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​

The Success of the Christ Is Risen Wristband Initiative

A new compoanion from Utah.

We pretty much just watched General Conference for Easter here. A member invited us over for dinner, so we stopped by and ate some traditional Ukrainian food. Most of it was good stuff, but there was the classic meat jello and blood sausage too. I was not feeling it, so I just told him no thanks and luckily didn't have to eat any of it haha. 

  

I did get the package, and though I was very serious about not wanting any more packages, it was still very much appreciated. Those caramel m&ms are pretty dang good, surprised they've never done that before. Pretty savage to send me white and black play-doh btw. It's also super funny you sent ramen cause I was just wondering the other day if American ramen is better than Ukrainian ramen, cause Ukrainian ramen is really not very good. I haven't tried it yet but I'll let you know. Also I shared the peeps with some Ukrainians and they both really loved them, which is good cause I think they're kinda gross lol, but I love sharing American things with Ukrainians. EZ-cheese blew their minds lol.

The big events from this past week were transfers--I have a new companion, Elder Frehner from Utah. He's actually from Spanish Fork and lives close to the Hara Hrishna temple where grandma had friends. And we had our big Easter-themed finding activities we did in the downtown walking street. I'll attach some pictures, but basically we made these big whiteboards (not really whiteboard, just white-finished particle board) and brought them to the walking street. We wrote questions on them, like "What special things did Jesus do?" or "How does Jesus help you today?" and "Now, what can you do for him?" Then we had people write their answers on the boards and they got a free "Christ is Risen" silicone wristband that we made for the activities. We also had a couple of the other missionaries playing musical instruments and then the rest of us were talking to people. It was a lot of fun and we were able to find some people who were interested in the church. 

So we did that Tuesday afternoon and then again Saturday afternoon. The firs time the wind was a bit of a problem, so we figured out  a way to tie the boards to some giant water jugs for the second time. But then for the second time there was no wind at all so we didn't even need them. At least we were prepared. 

Other than that, we watched General Conference. There were some pretty big announcements. Especially the temple in Russia, that's pretty huge news here. 

We also made tacos with some homies on Saturday night (I attached a picture with them). They thought they were pretty amazing, but they were even more impressed by the Reeses Pieces. we also played some pool last p-day and watched a bit of the international curling championship while we were doing it. 

Things are warm and should finally be warm for good (this is like the 3rd time I've said that, and then last Monday it started snowing, so hopefully it's true this time). Looks like my suits just barely made it through, and now I won't have to wear them quite as often. So far I haven't had problems with allergies, but it only started to get warm in the past couple of days so nothing has really started to bloom yet. Hopefully things are better than last year.

Hope everything's going well and that y'all have a great week!

Alec

Science & Religion, Part 2

Surprise picture recieved by text message from Elder Loveridge's family.

Elder Loveridge and his parents were here for about a week and a half visiting. It was cool to see Elder Loveridge again, he was my first companion when I was in Rivne and he's been home for about 9 months now, so it was cool to catch up. He and his parents came to our English practice and it was a relief to see that even Americans who haven't spent the last 18 months in Ukraine have difficulty explaining obscure English grammar things sometimes, too. They also took us to a nice Ukrainian restaurant the next day (that's where they took the picture they sent you) so that was nice of them. 

Alec puts on another Science Night.

A big part of this week was spent getting ready for activities. First, we did a science activity on Tuesday, and since that's my specialty we had to spend a lot of that day getting ready for that. It took a lot of work actually, but it all actually turned out pretty well. I tried to recreate some demonstrations from Morehead and then we added a few other ones cause it's kind of hard to find liquid nitrogen or potassium chlorate in Ukraine. People actually seemed to really like it. It was a lot easier this time than when I did it in Ivano cause one of our sisters here is a native Ukrainian and she could translate for me, so I wasn't stumbling through it trying to explain these things in Ukrainian. The best part was probably when I set the $20 bill on fire, ha ha.

The other activity we were getting ready for was our big Easter finding activity, which unfortunately hasn't happened yet cause of rain. We finished building the big boards that we're gonna be writing on in downtown and we also got our cool wristbands in. It should be a good activity, we just gotta hope that the weather clears up some time before the Easter season is over. 

"Christ is Risen" wristbands.

 We haven't celebrated Easter at all yet. Just like all the other religious holidays, Easter is celebrated on a different day. Easter here will be this coming weekend. The biggest tradition here is eating a nasty, dry, crusty, giant cupcake called Paskha (literally just means Easter) so that should be fun. We'll be watching General Conference next week, but I did hear about some of those changes. Super crazy about the home teaching/visiting teaching thing. It seems more like a re-branding, but hopefully it'll get people doing better stuff. The craziest announcement though was probably the temple in Russia. I have no idea how they're gonna pull that off, Russia is not exactly super friendly to the church right now. But I guess when your country is invading the country with the next closest temple, they gotta do something. Super curious to find out which city it will be in. 

That's about it for this week. I've got some pictures and videos for you, so have fun, hope you had a good Easter​.

Alec