cause we wanted help on the lesson, but just cause this lady is pretty interesting and has a pretty interesting decorating scheme. Last time, she told us that God can't hear our prayers because there are too many radio waves going around in the atmosphere, and this time she told us that the body of Christ isn't the bread that you partake of as part of the sacrament, but it's the actual grain, like wheat and stuff like that. She's pretty interesting. Hopefully we'll get some more investigators soon.

Of course, for exchanges we also went to the best restaurant in town (except the Georgian place that is closing down) called Show Basilik. And then we'll be going there again today cause a RM is coming back to visit with his family and he wants to go there. I'm definitely gonna miss being able to afford eating out whenever I want. I've learned how to cook ok, but it's just soo much more convenient to go out to restaurants.

And then we had the branch conference on Sunday. Which went pretty badly, but all in all not quite as badly as it could have gone. There was some confusion with the schedule of the sacrament meeting and a very nervous branch president trying to give a talk that ended up going a little too long, but at the end of the day it all worked out just fine. One of the members of the district presidency just didn't show up for some reason, and he was supposed to be leading the entire second hour, so that was kinda unfortunate. Luckily President Rizley was there and he was able to step in and teach something good about ministering.

But yeah, that's about it for this week honestly, I didn't take any pictures either so here's some random pictures from my companion from the past transfer that I don't think you've seen yet, so have fun!

It was great to see y'all yesterday. Tell Evan I missed him and I hope you had a great Mother's Day!

Alec​

Return to the Tunnel of Love

This week we had a pretty down week actually, lots of stuff fell through, but we did have a sweet branch activity on Saturday. We just had a little sports day out in the park, but it was well-attended and fun. Of course everyone wanted to play soccer, but we also played a little spikeball and threw a football around, too. The weirdest thing was the fact that, when we got there, there were a ton of people out disc golfing with portable disc golf baskets. That was the first time I've ever seen disc golf in Ukraine, so we went up and talked to them and exchanged numbers to hopefully be able to play with them sometime. Today for p-day, we went to the Tunnel of Love. You might remember it from a couple winters ago when I went there once or twice. It's an old railroad with a bunch of trees that grow up and over the railroad. It looks pretty cool and you might have seen pics of it on Pinterest or Instagram. I've been twice before, but both of those times were in the winter and it's much, much cooler when there are leaves on the trees.  

We had to take a bus to get there, but we really didn't know where to go, so we kinda had to ask around. One very nice lady told us where to go, and then when she found out we were from America she invited us to come see her children's art school that she runs. She offered us tea and cookies and took a bunch of pictures of the Americans that came to visit them, haha. It's super interesting how differently we get treated out in the small towns than we do in the big cities when people find out that we're Americans. She even gave us painted Easter eggs to take home. After that we met up with the missionaries from Rivne and went to the Tunnel of Love. We got some sweet pictures, I hope you enjoy them cause each of those pictures probably cost me about a pint of blood. The mosquitoes were pretty unreal. We made some Ukrainian barbecue, called "shashlyk" over a fire we built. It was pretty tasty, but the best part was that the smoke kept away the mosquitoes. 

Glad to hear that everyone is doing well. Grandpa's got a nice beard going there. I was playing a good game of chess btw, but then I made a pretty dumb move and he's got me in a pretty tough spot now. I got some ok pictures but it was definitely one of those times I wish I had a nicer camera, haha. Have a good one and see you on Sunday.

 Alec

The Highs & Lows of Missionary Work

Over here last week lots of our time was spent on buses, haha. We went to Rivne (the city I started in a year and a half ago) on Wednesday for exchanges, So we left Tuesday afternoon and got back Thursday morning. Luckily it's not a super long bus ride, less than two hours. And the road is actually pretty nice for most of the way. It's interesting to see how lots of things have changed since I first got here. Lots of new roads, I just hope that they're built well enough to last more than a year or two. 

In Rivne I had a good exchange with the zone leaders, had a few lessons with some cool people, and went to McDonald's three times in less than 48 hours. To be fair two of those times were just for McFlurries. 

On Friday we went out to a village to do service for an older couple in the branch. They really live in the middle of nowhere. We took a bus for about an hour, then got off and had to walk almost two miles to get to their tiny house. The man can barely walk with the help of a cane, I have no idea how they can live so far away from everything or why. It's just super crazy that people live so far away from everything. I mean they have Internet and running water (kinda) but it's just sooo far. I don't understand it. Anyway, we helped him move a big pile of wood he had chopped and then helped fix his fence. He showed us a bunch of pictures of his son that's serving a mission in England too, which basically just made me jealous of all the missionaries in the world who all have smart phones, haha.

