New City, New Companion, New Calling

Last week I moved to a new (and probably my last) city, Lutsk. It's pretty soviet looking, but there's a pretty solid branch here with some really cool people, so it should be a fun city to serve in. My companion is from California, and before his mission he was a rapper. Look up "chito" on Soundcloud. He also plays the violin and he's a pretty good chef, so it should be a pretty fun transfer.

Lutsk is pretty cool. It definitely has architecture...pretty much all old soviet architecture. It does have a really cool castle that's on the back of the money. I haven't gotten to see that yet, but I hear it's pretty cool. We were also planning on visiting one of the churches you had on that list today, the Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral, so that might be kinda cool. But you know they're stretching for tourist attractions when the best they got is a power line. Can't say that's super high on my list of must-see places. The district president's family actually lives in that super long building though, btw. It's super super big and super super soviet. 

  

So on Wednesday morning, I took a train from Ivano to L'viv, and then I chilled in L'viv alone for a couple hours waiting at the bus station for my bus to come. And then it was a four hour bus ride to Lutsk (actually one of the nicer roads I've been on in Ukraine). Literally an hour after I got here, the branch president asked me to be his counselor. I thought I would at least get a week break from being released in the last branch before I got called here, but nope.

So there's four missionaries here, 2 elders and 2 sisters. Since the numbers are even, there's all kinds of rules about not spending time together without a fifth person there. We probably have to get used to it though, cause apparently in the Kiev mission the elders and sisters don't do anything together.

The mission president and his wife were here this weekend. Somehow I've made it my entire mission without having to do any serious translating work for him (which is tricky, cause he likes to use big words and complicated sentences) and I mostly dodged a bullet again this time. There was a member from L'viv visiting the branch who knows English and was able to translate his sacrament talk. I still had to translate the other two hours of church for him, but that's less pressure than standing in front of everyone and doing it on the spot. 

I don't have any pictures of Lutsk, just a few from my last few days in Ivano with some English friends and with some members. 

I  still have lots of the hand warmers you sent, but I also left a lot of them in Ivano-Frankivsk. I think I could have had one of those for every hour of the entire winter and still not run out. I'm grateful for them...but honestly I haven't had the need to use a single one haha. It's been a super warm winter, and this coming week will probably be the last really cold one of the winter. I've given a few out to people on the street that look cold, and I'm sure the missionaries next winter will be grateful for them, If that makes you feel any better. 

Hope y'all have a great week!

Alec

Transferring to Lutsk

So the big news from this past week is that I'm getting transferred out of Ivano-Frankivsk into Lutsk, a city north of L'viv, kinda towards Belarus. I've never been there before, but I've heard there's lots of great members, so it should be fun. Kinda weird to think that it will most likely be the last city that I serve in. 

Other than that, we had a few big stories from last week.

First of all, we had the cool opportunity to go down to Uzhhorod this past week. When Elder Martino came a couple weeks ago, he asked us to change the way we do our district meetings, so all of the members of the MLC had to go around and visit all the cities of the mission to show them how we want to do it. Somehow we got to go to the farthest away city (which is actually really cool, and I was super happy to go back one last time) and since we were only there for one meeting, we ended up spending more time traveling than we spent in Uzhhorod. It's about 11 hours one way. We got in late Tuesday afternoon, did the meeting Wednesday morning, and left  early Wednesday afternoon. In total, we were in Uzhhorod for 21 hours, but we were on trains for something like 23. Can't complain about laying down and looking out the window for all that time though. I also got to see some members from when I served down there, including the lady I baptized the last time I went there for one day exchanges. She was super glad to see us, so that was cool.

The branch also put on a big valentines' day activity on Saturday. We were kinda worried, cause nothing was planned out at all ahead of time, so we were kinda worried it would be a huge disaster. Luckily the branch president and his wife came in clutch and planned out a bunch of games and competitions and decorations and stuff and it was actually very successful. We started about 45 minutes late cause it was all so last minute...but that's ok, it gave everyone a chance to help set up.

On Friday for our missionary activity night, we decided to try to make spikeball. We basically put some screws in a hula hoop, bought a hammock (cause that's the only netting we could find) and stuck it on some water bottles. For how janky it looked, it actually worked pretty ok. The holes in the hammock were too big, so sometimes it would bounce in weird directions, but it definitely could have been a lot worse. I'll try to get some pics at some point. 

And then on Sunday I basically said bye to all of the members, so there's a few pictures of me with some of the members. There's one with a lady with a head covering who really really loved me cause of my Ukrainian last name. She's very pro-Ukraine and likes to tell me all about it. One thing that's pretty cool though is that she found some short biography in a book of an artist with the last name Marchenko. It's a pretty common name, but this guy was actually born in 1932 very close to where grandpa was born, in a city called Zaporizhia. I wonder if there's a connection there.

