Adventures in L'viv and Ivano-Frankivsk

Alec in L'viv by the Monument to the Victims of Communist Crimes

So the big thing that happened here last week was exchanges in Ivano-Frankivsk with the zone leaders. Basically that means we spent about 20 hours on the trains going back and forth. It's a ~6 hour ride from Uzhhorod to L'viv and then ~3.5 hours from L'viv to Ivano. It's kind of unfortunate, but it's definitely much better than the alternative -- a 10-hour bus ride through Ukrainian mountain roads. Most of the time we get pretty nice private coupes with beds and stuff. 

Unfortnately, for the first 6-hour train ride to L'viv we did not have such nice tickets. It's called an elektrishka, and it's basically like sitting on a city bus for 6 hours, with a little bit less leg room. So that was fun. The real fun part was that our train left at 5:15 in the morning. however, something went wrong with setting our alarms, and we woke up at 4:55. The train station is about an hour walk from our apartment, so we were gonna call a taxi anyway, but those usually take 15-20 minutes to show up. So, we woke up and immediately called a taxi, grabbed our bags, and ran outside to wait. It was some kind of miracle, but the taxi showed up within five minutes, and was more than happy to drive fast when I told him we were a little late. We made it to the train station in about 5 minutes and were seated on the train with 5 minutes to spare. Defnitely a lot of luck involved there.

In front of the art museum in L'viv

When we got to L'viv, we had about 5 hours to wait until our next train, so we decided to stop by the mission office to get a package for my companion. Unfortunatly, neither of us know L'viv very well, but my companion seemed to think that he knew L'viv pretty well. Long story short, we ended up walking around L'viv for about 2 hours trying to find the mission office. Once we realized we didn't know where we were going, we were able to ask people and find our way. We were just already on the complete opposite side of the city by that point. I did attach a few pictures of L'viv from when I was wandering around.  The umbrellas are over the street in front of an art museum. 

The statue I'm standing next to (at top) is something about breaking free from communism. and the billboard with Uncle Sam says "America is waiting for you." It's for an apartmen complex called "America".

Billboard in L'viv advertising an apartment complex named America

Other than that, though, our travels were pretty uneventful, except for me accidentally calling two different taxis in L'viv and both of them showing up at the same time and fighting. We're going back to L'viv again tomorrow for zone conference, so hopefully things go a little bit smoother. 

 That's about all the big stuff that happened this week. Friday is the day of our big history activity. We've invited the mayor, governor, archivists, and professors, so hopefully it's at least a little bit successful and some people show up. It's at the nicest hotel in town, so hopefully that attracts a few people. 

Hope y'all have a great week!

Alec

A Walk In The Park

Elder Martschenko & Elder Loveridge

On Tuesday the assistants to the president came down to Uzhhorod for exchanges. They don't usually do that, but since there's so many new missionaries in the mission now, they've been going around to all the cities to sort of give advice and make sure everything is going well everywhere and no church buildings are being burned down. So that was cool, we got lots of good advice from them and it was nice having someone who actually knows the language really really well, instead of just kind of knows the language OK enough to survive. It was also nice cause Elder Loveridge, my first companion, came down here, too. He was with the other elders all day but I still saw him. I attached a picture of me and him outside the church building. 

This past week we also tried to get our sports day going. Basically we go out once a week and play a bunch of games and try to invite as many people as we can. The hardest parts are always 1) finding a place to play, and 2) getting people to actually come. This week we grabbed a couple members of the church and hopped a fence to get to a basketball court at a school here. We ended up finding some people there to play with and it was actually pretty successful and fun, mostly cause Ukrainians in general are not so good at basketball, and so it made me feel like I was actually talented.

Unfortunately, that's not always the case. Last Monday we had a few hours with nothing to do, so we went to the basketball court and tried to play. There were a few guys there who asked to play with us, so we said, "Sure, why not?" Unfortunately, they were very, very tall. Honestly, they weren't even that good, they just each had a solid foot of height over us, so we couldnt' do very much. So, it was much more fun when we could play against people who aren't quite so good.

Hitchhiking

For p-day today, we woke up early this morning and got on a bus to find this cool resort/park somewhere north of Uzhhorod. It turned out to be almost an hour and a half on the bus, and then from there we still had a 5km walk to get to the actual park. Luckily, on our way up we were able to hitchhike a ride with a nice old man on his way to work. I attached a picture I snuck from the back seat of his car. Unfortunately, we did have to walk all the way down afterward. 

