Unexpected Snow

An unexpected snowstorm makes P-day more fun.

This past week was pretty fun. Last week it snowed pretty hard on p-day. For some reason there is this giant hill out in the middle of a park, so we headed over there to check it out. It was pretty hard to climb up it. We actually ended up going back there for a branch activity on Saturday and did some sledding. 

We also had a fun family home evening at the branch president's family's house. It was their 2-year old's birthday, so we celebrated for her. They also got a new husky puppy, so that was pretty sweet. They decided to name it Monson.

Also for our activity night on Friday, we did a little minute-to-win-it activity. We had a pretty decent turnout and people seemed to like it alright. We did some classics like throwing ping pong balls into cups or stacking apples and stuff like that. We're trying to do fun activities, so if y'all have any ideas for fun things like that we could do we would appreciate it.

Minute-to-win-it at the branch activity.

I attached a bunch of pictures, hope you enjoy them! Oh I also found a Russian nesting doll with Donald Trump lol. his wife and kids were on the inside. Definitely wasn't about to pay $32 for it though.

That package I sent you definitely went through it, glad you finally got it. Sorry that the earrings were so lame. I ordered the ties and the earrings from a member that lives in another city, so I didn't really get to look at the earrings before I bought them. The ties are pretty sweet though. I figured Evan was the only one who would be able to pull off the super skinny one, so I gave that one to him. 

Super surprised that the ball Christmas ornament made it. I figured I'd put it in and y'all would appreciate the thought. I actually did wrap it up pretty well, but it looks like all the wrapping fell apart anyway. They don't really let you pack your own packages at the post offices here, so it wasn't quite done like I would have liked it. I definitely didn't make that one. I bought that and the doll at a store. The ball says Merry Christmas and the doll is a classic Ukrainian doll. The two painted ones I made at a Christmas activity we did with the branch.

Alec​

Merging the L'viv & Kiev Missions

Sounds like y'all had fun with a few days off and I'm glad you were able to enjoy the snow a little bit. We had no snow forecasted at all for the next little while, and then we wake up this morning and there's like 7 inches on the ground, so I know how you feel. We're planning on going sledding later today. 

Over here, we have more or less enough people to fill most of the callings that we need and we have people teaching all the classes we need. It ends up working out that the teachers have hardly anyone to teach because all of the people that would be in their class are off teaching lessons somewhere else, but at least people have callings. We actually had a hard time finding a calling for a person in the branch last week. I don't know how everyone gets callings in America. I guess a lot more people are needed in primary and youth and stuff like that.

This week the biggest news was a big Skype call on Saturday. We got a call from the APs telling us that we had to get all of our missionaries on a Skype call as soon as possible. They didn't tell us what it was about but they said it took precedence over everything else. So on the call the mission president announces that the First Presidency decided that late this spring they're going to merge the L'viv mission into the Kiev mission. There were lots of rumors about this going around for a long time, but this was the first time they made an official announcement (even though I was pretty sure it was gonna happen). It's not really gonna change too much, except for the fact that now we'll get to go to Kiev for conferences and go to the temple and stuff, so that's pretty cool. It's only gonna be the last month or so of my mission so it's not gonna impact me a whole ton. 

Basically they created this mission cause of the surge in missionaries after the age change, and now that the numbers are going back to normal, they have to shut down some missions throughout the world. We don't really know how it's gonna work yet, especially with the whole fact that that is a Russian speaking mission, but I'm sure it'll be interesting. 

Alec on a tough service project.

Probably the craziest thing that happend this past week was a bit of service we tried to do on Wednesday. We went to help this guy clean out his apartment. He's a friend of a member of the church and she asked us to go over and help this guy out, so of course we agreed, seems harmless enough. Never agree to help clean out someone's apartment without seeing the apartment first. It was literally, floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall, trash. I've seen some bad apartments and some bad hoarders before, but nothing like this at all. It was bad. and wayyyy worse than anything I ever saw on that TV show, haha. Anyway we did our best to help this guy out for a few hours. We cleaned out an entire hallway, but when we tried opening other doors and realized that was only a tiny fraction of the problem, we decided that was enough. Honestly it was super unsafe with broken glass and old razors all over the place. We also found out that this guy had stolen the dumpster we had been using from somewhere else, lol, so we were like, yeah it's time to go. So we just decided to dip out.  It was kinda sketch from the beginning, but don't worry I was using super thick winter gloves.

