Hello Again! (February 7, 2007)

Happy P-Day everyone! It's sounds like things are going well with you all (y'all, for Adam). I've had a pretty interesting week this week.

Well, we've started tracting a lot more, which means that we've been meeting a lot more strange people in their homes, where they seem more willing to be even stranger. On Sunday we went to an apartment building near ours and started knocking it down when we reached this one little hallway where the light was broken. This isn't anything new in Ukrainian buildings; about half of the apartment buildings are missing lights right as you enter, and since for some reason they don't find windows necessary in their buildings, they're pitch black. So, in this particular hallway, there was a light down on the other side of the hallway, but a door was kind of blocking it, so we had to keep pushing it open every now and then. We knocked on the apartment door nearest this other door and a short, squat Russian man answered. It was my turn to start us off, so I started talking and got about halfway into my second sentence when he cut me off and started cursing at us in Russian so much that his wife started yelling at him from another room to close the door and leave us alone. Thankfully, I don't know any Russian swearwords, so it didn't really affect me, but my companion was really mad and about ready to head home when we decided to do one more door. This lady answered and invited us in, and long story short, we have a lesson set up with her tonight; so, you never know what'll come next when you're a missionary. Like when we were riding on a trolleybus a few days ago and the radio started playing "It's Raining Men."

Something else that happened this week was when on Saturday we got on a bus to head to the church building when we saw an older man get on with...something...I don't know what, but something on his face. It was like a mask that only covered one part of his face, around one of his eyes, only the mask was part of his face, and it was black and thick and hairy. It was like a giant, black mole that stuck out of his face. It was incredibly gross.

And I'm getting really fed up with drunk people. They're everywhere, and all they do is stumble around, swearing and smoking and, in general, just getting in everyone's way before passing out on the sidewalk. And I'm getting really fed up with seeing kids younger than 10 smoking and drinking. I think that if people wanted to make effective anti-smoking or anti-drinking ads, they'd just need to videotape the people at your average Ukrainian metro stop for about two hours. I know I never want to do those now.

So, that's the highlights of my week. As usual, my time's running short, so I love you all, and I'll write you again next week!

--Elder Brett Hurst