Biking To Slovakia & Other Spiritual Adventures

Taking a break from the work to bike the countryside.

This past week was pretty interesting. For p-day on Monday we rented bikes from a place in Uzhhorod. They weren't the best bikes, and the roads here definitely aren't the best roads, so we had a few malfunctions along the way. One time my whole back tire got misaligned and I couldn't fix it without a wrench, but we managed to ask a guy in an electronics store if he had a wrench or something and their security guard came out and fixed it for me. He was super, super nice so I went and bought him some cookies afterward. Other than all that though the bikes were super fun. It's amazing how much faster you can get around the city when you have bikes. We actually kind of ran out of stuff to do with like three hours left. We rode all up and down the river, we rode to the top of a mountain with a cool view of the city and back down on gravel roads without very effective brakes, we rode to Slovakia, took some pictures at the border after asking permission from the guard, saw a cool monument, and went through a park on some dirt roads next to the river. It was a lot of fun, next time we'll just have to find somewhere outside of the city to go to.

Take a short ride with Alec and his companions through the Ukrainian countryside in the video below.

Most of the rest of the week was spent preparing for the mission president to come. He was here on Saturday and Sunday. We had interviews with him, and then he had interviews with some members of the church. The only super noteworthy thing that happened was on Sunday. after church President Rizley went back to the office to get something out of his backpack, and it was gone. Apparently at some point during the second hour of church, someone walked in and went and grabbed his bag and dipped. That was pretty bad. We spent the rest of the afternoon looking in dumpsters around the church trying to find something, but all we found was his backpack in the closest dumpster. Luckily he had his passport and everything on him, but he did lose his Bose headphones, nice sunglasses, and worst of all, his journal from the past year. So we felt pretty bad about that. He didn't seem to be too upset about the whole thing, though.

Other than that, we had a fun experience on Friday with our investigator. I don't know if I've told you about him, but his name is Alec (seriously) and we've been teaching him for a few weeks now. He lives in a village about 15 minutes from Uzhhorod. It's a pretty poor village, and he invited us to come to church with him on Friday. We had already met his pastor a couple weeks ago. At the end of our previous meeting with him, he started to pray and then he started to yell and touch our heads and chests in the middle of the prayer and he was speaking some strange language I've never heard before, so we figured it would be fun to go back. So we went to this little building in the middle of the village, and honestly it was about what you'd expect. Kind of like Southern Baptist evangelical, but also like new age churches with VERY loud music about Jesus and stuff like that. It was very interesting for sure and there was even a lady there who was nice enough to translate whatever gypsy language they were speaking into Ukrainian for us. It was strange for sure, but it was definitely a sweet experience. I got a recording of the music, but I can't figure out how to get it off our phone just yet. Anyway, after all of that, Alec agreed to come to our church on Sunday, so at least we had that!

It's actually started getting a lot colder again this past week. Today was supposed to get down below freezing, luckily it didn't happen though. The only good news is that I got a chance to wear the scarf that Abbie made! It's super nice actually and way better than any scarf I could find here. 

That's about all the exciting stuff that happened this week. We spent a lot of time getting ready for apartment checks . . . if you want to know anything just ask questions and I'll try to remember to reply. Love you all!

Alec

Easter in Uzhhorod

Alec on a hill overlooking Uzhhorod.  

This past week we had mission conference in L'viv, so we left Uzhhorod Tuesday afternoon for our 6-hour train ride. By the time we got to the apartment we were staying at (on the opposite side of L'viv from the train station) it was almost midnight, so waking up at 6:30 the next day was especially hard.

Here I am at a sweet big memorial in L'viv to some guy named Stepan Bandera:

Stepan Bandera (political activist) memorial in L'viv

Then we had mission conference til the afternoon, and right after that we got on another train at 5 to go to Ivano-Frankivsk (the same city I had to take a 9 hour bus to a few months ago) for exchanges with the zone leaders on Thursday. On Thursday I was with Elder Mund from Germany all day. It was pretty fun. We hung out in a village about an hour and a half from the city visiting a member in his village home. The only thing we didn' tknow was that the buses only come 3 times a day. So we got there and visited this guy, and then still had to wait an hour and a half for the bus. So while we waited we walked around and checked out the village. 

