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