So, it was kind of a journey getting there, but once we made it, it was actually pretty worth it. At first you walk through, and it's like a resort with hotels, swimming pools, tennis courts, zip lines and all that kind of stuff. And then you walk a little farther and there's a really nice park later on. 

P-day at the park

Apparently some rich guy decided to build this park and just let the public use it. It might not look like too much in the pictures, but it was probably the nicest place I've been to since I got to Ukraine. There was a pond with benches and streams and little hiking trails and helicopters and mini statues and mountain springs and all kinds of stuff like that. So, it was pretty cool, just kind of difficult to get to. And then, my companion left our phone there . . . so we'll probably have to wake up early again tomorrow to go get it, including walking 5km each way. 

Alec & his companions, plus one

As for the history event we're doing here, things seem to be going well. We were waiting on a press release from L'viv to go to the news stations and professors and all the people we wanted to invite. We finally got it today and, honestly,  . . . we'll see what we're going to do about that. I'm gonna be in a different city this week for exchanges, and then next week we'll be gone half of the week for zone conference in L'viv, soooo, I don't know how we're going to have time to do everything. Somehow we'll figure it out, I'm sure. It's just lots of unfortunate timing really. That's OK. I'm sure it will be fine. 

As for that investigator, we've met with him several times. He came to church once or twice. and then he said he loves us and everything, but he does not want to be baptized at all. And then he said that God wanted him to meet us so he could correct all the sinful things we do at our church, and so that he can be the church leader here, and basically help us all. So, yeah, we might have another meeting or two with him, but if nothing changes, that's probably about it. 

We also have another family we've been teaching in that village and they really want to be baptized, but, they've been having problems coming to church. There's not too much we can do for them until they come to church.

 

On the 5km walk to the park

Hope everything is going well for y'all!

Alec

Happy Mother's Day!

Along the river Uzh in Uzhhorrod

Skyping with you guys this weekend was great. I'm sorry it was the middle of the night, but if I had tried to do it later in the afternoon the Internet club would have been super loud and busy and we probably wouldn't have been able to get a computer with a camera, So I think that was much better. 

Probably the highlight of the week was running into a couple of Americans on Saturday--that's pretty rare. They were a couple college girls here on a mission trip (only for 10 days.) They were nice and we talked for a little bit--I definitely miss just having normal conversations with Americans, for some reason it's just totally different. They invited us to a couple events they were holding, but, unfortunately, we were busy for all of them. However, they did tell us about the guy who sponsors these mission trips--he's an American that owns a cafe here, so we're gonna try to go find him and see if he can hook us up with some service opportunities. 

They also said they found a restaurant here that had good burgers. Good burgers are super hard to find here. I don't know why, they just don't know how to make good ground beef here. So we went and tried it today for lunch. It was a little expensive (by Ukrainian standards) but it was actually a pretty good burger. Probably the only burger I've had that actually tasted better than the McDonald's in Rivne. 

We spent part of the week preparing for this history event that's gonna be in a couple weeks. We went to the nicest hotel in town to try to get a venue for it. It's not too expensive, I think the only problem is that it might be a little bit too nice. I guess we're trying to get the mayor and governor there so nicer is probably gonna be better. Then we should be getting a press release soon from L'viv and we'll start taking that to news organizations and stuff like that. Should be fun. 

I don't know if I told you about this on the Skype call or not, but on Friday we had plans to have dinner at a member's house. So, we went there at 6 o'clock and when we called her to come open the door, she told us that she wasn't expecting us until Saturday. But, of course, they always have to be as hospitable as possible, so she invited us in, and somehow put together a whole meal for us while we waited in her living room for like 15 minutes. As we were leaving, she said "So, we'll see you tomorrow, right?" So, even though she already cooked a whole meal for us, we came back Saturday night and had another 3 course meal for her, just cause she had already bought the food and couldn't eat it by herself. She's super nice, she just sometimes slips into Russian and sometimes even Hungarian when she's talking to us. 

Sorry, I don't even have any pictures for you today. I hope everything is going great and Happy Mother's Day! I love you mom, and I miss you!

