Hello again everyone, and again I'm sorry, but this is going to have to be kind of short. Every week we have to write emails to our mission president, and due to a bunch of technical problems (I really don't like internet clubs that much), that ate up almost all of my time today.
So: here's the highlights.
On Saturday, we went to see a play, and it was really, really fun. The play was called "The Gospel According to John" (Yevanhelia vid Ivanna), and it was about a farmer named Ivan (the Slavic form of John) who's really down on his luck money-wise, and who's friends think up crazy schemes to get him some money, but in the end, it doesn't work, and he loses everything. There was a lot in there about the traditional Ukrainian mentality. The soil in Ukraine is amazingly fertile, one of the most fertile areas in the entire world, and so this farmer has a deep reverance for the land he has, and all he desires to do is raise crops in the soil. He has a lot of soliloquys about the soil, traditions, Russian and Communist influences and how they were bad, and about the lack of religious values in Ukraine. It was an excellent play.
I wish I had more time!! Okay, well, that's the highlight of this week. If I had more time, I would have definitely written more, but I'll have to wait until next week. I love you all, and I hope you all have a good week!
--Elder Brett
Hello Again! (April 18, 2007)
Well, I don't really have that much time today, so I'm going to be forced to keep this short. Thankfully, there's just the story to do that with.
So, there's a less active member here named Oleg Parfioni. Oleg used to be a normal, active member until his dad died and left him a lot of money. Oleg, unsure of what to do with so much money, decided to spend it all on alcohol. So, Oleg is now continuously drunk. However, because he was so normal before this, missionaries have been working really hard to get him active again. We decided to give it a try too, so we met with him.
Oleg didn't answer the door at first, so his friend came out of their apartment next door and said that the door was open and we could just come in. We walked in and found Oleg, drunk as ever, wearing a ratty, gray, long-haired wig and a ripped up black beanie. He sat us down and showed us a pile of paintings he had done, telling us they were "New Wave Avant-Garde" and then giving us each one, telling us that we could sell them in America for 150,000 dollars when we get home. I'll have to send out a picture of the painting I got. It kind of looks like a new wave avant-garde demon baboon. He also gave us each a picture of him from the Soviet days when he was a guitarist, so I have a picture of Oleg Parfioni with a lot of curly hair, a mustache, an acoustic guitar, and random Soviet propaganda in the background.
While we were there, we met two of Oleg's friends. One of them is a man who was incredibly skinny, spoke only Polish, and said "Tralalalala" like how we'd say "Blah blah blah," or "and so on, and so on." The other was an...interesting lady who kept asking us if we could speak to her in Russian, then told us--while her little daughter was in the room--that while she was pregnant with this particular daughter, she had wanted to get an abortion (which, by the way, cost 100 gryven, or $20, and are entirely no questions asked...what a fantastically moral society).
Well, I wish I had more time...have a good week everyone, and I'll write again next week!
--Elder Brett
So, there's a less active member here named Oleg Parfioni. Oleg used to be a normal, active member until his dad died and left him a lot of money. Oleg, unsure of what to do with so much money, decided to spend it all on alcohol. So, Oleg is now continuously drunk. However, because he was so normal before this, missionaries have been working really hard to get him active again. We decided to give it a try too, so we met with him.
Oleg didn't answer the door at first, so his friend came out of their apartment next door and said that the door was open and we could just come in. We walked in and found Oleg, drunk as ever, wearing a ratty, gray, long-haired wig and a ripped up black beanie. He sat us down and showed us a pile of paintings he had done, telling us they were "New Wave Avant-Garde" and then giving us each one, telling us that we could sell them in America for 150,000 dollars when we get home. I'll have to send out a picture of the painting I got. It kind of looks like a new wave avant-garde demon baboon. He also gave us each a picture of him from the Soviet days when he was a guitarist, so I have a picture of Oleg Parfioni with a lot of curly hair, a mustache, an acoustic guitar, and random Soviet propaganda in the background.