The next day we had to wake up at about 3:30 to catch a train to L'viv, and then another back to Uzhorrod. Luckily, we had private coupes for both trains, so we just slept (or tried to) most of the way. The only unfortunate thing is that my camera ran out of batteries the day before we left for L'viv and I didn't realize soon enough to charge it. But, I took pictures on other people's cameras. 

I do have some pictures from yesterday of a little Easter celebration in town. They paint these wooden eggs and hang them up on something like a Christmas tree. 

Easter decorations in Uzhhorod

We also took a few more pictures of the blooming Sakura trees. 

The blooming Sakura trees

Alec wields the scythe for a good cause

We were mostly busy with conference and stuff this weekend, but we also on Saturday went to a member's house out in the village. Pretty much everyone here has an apartment in the city and a little hut in a village somewhere where they have huge gardens. We helped her get it ready for planting. Most of the time I was pulling up weeds, but I also got to use a scythe to cut the grass. It's very inefficient, in case you were wondering. 

And then coming home from service on Saturday, we were waiting at the bus stop and a taxi drove up and asked if we wanted a ride to Uzhhorod. We said yes, but there were six of us, and it was a very small old Soviet car with only four seats, but we still managed to all cram in there. I got the front so it wasn't bad at all, and we took the 20 minute drive into town. All of that saved us 11 gryven (about 40 cents.)

Six missionaries in a four-seat taxi

On Sunday after church we went to visit a member who didn't come to church cause she was sick. When we got there she had a huuuuge Easter meal set out for us. It was a bunch of traditional Ukrainian food, and none if it is really terrible, it was just sooo much food. And she's very insistent on having us eat a lot of food. So I'm pretty sick, but we're going there tonight for FHE and I'm 100% sure she's gonna give us leftovers again, So that'll be fun.

I got the package you sent! (I actually got it a few weeks ago, but I didn't take any pictures so I was gonna wait til I could do that...but I still haven't taken pictures of it yet so sorry!) The Reese's and peanut butter are very much appreciated and that scarf that Abbie made is super, super awesome. For some reason I could not find a nice scarf here at all, so I was using a pretty bad one all winter. Luckily, I don't think I'll need to use it til next winter, but it will be much nicer than the one I had last winter.

By the way, that ground beef we used last week was not so great. I didn't actually buy it, but they told me it was called "ground meat in assortment," so I don't think that's really the highest quality stuff. They do have real ground beef here, it's just a little more expensive. So next time I'll have to go for that. 

Painting Easter eggs with local church members

Sounds like y'all had fun for Easter, even without doing the traditional clues. Very nice eggs. We actually did the same thing for our branch activity here on Friday. Since we pretty much run everything church-wise here we were totally in charge of the activity, and that's all we could come up with. We watched the Easter video and then painted eggs. 

 Today we're planning on renting bikes and riding around town for a little bit. It's a great bike-riding city, so it should be a lot of fun. I'll try to take some videos and pictures and send them next week.

Alec and his companions in Uzhhorod

Ok, hope y'all had a good Easter! Love you all!

Alec

Spring Comes to Ukraine

Springtime in Ukraine

This week we spent a lot of time getting ready for General Conference (cleaning the church, figuring out a way to actually watch it and download it since we don't have a computer or anything at the church, and getting snacks and stuff for between sessions). We ended up using a projector and had a member download it onto her laptop. For the Saturday sessions, we had three people show up in the morning, but two of them left before the second session. When that one started, the other missionaries had to leave with the one member that stayed cause they lost their phone on the bus and had to go all across town to find the person who found it. It ended up working out pretty great cause my companion and I were able to watch it in English, which was much much better. You might remember the talk by Elder Christofferson about the Seventy, Bruce Porter, that died recently. He was the area president of the East Europe Area, so all the members here were really connected to him. Unfortunately, there were no members there to actually hear that talk.