Alec

Building On History

We got a call from the mission president last week about an upcoming event here. Apparently in the early '30s there were actually missionaries that came here to Uzhhorod from some Czechoslovakia mission or something like that. They were coming to see if they could open this area for missionary work, and they actually made the decision to send missionaries here. Unfortunately, WWII broke out shortly after, so it never actually happened.

But, the church history department got a hold of the journal of one of the missionaries that came here and some of his Kodak pictures, and now they're wanting to do kind of a bigger history investigation into his trip. So they're sending some church historians here from Salt Lake next month to retrace their steps and do some interviews with the modern day members. So, we'll be setting up interviews for them with our members (all 6 of them) which should be pretty interesting. Some of them have some pretty interesting lives. Like a while ago we found out that one of the ladies had a husband that actually died as a first responder in Chernobyl, so I'm sure there'll be some interesting stories.

The real cool part, though, is that they want to do some kind of lecture about the missionary trip from the 1930s. So, they're asking the four of us here to arrange for all that. That means we have to find a venue, spread the word, try to get radio announcements, talk to news channels, invite mayors/governors (the other missionaries here have already been talking to them--just trying to build bridges and stuff), talk to universities and stuff like that. And the event is in less than a month. It's gonna be a lot to do but it should be a super cool event actually and a pretty unique opportunity. We'll just have to make sure we get everything done in time. 

Oh, and one other small thing, on Saturday we were doing a stand trying to advertise our English practice and this really nice guy from Belarus on a bike comes up and starts talking to us (in pretty good English). He was super nice and I thought he was super cool. About five minutes later he comes back, and says he wants to give me a gift. I forgot to get a picture of it, but it looks like a block of soap made in a cupcake tin, but in the soap there are just a bunch of pieces of scrap metal and coins and stuff like that. He told us it was to protect us from chem trails. So he was a super, super nice guy, just a little bit of a crazy conspiracy theorist. 

Fun fact: The people next to me in the Internet club are working on a school report on Michael Jordan. I'd offer my expertise, but it looks like they're just copying stuff from online, so I think they'll be OK. 

And last week for p-day we did some cool things. I attached a bunch of pictures. I guess you can try to sort them out. 

Riding the children's reailroad

So, in a few cities in Ukraine they have something called the children's railroad. It's basically just a really small railroad (like 1 km long) and the train just goes back and forth as a thing for kids to do. Well, last Monday was the opening day for the season, so there was a little event there and it was free so we decided to go for it. It was about as exciting as you'd expect (not very), but it was cool to see all the little kid getting excited for it. I feel like I remember doing something similar as a kid, but maybe I'm just thinking of the Pullen Park train. 

There's also a little botanical gardens right next to the church, so we decided to check that out. They weren't gonna let us in at first cause they were at capacity, but when we told them we were Americans they opened the gate for us. I was actually kind of impressed with it. I was expecting something really bad, but it was actually pretty normal. I didn't get any great pictures, but it was not too shabby. 

Lastly, for some reason there was a weightlifting competition going on right in the center of town. One time when we were walking by, they were doing an arm wrestling competition, so I got a little video of the finals. There's no surprise on who won.

And also yes we have Skype calls this week. Bad news is it's probably gonna be at a very inconvenient time. The only Internet club here with cameras for Skype is super, super busy in the afternoons/evenings, so it's unlikely we'd be able to get a computer then. So we were thinking of going early Saturday morning around 8 o'clock our time. That's what, 1 in the morning your time Friday night? That's probably gonna be our best bet for getting a working computer.

Hope everything is going great!

Alec ​

Villages, Castles & Kittens

From the castle looking down on Uzhhorod

There's this very strange, very big, pink castle right next to our apartment. It looks like something out of Disney World, if Disney World had been abandoned for 15 years. Apparently no missionaries really knew what was inside it. Well, we decided to finally venture in. According to the signs on the outside, it's a family restaurant, but when we went inside it was completely empty. There were a few employees walking around, but they just completely ignored us. It was kind of like a Chuck E Cheese kind of place with rides and games and then a little eating area, but it was one of the spookiest places I've ever been. It was just so empty. And spooky. I didn't take a lot of pictures cause it was so scary. 

Inside the pink castle next door

Last p-day we also went to a cool museum by the church. It's basically a re-creation of an old Ukrainian village. The neat part is that all of the buildings are taken from actual Ukrainian villages, they just took them and moved them to this museum. They all kind of looked the same, but it was still pretty neat.