And then on Sunday church was fun, as always. I had to give a talk unexpectedly, and then teach lessons during the 2nd and 3rd hour. And then we had an almost 2-hour branch council afterward. It's nice to be busy and be needed, but it's super exhausting sometimes.

If they ever finish uploading, I have a bunch of pictures from our service day and from the walk to that guy's house. Also for last p-day, we hit up the zoo here in Lutsk. I was actually super impressed. It was small, but it was landscaped pretty well and pretty clean and there were decent living quarters for the bigger animals. The only big animals they had were lions, tigers, and bears, and I'm not sure if they made that reference on purpose or not. The bears were super active when we were there. The tigers were inside, but you could walk in and see them. You could literally get a couple feet away from a tiger with just a metal grate separating you. That was pretty crazy. 

We also went to an American diner for p-day. They had a pizza burger, which was just a burger but instead of buns they just had two mini-pizzas. Honestly it was pretty good, don't know why they don't have those in America. They also had a quesadilla, and it was the only actually kinda ok Mexican food I've had here. 

I had a crazy guy put his hand on my head and give me a blessing after I told him I couldn't give him any money at the bus station. Also we were sitting on a bus and a lady turns around, looks, at our nametags, swears really loudly, then gets off the bus. The next bus was in like an hour so idk why she inconvenienced herself so much. Also another lady stopped us on the street and started yelling about how we're satanists. Lots of fun stuff.

 Hope y'all have a good week!

Alec​

The 4am Knock on the Door

We had a pretty eventful week over here in the good old Ukraine. It all started off early Tuesday morning. Like 4:00 in the morning. I was awaken by someone knocking on our door. At first I just ignored it, figuring it was just some drunk person wandering through our apartment building, but then a couple minutes later they knocked again, so I decided to at least look through the peephole and see what was going on. Ukrainians really love their doors, so for some reason we have two, one right after the other. Well when I opened the first one I immediately got a strong whiff of smoke. 

So I was like, oh boy, I think our building is on fire. So I woke my companion up, put a jacket on, and we grabbed a couple important things like passports and stuff like that. We opened the second door and the entire stairwell was just full of smoke. So we grabbed some towels to cover our mouths and started making our way down from the sixth floor. We didn't see any flames, but as we made it down to the first floor we saw firefighters with the full gas mask outfits and everything pulling fire hoses up the stairwell. So, yeah, we made it out onto the street and there's like 3 firetrucks and an ambulance and a bunch of cops and everything (most of them just standing around watching.) And then after an hour or so all the firefighters started to leave, and so we decided it was ok to go back in.

Basically what happened is that something in the basement caught fire. I guess they put the actual fire out pretty quickly, but even today our building still smells like smoke. The weirdest part of it all was the fact that there were only maybe 20 or so people out on the street when we got there. There's probably close to 1,000 people who live in that building. There's no fire alarms or anything in the buildings, so some people might have just slept through it, but there were also tons of people just out looking from their balconies. It's super, super weird how people knew that their building was on fire, but for some reason they decided to just stay in their apartments. And the truth is we could have slept through the entire thing and had no idea. We would have just woken up and figured that one of our neighbors had been smoking in the building or something like that. So yeah it was a pretty wild morning. I have some real dark pictures that you can't see much from, but you can kind of see people just chilling in the balcony while their building is on fire, lol.

OK, and then after all that, for our activity night on Tuesday, we thought it would be a great idea to start another fire and do a little marshmallow roasting outside the church building. The Ukrainians actually really liked it, haha. We also played spikeball and four square and threw a football around. 

And then the next couple days were spent in L'viv for a mission conference. Going to L'viv is always fun, and I finally went to one of the famous restaurants there called Kryivka. It's theoretically supposed to be a secret. There's no signs or anything and it's just at an unmarked door. You knock on the door, say the secret password ("glory to Ukraine"), and then they let you in, give you a free shot (we kindly refused) and then they take you downstairs into what looks like a war bunker. It's a Ukrainian nationalist restaurant, basically, only purely Ukrainian dishes and pure Ukrainian language. As you leave you go through this war-zone decorated tunnel and out through the gift shop. They have a big transformer looking thing and  a tower you can climb up with a big turret on top. It honestly felt like I was at Disneyworld. It was fun, but, tbh, the food wasn't all that good. 

Then we took a late bus back to Lutsk and met a cool guy who just got back from visiting his girlfriend in the Netherlands. Apparently he just speaks English with her, and honestly his English was not all that good. Crazy how people have relationships like that with such big language barriers.

On Friday we did Helping Hands and cleaned up in a park here. Lots of nasty stuff but it looked a lot better afterward. It was super interesting actually, I guess Friday and Saturday were just like the general spring cleaning days for the entire city. As we were walking around we would just see tons of people walking around with trash bags and gloves and stuff just picking up trash. And after the snow melts there is a ton of trash. But it all looks a lot better and it's cool to see the entire city come together to make things look a little nicer. 