While we were there, we met two of Oleg's friends. One of them is a man who was incredibly skinny, spoke only Polish, and said "Tralalalala" like how we'd say "Blah blah blah," or "and so on, and so on." The other was an...interesting lady who kept asking us if we could speak to her in Russian, then told us--while her little daughter was in the room--that while she was pregnant with this particular daughter, she had wanted to get an abortion (which, by the way, cost 100 gryven, or $20, and are entirely no questions asked...what a fantastically moral society).
Well, I wish I had more time...have a good week everyone, and I'll write again next week!
--Elder Brett
Another week already? (April 11, 2007)
Hello again all, this Elder Hurst once again saying hello from Ivano Frankivsk!
This has been a really cool week. There's a lot that's happened, so let me try to make sure I remember to put it all in here:
Last week, we met with a really, really cool investigator that was "passed" to us from some other elders in a different city (ie, they met with him a time or two, found out he lived in our area and not theirs, and then had us start meeting with him). His name is Joseph, and he's a black man from Sudan who's studying to be a dentist at a medical school in Ivano. He's really cool, and he's probably the nicest guy I've talked to in a long time. Plus, the only language he knows that we also know is English (he also speaks Arabic and Russian), so we get to teach him in English, which is nice. A lot of missionaries in our mission really love meeting and teaching African people because almost as a rule, they're very nice, very cool, they love hearing about the gospel, and they speak English, which is always a boon. Anyways, I'm excited to meet with Joseph some more.
Last Thursday, we went shopping at a really big, Wal-Mart type store called Arsen when, to our delight, we found out that they sell peanut butter. Now, it's funny, when I was in America I liked peanut butter all right, but I could go a long time without eating it and still be just fine; but, now that I'm in Ukraine and peanut butter is about as rare as gold, it was an incredibly exciting discovery. Elder Isaacs and I went a little crazy and bought four jars of it and a big plastic bucket of jelly (literally, a bucket), and we've been eating it all week long. And, just so you can know the "inside secrets" on the Eastern European peanut butter market, the Polish peanut butter spreads great, but tastes kind of salty; the Ukrainian "klasychne" (classic) peanut butter is fantastic; the Ukrainian "solodke" (sweet) peanut butter (made with vanilla) is good, but you can't eat that much of it before you get sick of it; and the Ukrainian "desertne" (dessert) peanut butter (made with cocoa powder) is good, but would be better if they had used sweetened cocoa powder. The bucket of jelly was just plain fantastic though.
This Sunday was Easter, and Easter is a huge holiday in Ukraine. The Saturday before, everyone takes a basket with some herbs, vegetables, bread, and eggs (all covered with a white cloth with some typical Ukrainian stitching patterns on it) and they go to one of the many Pravoslavnic churches in the area, wait in line, and have a priest bless the basket. I'm not sure, but I think the food might be what they're going to cook for dinner on Sunday. Oh, and the bread they have is a special kind called "Pasko bread" (Pasko being "Easter" in Ukrainian), which is like normal bread except it's puffy and kind of circular; it's got an interesting taste that I personally don't like as much as other Ukrainian bread, but maybe I just haven't eaten it as much as I need to. Anyway, on Easter proper, everyone goes to church, and all day, instead of saying "Dobriy Den" like usual for Hello, they say "Khrystos Voskres!" ("Christ is risen!"), and then the people they're talking to say "Bo istynu voskres!" ("Of a surety he is risen!", or "He is indeed risen!"). It's cool. And while normally throughout the year people are really hesitant to talk to strangers, on Easter, everyone says "Khrystos voskres!" to everyone.