For the Sunday session, we had a few more people come -- about 10 in total. Almost all of them left before the second session, but at least a few stuck around. After four hours of straight Ukrainian (with a little bit of Russian mixed in by the translators) it was super hard to stay awake and focus. and if I don't focus really hard I can't get mch out of it. So I didn't pick much up from the Sunday sessions at all. Hopefully we'll be able to find some time to watch them in English at some point.

On Friday we also had a chance to go over to a member for dinner. All the people I've been fed by in this city don't actually eat with you. They feed you dinner and then watch you eat. At least it was pretty good food. She made soup for the first course, and then fried chicken and potatoes, and then these donut type things with jam for dinner. It was kind of awkward cause she didn't eat and I didn't really know how to make conversation with her, but she talked to the Ukrainian missionary in pure Russian so I didn't feel too bad about not participating cause I didn't really know what was going on.

Alec's attempt at chicken pot pie

For p-day today we hung out at the other elders' apartment and relaxed. I made cheeseburgers (they turned out ok, but the ground beef here isn't quite the same so they weren't quite as tasty as in America.) I also tried making chicken pot pie last night. The picture I sent makes it look a lot better than it was. I put dough on the top and bottom, but the dough on top cooked a lot faster than the dough on the bottom. So it basically turned into a soupy, doughy, mess. It still tasted ok, just mostly uncooked. 

Riverside language study

I also attached some pictures of some trees we walk past every day on the way home (see above.) There's lots of these colorful trees all around town. Also we did our language study by the river one day, so there's a couple pictures of that. The weather has been super nice lately, so there have been tons of people outside and it's just much nicer than the winter time in general.

There's a shortage of piano players here. I don't think I've ever actually seen a member that can play the piano, It's pretty much always missionaries doing it, and we don't even have that many missionaries that can play either. Definitely glad I didn't continue with piano though, cause that would mean that I would have had to play piano and I'm glad I don't have to.

Alec and his companions in Uzhhorod

Tomorrow I'll be headed to L'viv for a mission conference, and then right after that I'll go straight to Ivano-Frankivsk for exchanges with the zone leaders, so it should be a more exciting week. 

 And yes I heard about the game on Monday. Just be sure to get me a t-shirt and a bunch of other stuff please.

Alec

Exploring Churches & Castles

The trees and everything here are just starting to bloom. I don't have any pictures just yet, but in the next couple weeks there should be some pretty cool stuff. Apparently there are thousands and thousands of tourists that will be here to see the blooming trees, so it must look pretty cool. 

We haven't watched General Conference yet. They usually do it the week after because of the time delay. Since so many people don't really have reliable internet connections (or internet at all) everyone comes to the church to watch it together. Usually what happens is that all the members will watch it at the church and all the missionaries will go to a different room and watch it in English. But since this branch is so small and we don't  have a TV or a computer at the branch (we have to borrow a laptop from a member,) we'll all just watch it together in Ukrainian. But we'll see how it goes. Maybe I'll be able to understand more than I think.

Have they finally finished all that stuff in downtown Cary? I feel like they've been doing construction there for like 20 years. It looks pretty nice though from the pictures you sent.

  

As for basketball. At this point I have no choice but to cheer for the Tar Heels. Can't have them losing back to back years. That's all I'll say about that.

Here's a bunch of pictures and a bit about my week. 

Cool church in Uzhorrod

There's a few just from around Uzhorrod. there's lots of really cool churches and stuff here. The yellow one that I have a few pictures of is really cool. We wanted to go inside, but it was actually closed. We walked around the side and saw someone there that we had actually talked to on the street a few days ago. He lived at the seminary there and is like a priest or something but he's super super nice and he invited us in and gave us a little tour. It was a very cool, very old, very orthodox church. I didn't want to take any pictures of the inside but they are very elaborately decorated. 

There's also a picture of a piece of paper with what looks like scribbles all over it. We talked to this old guy selling his (really cool, actually) paintings out of his car (that he was clearly living out of.) We just wanted to know how much his paintings cost, but he ended up asking what church we were from, and then he told us all about his theory about the earth and the calendar system and the lunar cycle and all kinds of stuff about things that prove that God exists (Facebook post kind of logic.) He drew the schematic for us and told us that we need to share it with everyone, because it would be able to stop all wars all over the world. So this is my part I guess in fulfilling his request.