Alec & companions in old restored Ukrainian village

Inside a restored Ukrainian village home

And we finally went to the castle here in Uzhhorod. It was quite a bit smaller than the one in Mukachevo we went to about a month ago, but it was still pretty cool.

Outside the castle walls in Uzhhorod

There was a nice little courtyard inside the walls . . .

The castle courtyard

. . . and a pretty cool view over the whole city . . .

Castle's view of the city

There's also a sweet Hercules statue . . .

Alec & Hercules

The castle is the main tourist attraction here, and there have been A LOT of tourists this past week, so it's pretty cool that we walk past it every day on our way to the church. The church is about a 2-minute walk from the castle, so we have a pretty nice location.

The daily walk

We went to a member's house for dinner last night and her cat just barely had kittens this past week. So, of course I got a picture. ​

Kittens at a church member's home

Other than that everything was pretty much just a normal week. We made a couple attempts to go out to the village to visit our investigator, but he wasn't there both times. The second time, though, we found out he was in the hospital with his daughter who is apparently sick. Unfortunately, he doesn't have a phone so we couldn't really find out where he was. After some detective work, we figured out which hospital he was in, but we didn't know his daughter's name or even his last name, so we couldnt' actually find him. We'll probably try again tomorrow, and hopefully it works out. And, hopefully, his daughter is okay. 

Alec answers some Q&A from the family:

Q: How are your allergies holding up?

A: The allergies actually haven't been a problem at all so far. I was worried cause Uzhhorod has tons of trees and flowers and stuff so I thought it would be bad, but nothing has gotten bad at all yet. I haven't really seen much pollen yet, but I'm hoping it doesn't get bad. I'm thinking it's just NC springtime that I'm allergic to.

Q: Maya wants to know if you think Justin Jackson is cute? (She thinks he’s cute.)

A: We always said that Justin Jackson looked like a witch. I'm not sure why, but I think it's the nose. 

Q: Mom wants to know if you guys are doing formal discussions or if the lessons there are less structured than they are here?

A: It's not like formal discussions like it was 30 years ago. We use Preach My Gospel and everything like they do there, so I assume it's the same. The lessons aren't supposed to be structured at least--you're supposed to teach according to the needs of the person you're teaching. We kinda just teach whatever we think we should teach.

Q: Justin wants to know if you’re seeing any first hand evidence of the war with Russia?

A: I'm about as far away from Russia as I could possibly get, but yeah, you still see quite a bit. We went to a museum in the castle this week and they had a bunch of pictures on the wall from the war and stuff like that. People don't really talk about it a lot, at least not to us, but you can definitely see it. One of the other missionaries in Uzhhorod is actually from Donetsk which is right in the middle of the war.

Q: Maya wants to know if you think you have a good mission president?

A: Yeah I have a good mission president. I don't exactly have anything to compare him too, but he does a pretty good job.

Q: Maya wants to know if you feel like you are getting more fit with all the walking?

A: Yeah I think so. It's a lot of walking, so it's definitely lots of exercise. Just gotta be careful not to eat too much cause the food is so cheap here.

Q: Evan wants to know if they have any cool coins in their currency?

A: No nothing too special, really. They all just have 5/10/25, etc. on one side and then the other side the Ukrainian trident. I have started keeping a coin collection though. I figure that the country has only really existed for 25 years or so, so it's actually possible that I'd be able to collect all of the coins they've had. So far I've got most of the 2000s, anything before that is pretty hard to find though. 

Q: Do they mostly deal in cash there, or do you guys use your debit card a lot?

A: Yeah, it's almost entirely in cash. I think I've only used my debit card once when I really wanted a water bottle and the store didn't have change for a big bill. Most places don't even accept credit cards. Another reason collecting coins is so easy (even they don't  actually always give you change since the coins are so worthless.) So yeah, I haven't actually used that credit card y'all got me a single time, 

Q: Is it too early to start coordinating times for our Skype call with you on Mother’s Day?

A: Yeah, Mother's Day is in a couple weeks right? It's gonna be pretty tricky here since we don't have computers at the church. The Internet club with cameras here is usually very loud and busy in the afternoon/evenings, so we might have to do it in the morning, which would be like very late at night your time.

  

And I was very sorry to hear about Cocoa, but it's great that she's not in so much pain anymore.

Hope everything is going well back home.

Alec

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