"People Can Change"

Alec and a fellow missionary celebrating their 18-month mark (see video below.)

"Big whiteboard kinda thing"

This week we spent a fair amount of time getting ready for a big Easter initiative we're gonna do over the next two weeks. Basically, we had the idea to make a bunch of those silicon wristbands (like 3000 of them) with "Christ is Risen" on one side and mormon.org on the other, and then kind of hand them out to people and use that as a way to talk to people about Jesus. So we ordered a ton of those (enough for the whole mission) and then we're trying to make some big whiteboard kinda things to get people's attention as we're doing this in the center of the city. We went to the Ukrainian version of Home Depot (it's exactly like Home Depot, it's actually a little eerie) and got all the materials for it on Wednesday. I attached a couple pictures of what we have so far, they're maybe not the most structurally sounds just yet, but we're still working on it. So we're trying to make three of those, and so far we have just one. So that's what we'll be doing tonight. 

Also tomorrow we're planning another Science Night, so I'll get to use some more of my pre-mission talents a little bit. It's just tricky when you can't really use fire.

Back of "big whiteboard kinda thing"

Also on Monday we had a good family home evening with the district president and his family, a super cool family that I knew back when they lived in Rivne when I was there over a year ago. They just got a new car (which is a really big deal) and it's big enough for all five of their kids, which is super great for them. We helped them move their summer tires and when I was trying to lift one up my suit pants ripped superr bad in the back, lol. And just a few days before that my other suit pants got stuck on something and a huge hole ripped in them. Oops. I've gotten them both fixed, but I think I might have to buy a new suit pretty soon, haha.

We also had a good sacrament meeting. Unlike last week, we actually had a lot of people come. A few minutes late, a guy walked in that I knew I recognized from somewhere. After a minute, I realized that I knew him cause the police had brought him to the building a few weeks ago to do a little investigation, because this guy had stolen a coat from our coat rack during our English practice. I don't know why they were doing the investigation, he had already admitted to doing it. But while he was there that time, one of our sister missionaries talked to him for a minute and gave him a Book of Mormon. I guess after a few weeks he decided to come check it out. He seemed actually very interested and even stayed for two hours. So we were kinda disappointed to hear that someone had their bag stolen during church. We weren't really sure whether to call the police or not or what to do, but we decided just to wait a little bit. Good thing we did, because the girl ended up realizing she had just left her bag at home. So all is well. People can change.

Other than that, things are going forward. It should be getting warm for good this week, finally. 

I only have a couple pics cause this computer doesn't have a card reader, but enjoy. 

A short video of Alec and his fellow missionary celebrating 18 months.

Alec

Passing the 18-Month Mark

The weather there sounds a bit like here, just not quite as cold. It got really warm here for a few days, and then it surprised everyone by getting really cold and snowing a ton. It's pretty interesting how Ukrainians will deal with the snow. No problem during the winter time, but then after it gets warm for a couple days, they act like a slight dip in temperature is literally the end of the world. They just all of a sudden get real scared of the cold.

The biggest thing from this past week was exchanges in Rivne. We took a bus Tuesday night to Rivne for exchanges with the zone leaders. This is the 3rd or 4th time I've been back in Rivne since I left my first area there 14 months ago. It was good, we went to McDonald's twice in two days, including breakfast. Unfortunately, all they have here is the McMuffin, no biscuits, but it's still pretty good. I also got to teach a lady that I taught a little bit when I was first in Rivne. It was super sad, her husband, who we had also taught, died a few months ago and she herself is really, really sick right now. It was nice to see her, though, and talk for a little bit.

Wednesday in Rivne was my 18-month mark, so I went with one of the missionaries there that was in the MTC with me to celebrate. We got some pizza and some chocolate fondue, pretty tasty stuff, almost as good as McDonald's.

When we got back to Lutsk, we spent a lot of time traveling out to the suburbs of Lutsk to visit some people. One of them who ordered a Book of Mormon from mormon.org and one lady who we met on the street. The lady was super nice and super happy to welcome two American boys into her home. She showed us her collection of orthodox icons that her husband made when he worked for the orthodox church. It was quite an impressive collection. She tried to give us a huge one to take home. As much as I wanted to, it wouldn't really fit in a suitcase, so we refused and took smaller ones. And then she gave us an officially notarized card of thanks, for "visiting an old grandma" like herself. So, that was fun.

