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