Saturday was a pretty cool day. We started off doing a mutual activity for the youth in the ward, we made PVC nerf dart guns, and everyone really liked that. Afterward, we went over to a family for a little FHE, and they made us pizza and borscht (Ukrainian beet soup.) It was a weird combination, but pizza is always good and borscht is always good too.

That's about it for this week. I don't really have any pictures, but i'll try to get you some next week.

Alec

My Thoughts on Ukrainian Food

THe holiday lights of Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine.

It's such a classic missionary idea: go back home and start a restaurant with the food from where you served your mission. I definitely would not want to try that with Ukrainian food. There would be very little success. Something I realized this past week is that Ukrainian food is 100% ok. Nothing special about it all. But. Georgian food is super good. Idk if you can find them in America, I never really looked, but there are Georgian restaurants all over the place here and they're super good. 

That's pretty crazy about Hawaii. Sounds like it was a really bad practical joke.

Over here the biggest thing that happened was transfers this week. My companion left and I got a new one, Elder Fuller. We were companions for my last transfer in Uzhhorod and we were in the MTC together, so we already know each other pretty well. We also have a new sister in our city, straight from the MTC. It's the first time I've really seen a brand new missionary since I was a brand new missionary, so it's very interesting to see and think about how I was back then.

After my old companion left and before my new one came I was with the other elders here for a couple of days in a trio. We met with a cool guy from Ghana who just recently started coming back to church. We got to his place and he invited us to play FIFA with him on his PS4, which we had to decline. He also ordered some super good African rice and chicken, and then we had a good discussion. He's got lots of deep questions. 

On Sunday, we had our first day of 3 hours of church. I forgot how long three hours is. That's sooo much church. It's been a whole year since I've done that. It's super tricky, cause even here in one of the biggest branches in the mission, we have a pretty hard time finding people who can teach all of the different lessons and everything for three hours, so we missionaries usually end up having to do something every week. And then of course there's all the branch presidency stuff after church too, so we pretty much just spend the whole day in the church on Sundays. It's a lot of time, but it's nice having stuff to do.

 We had a super drunk guy show up to our game night and play ping pong for a bit. When I tried getting him to leave, he demanded some liahonas and would't leave until I gave him some. It's actually a fairly common experience.

That's about it for this past week. I attached some pics of some cool arches they set up in downtown for the holidays. Unfortunately, they were a little late and didn't get them set up until after most of the holidays were over.

Hope you had a great week!

Alec

Making Paper Airplanes and Borscht

Glad you liked all the pictures last week, cause I don't have any for you this week. 

But, yeah, the ribs were pretty sweet. We went back again when we were in L'viv for MLC on Wednesday, but they were super super busy so they were kinda skimpy on the ribs, so we didn't get quite what we paid for the second time. But, it was stil pretty good. 

I did get the package, but it was really just super lucky that I happened to be in L'viv this past week. Otherwise, I wouldn't have gotten it until the very end of January. Thank you very much, btw. lots of cool stuff. The little metal puzzle things are always pretty fun. I was never able to solve the first one you sent me, so I was a little concerned about getting another one that was supposed to be even harder. It was definitely a little easier though, cause I've already been able to figure it out. Now I just gotta work on the other one. 

It is kinda unfortuante though that y'all sent me so much cold weather stuff lol. According to the forecast, it's only supposed to dip below freezing during the day a couple times for the entire rest of the winter. That's ok. I'm sure some missionary next winter will appreciate the dozens of hand warmers. That's too bad y'all haven't received my package. According to the tracker, it left Kiev in the middle of December, so I guess it got stuck somewhere along the way. That would be super unfortunate if it never makes it.

But, thank you for the package, I appreciate it. That being said, I think I'm pretty well stocked on peanut butter and taco seasoning and stuff for the last six or so months, So I probably don't need any more big packages. Just put the $70 towards a new iphone or something...jk. But yeah I think I'll be set, thank you!

As for stuff over here, we were in L'viv on Wednesday for MLC. Usually we have to take a train at 3 in the morning and then come back on another train later that same afternoon, but the new senior couple hooked it up (probably cause they don't know what they're doing yet) and we got to go up the night before on a nice train and take a nice train back Wednesday night. So we got a normal amount of sleep and we got to chill in L'viv for a bit. 