For us, we went to the family of a member in our ward for Easter. His name is Vitaliy, and he was baptized about three or four weeks ago (the week before I arrived). His wife is going to be baptized as soon as its warm enough for her to be baptized in a river. So, we went to their house out in a sello (a "sello" is a little village; there's dirt roads and actual houses, animals are everywhere, and if it was a little cleaner and if some of the homes were a little better taken care of, it could be really picturesque and cool) for dinner, which consisted of really good hard boiled eggs with tartar sauce, holobtsi (I think this is boiled buckwheat wrapped in cabbage leaves like burritos and covered in sauce; it's really, REALLY good), Pasko bread, some sauerkraut-like salad, and--last but not least--holodets, which (unlike holobtsi) was utterly disgusting. Now, as of last Sunday prior to this meal, I had never had anything to eat in Ukraine that I didn't like. The vast majority of Ukrainian food is incredibly hearty and mostly healthy and really good tasting; holodets almost made me gag. Basically, to make holodets, you boil chicken bones for a long time until a layer of goo starts forming in the water; you scoop this goo into a bowl, mix it with small pieces of cooked chicken and maybe a few vegetables, and then put in in the fridge until you eat it. It is, almost literally, chicken flavored jell-o, except with the wonderful addition of knowing that your eating whatever goop was boiled out of a bone. It didn't help that Elder Isaacs and I get along pretty well and he jokingly kept telling the family, after I'd choke down the last of the holodets on my plate, that I wanted more. I'm usually really good about having a clean plate after every meal, but this time there was a large mound of holodets that I just couldn't bring myself to touch again.
Wow, I'm writing a lot today. I'll have to write the rest a little quicker:
On Monday, we went on a picnic with the branch to some hills just outside of the city. It was a lot of fun. We had a lot of people from our English classes come along, which was great because we want to start teaching them lessons and this was a great way to get them to be comfortable with the church and get to know members. Now, in Ukraine, the day after Easter is another holiday called Water Monday. I have no idea where Water Monday came from or why, but as far as I can tell, it's a day entirely dedicated to trying to get everyone around you wet. People carry water bottles and splash each other, people in cars throw water on pedestrians, and heaven help you if you walk near any of the many fountains in town. So, during the picnic, there was a lot of random water being thrown on people. It was a lot of fun.
Yesterday, Tuesday that is, Isaacs and I went to another sello called Strupkiv to visit a really old man who's a member of the church but lives far enough away that he can't really come to church that much. He was really nice, and he looked like he could be right at home living on a British farm in a movie or something; unfortunately, he's really pretty deaf, and he doesn't understand us because of our accents anyway, so communication was limited. But, it was fun.
All right, I'm literally out of time, but have a good week, and I'll see if I can send pictures later today.
--Elder Hurst
This has been a really cool week. There's a lot that's happened, so let me try to make sure I remember to put it all in here:
Last week, we met with a really, really cool investigator that was "passed" to us from some other elders in a different city (ie, they met with him a time or two, found out he lived in our area and not theirs, and then had us start meeting with him). His name is Joseph, and he's a black man from Sudan who's studying to be a dentist at a medical school in Ivano. He's really cool, and he's probably the nicest guy I've talked to in a long time. Plus, the only language he knows that we also know is English (he also speaks Arabic and Russian), so we get to teach him in English, which is nice. A lot of missionaries in our mission really love meeting and teaching African people because almost as a rule, they're very nice, very cool, they love hearing about the gospel, and they speak English, which is always a boon. Anyways, I'm excited to meet with Joseph some more.
Last Thursday, we went shopping at a really big, Wal-Mart type store called Arsen when, to our delight, we found out that they sell peanut butter. Now, it's funny, when I was in America I liked peanut butter all right, but I could go a long time without eating it and still be just fine; but, now that I'm in Ukraine and peanut butter is about as rare as gold, it was an incredibly exciting discovery. Elder Isaacs and I went a little crazy and bought four jars of it and a big plastic bucket of jelly (literally, a bucket), and we've been eating it all week long. And, just so you can know the "inside secrets" on the Eastern European peanut butter market, the Polish peanut butter spreads great, but tastes kind of salty; the Ukrainian "klasychne" (classic) peanut butter is fantastic; the Ukrainian "solodke" (sweet) peanut butter (made with vanilla) is good, but you can't eat that much of it before you get sick of it; and the Ukrainian "desertne" (dessert) peanut butter (made with cocoa powder) is good, but would be better if they had used sweetened cocoa powder. The bucket of jelly was just plain fantastic though.