The last fun thing was Friday afternoon we set up to go visit a member at his workplace. He lives out in a quiet village and works as music teacher there. The little known fact about this guy is that he used to be the lead-guitarist for a pretty dang popular post-soviet rock band called Листопад. I've seen some YouTube videos and they're actually pretty legit. He doesn't do that anymore, but he still had the drum set and his instruments. My companion played the drums before his mission, so we went out to him to have a little jam session. I was pretty impressed with how good both of them actually were. The guy said that my companion is the best drummer he's ever seen in this entire city lol. It was probably the loudest noise I've heard in the past 18 months, but it was all pretty fun.

Ok, I'll attach a bunch of pictures, have fun going through all of them. There's a couple of the huge icicles that were on our house one night last week. Those things are super dangerous. There's also a pic of the cake some people gave us for helping out at their English school. It was pretty tasty.

Also speaking of the Olympics, I think I might have seen a Ukrainian Olympic athlete at the train station last week. I don't know what she was doing in Ukraine during the Olympics . . . but she certainly had all the gear and a whole entourage following her. Surprised to hear Shaun White is back winning medals. If I remember right he was gonna retire after not even medaling at the last Olympics.

To answer your question, there is Seminary here in most of the branches, as long as there are actually any seminary students. they try really hard to get all the different programs of the church running as best as they can, no matter how small the branch or how small the classes will be. Of course they don't meet at 6 in the morning and it's at most once a week, but they do the best they can. lots of times they just combine seminary and institute.

Ok have a good week,

Alec​

Passing The Six Months To Go Mark

I probably could have explained this last week, but I kinda forgot to let y'all know that I wasn't going to be emailing on Monday. Basically, we ended up having a Zone Conference on Monday, so we had to move our p-day to Tuesday.

First of all, I was glad to hear that the Patriots lost. They need a few Ls every once in a while. 

Today for p-day (we're in L'viv actually) we tagged along with the L'viv missionaries tradition of going bowling every p-day morning. One of the senior missionaries comes with us, and despite being 74 years old and missing half of a finger, he's surprisingly good at bowling. I think he averaged around 175. We also went to a museum in the afternoon, I'll tell more when I can send pictures. and then of course we went to McDonald's.

In the L'viv mission we get to spend p-day time with the sisters. Apparently, though, that's not allowed at all in the Kiev mission, which will be a pretty big bummer when we make the switch in a few months. They also apparently discourage backpacks in that mission, which is gonna be a bit of a problem. I'd rather not have to buy a shoulder bag for my last month and a half. 

This past week was a pretty big one.

First of all, for our activity night on Friday, we made kan jam, like I've done in my last two cities. This time we made an indoor version using buckets and bucket lids, and it actually worked out pretty well. I don't have any pics cause this Internet club wont' let me upload them, but I'll try getting them to you next week. This week we're gonna try to make spikeball, but we're having a difficult time trying to find some kind of netting for the trampoline. We wanted to use a volleyball net but they're a bit more expensive than we were expecting.

And then Saturday we had exchanges with some missionaries from Uzhhorod. It was a good day with some interesting activities. We had a lesson with an investigator who told us if we ever wanted to use his computer to Skype with our friends or watch some movies or something we were free to come over to his room (he's like an 80 year old living in a dorm for some reason) and use his Internet. So, that's nice of him.

And then on Sunday the big stuff started happening. We woke up early on Sunday morning to take a bus with the rest of our branch to L'viv for District Conference (the equivalent of stake conference.) The big guest of honor was Elder Martino, the president of the Europe East Area. The conference was actually very well put together, which was nice to see, because this one was run almost entirely by the members, instead of the mission. That's super good, cause once this mission gets shut down this summer the members will have to do a lot more stuff. 

Elder Martino talked a lot about home teaching, which, to answer your question, is not a very big thing here. There are home teachers and everyone is assigned and stuff, but no one really does it. So now we're supposed to be encouraging all of our members to do better about that. 

So that was Sunday, and then after that on Monday we had a Zone Conference with Elder Martino. Technically, since we're zone leaders, my companion and I were supposed to be in charge of the event. But we really didn't do anything at all, which was pretty nice. Elder Martino just pretty much talked the entire time. Basically, they want us all working with members to help them be better, mostly because in the coming years there will be a fraction of the number of missionaries in this part of the world that there used to be, and members will have to do a lot more. 

So, that's the reason we had p-day today. When a General Authority comes you kind of have to move things around sometimes. We're still in L'viv because we'll have MLCon Wednesday, so we just stayed here instead of going back and forth. Tomorrow we'll be having our leadership council with Elder Martino, so we'll see what big changes come from that. 

Other news: My mission president talked to Elder Martino about my release date and now it's totally confirmed that I'll be able to make it back for school (still don't know exactly when though.) There was a bit of confusion in the response from the missionary department, so there was a bit of worry the past couple weeks, but everything's gonna be just fine. So that's good. That means that sometime in the past week or so I passed the 6 months left mark.

Also I talked to a new sister missionary at the conference, turns out she's from Aunt Holly's ward in Orem. so that's neat.

I'm glad grandpa got the gift, but I hope he understood it - haha. The fact that it was matches doesn't really matter, I just bought it cause it says "best grandpa" on it. Literally translated, it says "better grandpa" which I thought was kinda funny.

Hope y'all had a good week!

Alec