A Ukrainian artist's expression of faith

There's also a pic of my favorite lunch spot with a view of the river. People really like schwarma in this country for some reason, and it's the closest thing you can get to a burrito so we eat it all the time.

Alec's favorite lunch spot on the banks of the river Uzh

Overlooking Uzhorrod

The rest of the pictures I think are from today. 

At the castle in Mukacheve

For p-day we took a bus outside of Uzhorrod to another town nearby called Mukacheve. They have a pretty sweet castle there, it's way up on top a hill, and it's actually pretty big. So we went there and walked around for a bit. I was actually pretty impressed with how cool it was. They had little museums and gift shops in the castle and a bunch of statues all around (I think I put a picture of the torture chamber, too). There were some pretty cool views from the terraces of the castles, too; there's actually some pretty big mountains nearby. 

Statues at the Mukacheve castle

Alec at Mukacheve Castle

The view of the Carpathian Mountains from Mukacheve Castle

Alec's E.T. moment with statue at Mukacheve Castle

Mukacheve Castle courtyard

Alec with statuesque friends at Mukacheve

One thing about the pic of the keys: Those are two old castle keys next to the key we have for the church building here. I feel like a dungeon master every time I have to open the church building. 

Alec's church key compared to castle dungeon keys

-Alec

"A Little Bit About Uzhhorod"

Yup, I got transferred last Wednesday. All together, it was about 9 hours on a train from Rivne to Uzhhorod (also spelled Uzhgorod). Luckily for the last six we had a private coupe with beds and everything. And lots of the ride was through the Carpathians so there was plenty of stuff to look at. I attached some pictures and videos of the view from the train ride.

30 seconds of Alec's 9-hour train ride

Riding through the Carpathians

Alec's trusty hammock at the Tunnel of Love in Rivne

I also attached a couple pictures from my last couple days in Rivne. For P-day we went back to the Tunnel of Love, cause Sister Morris was being transferred out and she hadn't been there yet. It hadn't bloomed yet so it wasn't super nice, and there wasn't snow or anything, so basically it was pretty ugly -- but still cool enough to take pictures. 

Right after that, we had to rush home to help a member. We talked to her on the phone and we thought she wanted help moving a desk from her apartment to her office. Apparently we misheard. When we got there, she had a giant 10 foot cactus for us to move. So we had to carry a huge cactus halfway across the town to her office. So that was fun. 

After that, we went to a member's house for a family night. He's super cool and he knows English pretty decent so it's easy going over to him. He also makes really good pizza. 

Family and homemade pizza night at a local member's home

Alec says goodbye to his companion in Rivne and boards train to Uzhhorod

I left Wednesday morning pretty early (here's a pic of me with my old companion). And then got on the train to L'viv alone. When I got there I met up with Elder Volkov, who was also coming to Uzhorrod. He's from Donetsk (which I'm pretty sure might be part of Russia now, depending on who you ask,) so he just speaks pure Russian. He was supposed to be going to England, but so far he hasn't gotten his visa, so he's here with us. The train ride was pretty uneventful, except we did have to translate for border control for this poor Libyan guy who didn't have his passport and we had to tell him he had to get off the train. A little bit later we arrived in Uzhorrod.

Uzhhorod with the river Uzh flowing through it

A little bit about Uzhhorod: It's definitely much prettier than Rivne. Some parts look pretty ugly and communistic, but a good half of the city looks very cool and old European. There's a huge river (called the Uzh) that runs right down the middle of the city. In a couple weeks, the cherry blossoms should be blooming, and apparently this becomes a huge tourist destination cause it's so pretty. The mountains around here aren't super big, but if you get a good vantage point you can definitely see some cool mountains. Our apartment is actually very nice (and we even have hot water this time--except we did have our apartment partly flooded this morning when we came back from the grocery store, not sure why but I think we got it figured out) so that's nice. Unfortunately, there are almost no buses here cause it's kind of a smaller city so we end up walking most of the place, usually a couple hours a

day just spent walking around. We are very close to the border- -- our apartment is about a 20-minute