On Saturday night, we hung out with some friends (the ones we went to the castle with last week) and made dinner -- potatoes and drum sticks, pretty Ukrainian. We told them next time we would make tacos for them. Hopefully, it won't be too spicy for them.

Oh, I almost forgot, but last Monday for P-day we went to an orthodox icon museum. Icons are the pictures that they pray to. I was blown away with how nice it was. I don't have any pictures, 'cause I didn't want to pay 80 cents for the picture pass, but it was just like a nice art museum in America. Usually museums here are poorly lit collections of stuff with no explanations or identifications of what the items are. But this one was super nice and clean with lots of explanatory signs. Of course, they're gonna take care of their orthodox religious relics.

Orthodox Icons

 We had like no one at church (probably cause of the cold, lol) so we started sacrament meeting with 2 people sitting in the audience. Usually there's like 20. Luckily some more people came a bit later, but that just goes to show how scared people get of the cold when it's not winter time.

I attached a few pictures. 

No, there ,wasn't really that much snow. The wind just blew it all into a pile there. And yeah, there's some pictures of classic abandoned soviet warehouses out in the villages . . . 

. . . and a picture of all the stuff that orthodox lady gave us to thank us for visiting her​.

Alec

The Time I Got a Bunch of Soviet-Raised Old Men Making Origami Flowers

Over here we had a fairly interesting week. Luckily, I did not really get sick, beyond a mild sore throat, so we didn't have to stay in the apartment all the time. 

Making flowers for International Women's Day

This past week was a pretty big holiday. The 8th of March is International Women's Day, apparently everywhere except America. Ukraine technically didn't celebrate it this year (something to do with trying to separate even more from Russia) but everyone pretty much still celebrated it. We didn't have time to plan a big branch activity, so we decided to do something after church on Sunday. Apparently, we didn't have the budget to buy flowers for everyone, so I suggested we just make paper flowers. So, we had the elders quorum get together and follow along with a YouTube video making paper flowers. So, last week was the time I got a bunch of soviet-raised old men making origami flowers out of colorful paper. They were definitely not quite as against the idea as they thought they would be, and they ended up making some pretty OK flowers. And the district president told us about the time he was in America last summer and he thought he could handle the spicy sauce at Taco Bell, lol.

Then on Sunday we gave the flowers to the women and had cake and everything.

On Thursday, though, the actual holiday, we weren't sure what to do 'cause we couldn't meet with anyone or anything. So we went out to visit a few addresses of inactive sisters in the branch and drop off some flowers for them. We actually got to talk to one for a little bit, and another one who wasn't home called us later thanking us that we remembered about her. Definitely more successful than most stop-by attempts we make.

Also on Thursday, we had English practice and this one girl from the advanced group brought her 6-year-old daughter along. I was expecting the daughter to just kinda sit there, 'cause obviously she wasn't gonna know English. But, turns out English was her first language. Her mom has never even been to an English-speaking country, but her English is good enough that she raised her daughter only ever speaking English with her. It was super, super weird to see a small child that speaks English, too. We talk with plenty of adults who speak English, but it's probably been 18 months since I've talked to a small child in English. Super weird but she was cute. Her name was Agnes. Her poor mom must have gotten names from some super old soviet English textbook or something, haha.

And then on Saturday, we were invited to check out the castle here in Lutsk with some friends from English practice. They gave us a little tour of the castle and we went to a super old church, too. We only had like an hour, but it was cool to get a tour from a native Lutskian. I attached some pictures of all that.

The castle in Lutsk which appears on the back of their currency.

There's also a picture of a sign I saw in a shopping mall with a really janky map of America . . .

. . . and a picture of a frozen creek that is now all melted.

Anyway, I think that's about it for this week, hope everything is going great there,

Alec​

"Looking Forward To Spring"

So the L'viv and Kiev missions will officially combine on the first of July, as far as I understand, which is also when my mission president goes home. We don't really know how it's all going to work out just yet, we just know they're gonna start moving some of the back-end stuff over earlier. But other than that, as far as I know nothing too big should be changing before the missions actually combine. I'm sure we'll find out more and more over the coming weeks. Since I'm not a big dog in a big leadership position I'm definitely a bit more out of the loop than I was the last few transfers. 