This Sunday was Easter, and Easter is a huge holiday in Ukraine. The Saturday before, everyone takes a basket with some herbs, vegetables, bread, and eggs (all covered with a white cloth with some typical Ukrainian stitching patterns on it) and they go to one of the many Pravoslavnic churches in the area, wait in line, and have a priest bless the basket. I'm not sure, but I think the food might be what they're going to cook for dinner on Sunday. Oh, and the bread they have is a special kind called "Pasko bread" (Pasko being "Easter" in Ukrainian), which is like normal bread except it's puffy and kind of circular; it's got an interesting taste that I personally don't like as much as other Ukrainian bread, but maybe I just haven't eaten it as much as I need to. Anyway, on Easter proper, everyone goes to church, and all day, instead of saying "Dobriy Den" like usual for Hello, they say "Khrystos Voskres!" ("Christ is risen!"), and then the people they're talking to say "Bo istynu voskres!" ("Of a surety he is risen!", or "He is indeed risen!"). It's cool. And while normally throughout the year people are really hesitant to talk to strangers, on Easter, everyone says "Khrystos voskres!" to everyone.
For us, we went to the family of a member in our ward for Easter. His name is Vitaliy, and he was baptized about three or four weeks ago (the week before I arrived). His wife is going to be baptized as soon as its warm enough for her to be baptized in a river. So, we went to their house out in a sello (a "sello" is a little village; there's dirt roads and actual houses, animals are everywhere, and if it was a little cleaner and if some of the homes were a little better taken care of, it could be really picturesque and cool) for dinner, which consisted of really good hard boiled eggs with tartar sauce, holobtsi (I think this is boiled buckwheat wrapped in cabbage leaves like burritos and covered in sauce; it's really, REALLY good), Pasko bread, some sauerkraut-like salad, and--last but not least--holodets, which (unlike holobtsi) was utterly disgusting. Now, as of last Sunday prior to this meal, I had never had anything to eat in Ukraine that I didn't like. The vast majority of Ukrainian food is incredibly hearty and mostly healthy and really good tasting; holodets almost made me gag. Basically, to make holodets, you boil chicken bones for a long time until a layer of goo starts forming in the water; you scoop this goo into a bowl, mix it with small pieces of cooked chicken and maybe a few vegetables, and then put in in the fridge until you eat it. It is, almost literally, chicken flavored jell-o, except with the wonderful addition of knowing that your eating whatever goop was boiled out of a bone. It didn't help that Elder Isaacs and I get along pretty well and he jokingly kept telling the family, after I'd choke down the last of the holodets on my plate, that I wanted more. I'm usually really good about having a clean plate after every meal, but this time there was a large mound of holodets that I just couldn't bring myself to touch again.
Wow, I'm writing a lot today. I'll have to write the rest a little quicker:
On Monday, we went on a picnic with the branch to some hills just outside of the city. It was a lot of fun. We had a lot of people from our English classes come along, which was great because we want to start teaching them lessons and this was a great way to get them to be comfortable with the church and get to know members. Now, in Ukraine, the day after Easter is another holiday called Water Monday. I have no idea where Water Monday came from or why, but as far as I can tell, it's a day entirely dedicated to trying to get everyone around you wet. People carry water bottles and splash each other, people in cars throw water on pedestrians, and heaven help you if you walk near any of the many fountains in town. So, during the picnic, there was a lot of random water being thrown on people. It was a lot of fun.
Yesterday, Tuesday that is, Isaacs and I went to another sello called Strupkiv to visit a really old man who's a member of the church but lives far enough away that he can't really come to church that much. He was really nice, and he looked like he could be right at home living on a British farm in a movie or something; unfortunately, he's really pretty deaf, and he doesn't understand us because of our accents anyway, so communication was limited. But, it was fun.
All right, I'm literally out of time, but have a good week, and I'll see if I can send pictures later today.
--Elder Hurst
Another picture (April 4, 2007)
Here's a picture I forgot to send a minute ago...
Icon of Elder Hurst - The Pravoslavnic ("Orthodox," in case you're not Ukrainian) church has these things called icons, which are basically pictures of saints, Christ, Mary, etc. that Pravoslavnic people put in their houses, their cars, or their wallets. After seeing these everywhere, I started to wonder if maybe I could have an icon made of me. So, being resourceful, I drew one...