View of the Carpathian Mountains

walk from Slovakia, and maybe a 30-minute bus ride to Hungary. Because of that, the languages here get kind of jumbled. We have one family we started teaching -- he pretty much just speaks Russian and his wife only speaks Hungarian, so things get kind of tough. From what I've noticed so far it's about a 50/50 split between Russian and Ukrainian here, so things might get a little difficult. There's also a ton of gypsies here -- it's like the gypsy capital of Ukraine, so it's nice seeing more dark-skinned people for once. We're actually teaching two different gypsy families right now, one of them is actually named Alec! I didn't believe it when I first heard it and I assumed his name was Oleg, but it's actually Alec.

The church here is very small -- on Sunday we had four people at church (I'm hoping that was mostly cause people forgot about daylight savings.) There are some strong members, and then some that are not so strong, but for the most part the members we do have are great. Basically the way it works here is that the missionaries do everything here. At least two of the four of us are pretty much expected to talk every Sunday, and we lead most of the classes and stuff like that too. It's definitely a lot of work, but it's interesting for sure. 

Uzhhorod Castle

We were planning on going to see a castle today, but since our water heater was leaking everywhere, we're going to meet up with our landlord today to get it figured out so we'll have to go to the castle next week. Hope everything is gong great back home!

Alec

Farewell to Rivne, Off To Uzhhorod

OK, so the big news this week is that I'm getting transferred to a different city. On Wednesday I leave Rivne to head to Uzhhorod. It's about as far away as you can possibly get in this mission, but it's still only about 9 hours by train total. It's about as far west in Ukraine as you can possibly go, right on the border of Slovakia (so you hear all kinds of different languages there.) It's right in the base of the Carpathian mountains, so the weather is either much warmer or much colder (I don't remember which) and the terrain is very different. The church is very small there - about 4 or 5 members and not even a branch, so it will be a very different experience. I'm excited for a change, but I've come to really like Rivne (or at least some of the people here) so it'll be a little sad to say goodbye. I'm definitely ready for something new though and supposedly it's a very pretty place in the spring time.

A day at the Rivne Zoo

Last Monday we did have a sweet chance to go to the zoo in Rivne. I've been wanting to go for a while but we waited until it warmed up a bit. It was actually a whole lot better than I was expecting out of a Ukrainian zoo. It doesn't really compare to Asheboro zoo, but it was definitely much better than that wildlife reserve we went to in Florida. I attached a ton of pictures from that and the sketchy playground that was there. They didn't have elephants or rhinos, but they did have tigers and lions and some cool monkeys. I also love when they try to write things in english and then spell it wrong, so I attached a picture of a "Madagaskar" sign.

At the zoo

Llama, llama, llama

At the zoo

Ths Rivne Zoo measures up

Alec and King Louie

Because mom would have wanted him to

The "sketchy" playground at the zoo

Spelled right or no?

Now that it's warmer we've started doing our sports day every weekend. On Saturday we went out to a caged in soccer field (just dirt really) and played field hockey. Not a ton of people came (lol )but it was still fun playing field hockey. I don't know why but I've been super sore since then. I guess cause you have to bend over the whole time.

Field hockey with some of the locals

We had exchanges on Thursday and we decided to go out and visit some members and sing to them, so we did that Thursday night. We've been trying to get in touch with universities to ask them to advertise our English practice, but we've had a hard time getting in touch with the right people.

Alec prepares to say farewell to the people of Rivne

I'm sure I'll have a lot to talk about next week with all of the transfers and everything. I hope everything is going great and I miss everyone!

Alec

"Hard To Believe It's Been Six Months"

The people here are the same as people everywhere else. They might be a little more forward than in America, but you'll find all types of people all over the world. There's no difference. People are definitely more friendly now that it's started to warm up a bit. As for my companion, things are going fine. He's super nice so we get along just fine. He has some interesting quirks from being home schooled in a big Mormon family his whole life, but nothing bad at all. He's quiet, which is nice, cause I would much rather be with someone quiet than with someone who wants to talk with me every minute of every day. 