Other than that all we really did was make paper airplanes. We're trying to be more creative with our activities to get more people interested so we had a paper airplane night on Friday night, and then we did it again for a mutual activity (something we're trying to get started here) with the youth on Saturday. It was moderately ok, not a ton of people came cause of the holidays and everything (yesterday was Ukrainian Christmas.)

The only other exciting thing was Thursday night. We were invited by some friends from English practice to go over to their apartment and make some real Ukrainian borscht (the famous Ukrainian beet soup.) I think I told you about the time we went weight-lifting with them when I first got to Ivano. Anyway I wasn't sure what to expect when we went over. They told us they had a really small apartment and stuff. Turns out it was definitely the nicest apartment I've ever been to in Ukraine (besides our mission president's.) He works as like a 3D graphic designer or something like that, so I guess he makes pretty good money. It's just interesting to realize that there actually are people here in Ukraine who have a decent amount of money. It's just most of the people we work with are not those people. Anyway, the borscht we made was pretty good.

Sunday was full of doing stuff for the branch. They usually ask the missionaries to do all this kind of stuff, anyway, but now that I'm in the branch presidency, it just means that they ask me specifically to do all of the stuff. So, Sundays after church are usually pretty busy.

Hope y'all have a good week and you stay warm. Let me know if I need to send some of those hand warmers back!

Alec

Happy New Year From Ukraine!

Christmas & New Year's in Ukraine.

New Year is pretty big here, but from what I've heard, more and more people are making Christmas a bigger holiday, and more and more people are celebrating Christmas on the 25th, too. It's just another part of them trying to be as westernized as possible and as removed from Russia as possible.

Alec continues a Martschenko Christmas tradition.

But, we didn't do too much on New Years, mostly just sat around and ate a ton of food. We played a long game of a Ukrainian version of Monopoly (where the Ukrainian railway company is worth more lol) which I won and a few games of Bananagrams, which I also won. We also had a puzzle we worked on to fill the time a bit.

I also made some pretty tasty roast beef and mashed potatoes. I wanted to make some pumpkin pie, too, but I didn't have anything to actually cook the pie in, so that will have to wait. Sounds like ya'll had a fun New Years too with some pretty good food, as well.

Anyway, the big thing from this past week was Mission Conference in L'viv. The Christmas one is always the biggest one of the year, so it was pretty funny when they realized on Tuesday that no one had bought train tickets for anyone to make it into L'viv. When the old senior couple went home, it somehow just got forgotten lol. It all worked out ok in the end. Some people had to come a day early and some people got home later or had to take really long buses, but everyone made it there ok. That's why there were so many credit card transactions, I was trying to get tickets for all the missionaries in my zone lol.

But, everyone made it to L'viv, we had a great conference on Thursday, and then, just like last year, we all went to the city center and sang under the big Christmas tree.

Caroling in city center.

After that, we went into the opera house, where we had front row seats (which cost like $10 lol) to a Christmas concert. It was mostly weird old orthodox songs that I've never heard before, but there was one part where they tried singing some more familiar songs, some of them in English even. The best was when they tried to sing Jingle Bells - "dzhingel all ze vay." They also did not seem to care at all if they actually sang the right words in English, they would kind of just mumble through it and hope no one noticed. I guess they weren't counting on 35 Americans sitting in the front row. I think I attached some videos of it, idk if you can hear or not though.

Alec & his companions at the opera house in L'viv for a Christmas concert.

Other than that the big highlight of L'viv was going to a famous rib place. We heard a lot about it so we decided to give it a shot. It's only 4 dollars for a whole rack, so of course we got two racks each. They were pretty dang good for only 4 dollars, but two racks of ribs is way too many ribs. I attached some pics of the place and how they cook the ribs. Probably gonna go back there tomorrow again when I'm in L'viv for MLC. You can't beat $4 for a rack or ribs.

Mmmm . . . ribs.

The rest of the week was spent planning for MLC, going to church (btw, we're going back to the three hour block in this branch in 2018), and making failed attempts to visit inactive members that live super far away.

I attached a bunch of pics from this week and from last cause I don't remember if I sent any last week. I ain't got time to look through them so go ahead and pick out the bad ones.

Happy New Year!

Hope you had a great week!

Alec​