Yak zavzhdy, pryvit! (May 23, 2007)

Hello again everyone! It's that time again, and I actually have a few interesting stories this time around.

First of all, the weather has gotten hot here. Well, no, that's not quite true, it's actually gotten H O T here. The humidity doesn't help. I remember with an odd sense of irony back when I was still new here and there was snow on the ground. I also remember how naively I had thought that Ukraine was always a cold place. Not so anymore!

All right, now to more interesting stuff. Last Saturday, Elder Walk and I had a lesson with an investigator family (the Ponomarenko family--they're really, really cool) and were walking home when we noticed, off in the distance, dark clouds and lightning. We thought it was cool and took a few pictures, then went down and got on the metro and forgot about it. However, when we came out the other side, it turns out the storm had travelled incredibly fast and was right on top of us! So there we were, sprinting from shelter to shelter, making our way to the bus stop while driving rain and pounding lightning poured down around us. It was probably the heaviest storm I've been caught in in a long time.

On Monday, we went to Family Home Evening with a family in our ward named the Mutilins. Brother Mutilin is on the Stake High Council, and looks like he would fit in on a High Council in just about any ward in Idaho or Utah. Sister Mutilin is your average LDS mom (she reminded me of Sister Soelberg, for those of you who know her). They have a son who served a mission to Ogden Utah and who speaks near-fluent English, and a daughter who's incredibly pregnant and kind of reminds me of Renee (not only because of the pregnant part). She also has a son who's about 4-ish and is the coolest kid I've ever met who isn't related to me. He's really funny, and he's learning a little English (he eventually said, after overcoming some shyness, "Hello missionaries, how old are you?"). The meeting was great. I love seeing happy families here. Too often the only families I see are either a single mom who's more concerned with looking fashionable than being a mom, or parents who are too busy holding their cigarette and bottle of beer to hold their kid's hand.

There's a little saying that Elder Isaacs and I came up with last transfer: "Never bother a missionary between 10:30 at night and 6:30 in the morning." Those are our hours to sleep, and those are very, very precious to us. So imagine how we felt yesterday morning at about 5 when someone pounded on our door and kept ringing the doorbell. If you imagined that we were angry and confused, you'd be correct. We answered after a little while (we were really tired, and so it took a few minutes for us to work out that this wasn't a dream) and found out that the hallway outside our apartment had flooded with water, and our neighbor from the floor below was wondering if it was coming from us. We looked and it wasn't, so he left and we went to bed again. Ten minutes later, someone else started pounding and ringing the doorbell, so we got up again and answered the door to find the neighbor whose apartment was the one with the problem asking if we could help him out. We went over and helped clean the water out of his apartment towel by towel, squeezing the water into the toilet. After about thirty minutes, the apartment was a lot cleaner, and we went back to bed. We had just fallen asleep again when another neighbor, having only just woken up I guess, noticed the water and again assumed it was us responsible (why is it always the missionaries' fault?) and pounded on our door and rang the doorbell until we answered. The worst part of the story? Twenty minutes later, ANOTHER PERSON DID THE SAME THING!

Well, I'd better get going. I love you all, and I hope you all have a good week!

--Elder Brett