Keeping Busy To The End

Yeah, so it was actually a pretty crazy week over here in Lutsk. I don't have a ton of time today, so we'll see how much of it I can get to. If I don't have time to write everything then just remind me in a couple weeks and I'll tell you the stories in person.

Ok, so first of all, on Wednesday we got invited by one of our investigators (Ihor, super nice, really, really loves the bible) to go out in the forest hunting for mushrooms. So we took a bus out to his village, about an hour away, met all his extended family out in their tiny little village and went out in the woods looking for mushrooms. We were out there for at least two hours, and altogether we found like 3 mushrooms. We did, however, find a ton of wild berries - mostly blueberry-ish things and raspberry-ish things. By the way, Ukrainians all know like 100 different kinds of berries and they're always surprised when you don't know what berries they're talking about, even after they translate it. We just don't have as many berries in America. The berries were pretty tasty actually. There were also some apple trees out there and after trying about 10 different super sour unripe apple trees we found one that actually had somewhat tasty fruit and so we picked a lot of those as well. It's pretty crazy how you can just walk out into a forest and find a bunch of free food just chilling out there. Anyway, on the way there this investigator told us that he met his wife during one of his many stays in a psych hospital, so I definitely made sure to keep the knife he gave me to cut mushrooms secure in my hand at all times. Just kidding. He's pretty chill - it wasn't that sketch. Afterward his grandma made some good food for us and we went back to Lutsk. He invited us to come again the very next day, but we told him we were pretty busy.

Today for P-day we went and did something we've been wanting to do for a while. In the biggest shopping mall here, there's a super sweet roller skating rink. Well, in the L'viv mission, roller skating wasn't allowed. However, we're no longer in the L'viv mission. So we went to check it out. It's been a long time since I've roller bladed, But it was still pretty fun and I was even brave enough to go up a few ramps - one of the good things about less liability and laws and stuff. We went with Larisa, a recent convert we hang out with a lot and I got a sweet video of her biffing it pretty hard, lol.

Also today we got invited over to a member's house for a little Family Home Evening. We went there with a few of the members and an investigator and she taught us how to make cheburekiy (honestly I have no idea how to transliterate that). They're basically just meat pies, so you just make dough and then put meat inside and fry it. They're pretty ok. It was fun though. and then afterward I tried leading a little spiritual thought object lesson real quick. The idea was you're supposed to take an egg and hold it in a cupped hand and try to break it, without using your thumb. The idea is that it's not possible without your thumb but with your thumb it's possible and the thumb represents Jesus, etc. Well everyone tried breaking it without their thumb and no one could do it (it really doesn't work, you should try it) until I gave it to Larisa, and she somehow immediately was able to crush it. I had a bag to catch any yolk in case something went wrong, but the egg kinda exploded and yolk got everywhere, including on our investigator, lol. Even worse though, was that when I tried to break the egg using my thumb, I absolutely could not break it. It's supposed to be easy with your thumb but I could not do it, and no one else could either (until I let Larisa try, of course). So, yeah, that object lesson was super ruined, but it was funny so it's all good. 

The coolest part of this week was probably on Sunday when we had 4 girls (including 2 recent converts and 1 investigator) come back from the countrywide YSA conference that happened last week. They go pretty hard with these YSA conferences--basically rent out an entire ski resort out in the mountains and basically try to fit in all the different parts of EFY and youth conference and trek and all those things they do in America. So everyone really loves these conferences (I would too, they look super super cool) and everyone always comes back super excited from them and everything. So, essentially our sacrament meeting was these four girls telling about their experience at the conference and it was pretty neat. The last one to go was the investigator, Vika. She had been planning on getting baptized, but she told us last week that after talking with her mom they both kinda agreed that it's a little too early, and that she needs to wait a bit longer before making a decision like that. Well after the conference she got up and told the whole branch that she's gonna get baptized "right now" so that was pretty neat. Hopefully "right now" will be in the next week and a half before I head out to Kiev. 

So yeah that's probs enough for now. In a couple weeks don't forget to ask me about the wedding story and about the "20 dollars" story and I'll tell you what happened.

I have some pics of when we did an activity on the street "sign up to receive a free Book of Mormon"  and one where we made quiche.

Alec

NOTE: Pictures did not come through this week.