Back To The Beginning

The biggest thing from this past week was probably the exchanges we had in Rivne on Wednesday. I've been back there plenty of times, but it's always super weird going back to that city cause I just feel like I'm all the way back at the beginning of my mission cause that's where I started out. It's always fun to see some people that remember me though. Honestly though, I'm not sure why they remember me, it's not like I could even talk to them back when I was there.

Of course while I was in Rivne, I made sure to hit up McDonald's (twice). Mostly cause of the convenience of it, but also cause it's the best burger you'll ever find in Ukraine. 

We also did a sports day this past Saturday, which was luckily a bit more successful than the last one. We had enough people to get a somewhat decent game of volleyball going, and that's all that really matters. None of the members were able to come cause almost the entire branch was in Kiev visiting the temple (a decent excuse, I guess). They rented out a bus, left Lutsk at 3 am Saturday morning, drove through Rivne to pick up some members from there, and then got to Kiev by like 10 o clock. They went to the temple for a few hours, then made it back to Lutsk by 11pm the same day. Pretty cool that they were able to organize that for people who can't afford to miss work or can't afford their own tickets to Kiev. If they had planned it for just two weeks later we might have been able to go with them because we'll be part of the Kiev mission at that point. Oh well, I'll be there in like a month and a half anyway. 

Since everyone was just at the temple, everyone wanted to share their experiences during sacrament meeting, so for once we had plenty of people speak. Probably the first time I've ever actually been supposed to give a talk but didn't get to cause there wasn't enough time (not a bad thing at all). 

This is the last week for our sisters here in Lutsk, and then all three of them are going home next Tuesday. So for the last five or so weeks it'll just be me and elder Abraham here in Lutsk all alone. Kinda unfortunate, but the good news is we get to move into their apartment which is closer and nicer than ours. Bad news is that means we have to close our apartment and deal with our landlady complaining about all the damages that missionaries have done over the past 6 years. Super bad news is that I have to pack up all my stuff, again. I thought for sure I was never gonna have to do that again. Oh well, at least the other apartment has real beds.

An interesting meeting we had last week: we met with this guy named Dima. He was pretty drunk and he started telling us about how he was at Maidan in Kiev (the big protest that started the Ukrainian revolution in like 2013 and basically led to all the stuff that's going on now). He says he got shot 39 times (I don't believe that) and that he prayed to God to protect him the whole time and he survived (obviously) but God didn't do anything to help him so he doesn't believe in God. Not super sure how to argue with that logic, so we probably won't try to meet with him again. 

I've got some pics of a cool hot air balloon festival that was going on right in the middle of town. That's not the kind of thing you see very often in Ukraine, so it was pretty neat to see. 

I remember that the weeks of graduation parties were definitely a ton of fun, but super exhausting. It's definitely an exciting time. The computers at the library we're writing at don't have any sound, so we might just have to wait to watch all those videos til I get home. I'll make sure to keep Aunt Gail in my prayers, too.

Anyway, hope y'all have a great week!

Alec​