And then on Saturday we helped out at an English school. One of the students walked in and I knew I recognized him, but I couldn't tell where from. Eventually I realized that he was the kid a couple weeks ago during our big Easter activity in downtown who walked up and asked to see our permit for being there on the street. He had told us that us talking about religion "cuts him deep to his soul" and then it was super offensive for us to be here. I told him I didn't really have to show him any permit cause he didn't really have any authority to ask for it, and that he was welcome to keep walking on his way. He kinda started arguing and I didn't want to make a scene, so I kinda flashed him the permit. We actually did have one (literally the first time on my entire mission I've gotten a permit for something like that) and he walked away kind of upset. So when he showed up to the English thing, I thought it was pretty hilarious. He was actually a nice kid there, so hopefully we'll be able to help him change his mind a bit about religion.

Oh and right after that we stopped by a recital one of the young men from the branch was doing. I think I have a video of it.

And finally on Sunday we spent half the day trying to figure out financial stuff with the branch. MLS is a pretty complicated program and NO ONE here knows how to use it. I feel like I've spent half my Sundays on my mission in the clerk's office trying to figure this stuff out, always fun stuff. 

That's about it for this past week, I think. I'll attach a few pics. They're kind of all jumbled up, sorry and good luck. Oh also we went to the castle again last p-day. Today we're planning on going to the zoo, so I should have some more pics for ya next week. Oh and also Sunday evening we took a walk through the park with our friend/investigator. lots of super sketch carnival rides and stuff. I won't tell you when I ride them.

Have a good week!​

Alec

Why Missionaries Should Always Check In

The walk home each day.

Homemade spikeball.

It was a good week. We tried making spikeball again, and this time it actually worked out a lot better. Last time the biggest problem was finding a net, but this time we just decided to go to a thrift store and find an old afghan blanket which we stretched over a hula hoop and it actually worked super well. The ball we found isn't ideal, but it still works. Now we just need to find a couple of ukrainians who are coordinated enough to play. The problem is they usually don't have enough patience to get good at it, so it'll be tough. We did a Young Men's activity on Saturday and we forced them to play for about an hour and by the end of it they were pretty ok at it, so it gave us a little bit of hope. We'll be starting doing a sports day activity now that the weather is warmer, so hopefully we'll be able to get some people playing spikeball.

We also met a lady while we were advertising for our English practice. She owns an English school in Lutsk and she wanted to meet with us to figure out how we could help her. We met with her and told her we'd be happy to help every once in a while, but that we wouldn't be able to accept any payment. She kinda refused to take that answer, and insisted on paying us. We had to clearly explain that we are not here as English teachers and our visas don't allow us to receive any money, but that we would still be happy to help. I think she understood, but she might still try to slip some money under the table or something haha. I'll just tell her to buy us some food instead.

Another funny story from the past week: So basically every night all the missionaries have to send a text to their missionary leaders saying they're home, just to make sure everyone makes it home safe and everything. Well it was like 10:20 and I still hadn't received a text from our sister mssionaries and their phone was off so I couldn't call them. So we had to call a taxi, drive across town to their apartment, break into their apartment building, and then knock on their door. Of course they were home, they just forgot to send a text and their phone had died. It was kind of a pain in the butt, but it was worth it to see their surprised faces when they opened the door.

Church yesterday was pretty interesting too, mostly cause one of the sister missionaries were sick and so they couldn't make it. Which was unfortunate, cause two of them were supposed to be giving talks. So I ended up having to give a talk (luckily I have plenty I've already prepared for other cities.) The bigger problem was the fact that we had no one to play the piano, so we had to rush to figure out how the CD player works and find all the right hymn numbers (in English and Ukrainian) and what CD they were on. And then I had to conduct the music too, cause we had no one else to do that. So that was a lot of fun, but all in all it went a lot smoother than some other sacrament meetings I've seen here. 

This coming week we'll be in L'viv for a mission conference, so that should be fun. After being a Zone Leader and traveling all the time I feel like I've been in this city for forever (even though it's only been like a month) so it'll be nice to go somewhere different. 

Downtown Lutsk Easter celebration

Just a couple pics, there was a big Easter celebration in downtown on Monday, so we went and checked it out on p-day. Unfortunately all of the good bands were performing in the evening, but we got to hear them do sound checks, so that was pretty neat. There's also a pic of the sweet walk we make every day from the church back home through a little valley with a river (see above.) The river is gross so it smells pretty bad, haha, but it's still a nice walk. Lots of hooligans doing stuff when it gets dark though. Also some super sketchy bridges we have to walk across.

Anyway, that's it for this week, hope y'all had a good one!

Alec​