--Elder Hurst
A few pictures (April 4, 2007)
Hello again, I just had the chance to get some pictures off of my new digital camera and onto a computer, so I thought I'd share them with you all.
Big Momma - This is a gigantic statue in Kiev that the Soviets built. It's made out of metal, and is basically a titanic woman holding a sword and a shield.
English in Voskresensky - This is me with the beginning english class in my last area the day before I was transfered. They were fun people, but for some reason one of them decided to wear a somewhat skanky shirt the day I took a picture.
Me in a Hind - My favorite picture of the bunch.
All right, I'll try sending more sometime else, so I'll write again later!
--Elder Brett
Big Momma - This is a gigantic statue in Kiev that the Soviets built. It's made out of metal, and is basically a titanic woman holding a sword and a shield.
English in Voskresensky - This is me with the beginning english class in my last area the day before I was transfered. They were fun people, but for some reason one of them decided to wear a somewhat skanky shirt the day I took a picture.
Me in a Hind - My favorite picture of the bunch.
All right, I'll try sending more sometime else, so I'll write again later!
--Elder Brett
Hello from Ivano Frankivsk! (April 4, 2007)
Hello again everyone! This has been an interesting past week. Unfortunately, I don't have much time to write about it, so I'll have to write quickly.
First of all, our branch president here is slowly going insane. We just moved the branch into a new building, and he seems to think that the building is his own personal one, so he's been directing a lot of the set up, which has led to every single door having its own individual lock and key, the coat rack being hidden in the back of the building (far far away from the entrance), and the Primary--which consists of two, sometimes three, children--having a large, carpeted room that no one else--especially missionaries--is allowed to use; or, if they do, they have to take their shoes off to go inside.
So: the other elders who were here, Elders Tanner and Aird, were mini transfered to Kiev yesterday, and we'll probably not get another companionship here until next transfer (still five weeks away), leaving us here alone with the two bickering senior sisters and the branch that's slowly descending into madness. On top of it all, Elder Isaacs just found out a few days ago that his parents filed for divorce. It's been a little stressful for us.
But, there was a little bit of excitement on Saturday, when we were walking home from the church and saw a street fight. I guess that a gang of Ukrainian punks were making fun of a Muslim kid, and so he turned and pretty much single handedly took on the whole gang, and won. Lesson to be learned: being prejudiced doesn't pay off. This was a first for all of us, including Elder Isaacs, who's been out a year and a half, so I'm pretty sure street fights are about as common here as anywhere else. (As usual, the crack local police team did absolutely nothing about this fight).
Well, that's been my week, hopefully I'll have more time next week. I love you all, and I'll write again soon!
--Elder Brett
First of all, our branch president here is slowly going insane. We just moved the branch into a new building, and he seems to think that the building is his own personal one, so he's been directing a lot of the set up, which has led to every single door having its own individual lock and key, the coat rack being hidden in the back of the building (far far away from the entrance), and the Primary--which consists of two, sometimes three, children--having a large, carpeted room that no one else--especially missionaries--is allowed to use; or, if they do, they have to take their shoes off to go inside.
So: the other elders who were here, Elders Tanner and Aird, were mini transfered to Kiev yesterday, and we'll probably not get another companionship here until next transfer (still five weeks away), leaving us here alone with the two bickering senior sisters and the branch that's slowly descending into madness. On top of it all, Elder Isaacs just found out a few days ago that his parents filed for divorce. It's been a little stressful for us.
But, there was a little bit of excitement on Saturday, when we were walking home from the church and saw a street fight. I guess that a gang of Ukrainian punks were making fun of a Muslim kid, and so he turned and pretty much single handedly took on the whole gang, and won. Lesson to be learned: being prejudiced doesn't pay off. This was a first for all of us, including Elder Isaacs, who's been out a year and a half, so I'm pretty sure street fights are about as common here as anywhere else. (As usual, the crack local police team did absolutely nothing about this fight).
Well, that's been my week, hopefully I'll have more time next week. I love you all, and I'll write again soon!
--Elder Brett
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