The weather here got pretty cold the past week or so. The coldest I saw was -16 (idk what that is in Fahrenheit, but it sounds a lot colder in Celsius.) We just barely got into booger-freezing weather. It's pretty cold, but at least we only had to deal with it for one week this year, instead of 3 months like last year. I think it's supposed to start warming up again in the next week or so, and after that we should be home free. I'm looking forward to spring, too, for sure, best time of year in Ukraine. 

Other than the cold weather this past week, not a ton happened, mostly cause my companion was sick for a lot of it, so we spent a good bit of time at home. I thought I had avoided it, but I woke up this morning with a sore throat . . . hopefully it just stops there and it doesn't get any worse for me, though. 

One thing I realized this week is that my English has gotten a lot worse than I remember. Or maybe the website I was looking at to prep for English practice was wrong. If you ask someone what they do on the weekends, and they say "I watch TV," is it correct to explain what he said by saying "He said he watches TV" or do you have to put it in the past tense "He said he watched TV." Idk honestly, I thought it was the first one but now it's got me all tripped up and I have no idea. English is pretty hard, so thanks for putting up with my weird English in these emails. 

Other things that happened: 

We visited a lonely member and brought him some pizza. He was grateful, but he asked us not to do that anymore cause we're rich Americans and so it would be better if we spent our money on ourselves. Not sure about the logic there, so we'll probably keep doing it.

I saw a security guard at a grocery store here repping some sweet Carolina blue 23 Jordans. When I went to check out he came up and talked to us and said he noticed me admiring his shoes.

One of the youth invited us to go visit another one of the youth who has been sick recently. When we got there, we couldn't remember their apartment number. To get into most apartment buildings you have to dial their apartment number to have them let you in. I forget what that's called in English - a telecom? So we just dialed a random number and then the kid said we were there to deliver water, and the random person let us in lol. He thought it was pretty funny. I felt like we were kinda ding dong ditching, but oh well, it's for a good cause.

Speaking of water delivery, one of the only bad things about our apartment is that there's no water filter. So, we have to have jugs of water delivered to our apartment. Super inconvenient when you run out or when you have to wait in the apartment for the 3-hour delivery window. But, at least we don't have to worry about changing out dirty filters.

We also met with a guy who wanted to talk to us about psychology - in really broken English. We thought it would be an easy topic to turn to a gospel discussion, but he ended up just giving us an hour-long lecture about introverts and extroverts and other different dichotomies and stuff like that. Kinda interesting, but it just made me feel bad for all the people who had to listen to my broken Ukrainian for the first several months I was here. Super hard to pay attention. 

You asked in your last email about my mission president not speaking Ukrainian. It causes some challenges every once in a while, but I think there's lots of places all around the world where the mission presidents don't know the local languages. Especially in places where the church is small. There just isn't really anyone that speaks Ukrainian who could be a mission president, there's barely enough Ukrainians to fill all the priesthood callings here in Ukraine. It's hard to take them out of their home wards/branches to serve other places. They do have Russian speaking mission presidents in the other two missions here, but that's about it. Hopefully in 30-40 years there will be Ukrainian speakers who can serve as mission presidents. They also don't encourage mission presidents to study the languages, I guess it takes a lot of time and I think people would take them a lot less seriously if they were struggling to speak Ukrainian than they would when they're speaking through a translator.

Thank you for the update on the current events, btw. I definitely feel pretty disconnected from the world, which is kinda nice sometimes (kinda) but I definitely appreciate having some idea of what's going on over there. So I always appreciate how you fill me in on those things.

  

My companion right now is from California. He's like 20 I think, almost 21. He's pretty chill, he was an amateur rapper before his mission lol, but he also was a very serious violin player. He bought a restored violin in L'viv from the 1600s a few weeks ago and so he's been looking for opportunities to play it during sacrament meeting or other things like that. Today we're trying to go do an escape room kinda thing for p-day. Basically we do whatever we can to have fun haha, there's not a ton of options really.

  

Anyway love you and hope you have a good week!  

Alec