I heard about the ACC Tournament. Not too upset I wasn't there for that one.

On Monday night we went over to the same guy's house who made us chicken for him to make us lasagna. It was pretty good, but it ended up taking a very, very long time to make. Every time I thought he was almost ready to put it in the oven, he added another ingredient or started making a whole new kind of sauce. It was tasty, but it made us a little bit late getting home. And apparently we didn't buy enough mozzarella either, oops. Mozzarella is kinda hard to find and a little expensive, so we got the best we could.

The sun comes out in Ukraine

The rest of the week was actually pretty busy. Wednesday was the eighth of March, which in all of Europe is a pretty big deal. It's Women's Day, so everyone buys flowers and presents for all of the women in their life. On that day we went with the sisters to one of their investigators to do some service raking leaves in her yard. We don't get many opportunities to do service like that, so it was nice to do something. For the holiday, there were lots of street vendors and stuff like that out in the center, so we went and bought some kind of fried potato chips on a stick. it was really just potato chips on a stick, but still tasty.

Making the pinata

The ward wanted to do an activity, and as missionaries we had a lot of responsibilities for the activity. First of all we made a pinata--which was a little messy but actually turned out pretty well. We had missionaries from Lutsk here on exchanges so we had them help us a bit. We ended up printing off pictures of the missionaries and letting everyone beat us with a stick.

We were also in charge of a few games for the activity. They were mostly games just to embarass the men. so we did the one where you roll a coin down your forehead and try to get it to land on a piece of paper on the ground. The trick though, is that everytime it lands on the ground, you trace a circle where it landed with a pencil, so that the next time they roll it down their forehead they get a black line going down their face without even realizing it. We had a bunch of the men and boys come up and try it, and they had no idea why everyone in the audience was laughing. 

The coin game leaves its mark

We also had some of the women put makeup on people (some of them look pretty good.)

Making up a little fun

One of the other games we did was when you put a cookie on your forehead and have to use your face muscles to get it into your mouth. The branch president just put the cookie on his head and looked around. Here's a video of that one.

Bobbing for candy buried in sour cream

The last game we did was where you have to use your mouth to find a candy or something buried in whipped cream. Unfortunately, we couldn't find any whipped cream, so we just got yogurt. Except a couple of the bowls weren't yogurt--they were just sour cream. Sister M. got one of the bowls with sour cream, but it took her a while to realize it wasn't yogurt. The kid in the background just drank the entire bowl of sour cream to get to the candy. That's a pure Ukrainian.

After that we went and broke the pinata. It took a lot of hits and a few swings from a crazy lady, but they finally got it open.

It was a fun activity, and a lot better than most of the activities here where you don't do much.

Alec with one of the Rivne branch youth at the Women's Day activity

The whack-a-missionary pinata

So lots of the week was spent preparing for that activity. But we also found time on Tuesday to go to Zdolbuniv, a smaller town about 30 minutes from Rivne to visit a member (the guy we baptized a couple months ago actually.) He had a heart attack last week and he didn't come to church and wasn't picking up his phone, so we went to go check on him. When we got there, he was out working in his garden, so he seems like he was doing just fine. He said he had to help his sister with something last Tuesday, so that's why he couldn't make it. He came yesterday, so all is well. When we got there he called us "heroes of Ukraine" cause we were able to find his house. All we did was look on Google maps before we left, but we didn't tell him that.

Oh, also, I made a pretty good quiche this week. In a cake pan, of course, cause we don't have any pie tins. 

Quiche in a cake pan

That's about all the exciting things that happened this week. It's kind of hard to believe it's been 6 months already. Lots of times it seems like time moves pretty slowly, but when you look back on it, things start to go fast. I think I've more or less adjusted to it all by now and I'm starting to have fun. I definitely don't get bored, we're usually very busy. As soon as March Madness is over, everything will be fine. 

Alec and his fellow missionaries in Rivne

I miss y'all a lot and hope everything is going well.

The Ukrainian thaw

Alec​