Time flies

Hello again everyone! Happy birthday Renee! Happy birthday Mom! 50 might sound like a lot, but as they say here in Ukraine, "Shche ne vechir!" ("Still not evening!", as in, "You're not dead yet!").

Speaking of time flying, today marks my being in Ukraine for 6 months. I've already been in-country for half a year. That also means that I have about four months until I reach the halfway mark of my entire mission (!). It really boggles my mind about how fast time moves! This is my black hole year (the time on my mission when I have an entire year to pass through instead of just a part of one), and it's half over in a week or two. It's going too fast!

And it doesn't help that Carter, Alli, Mary, and Jensen are growing by leaps and bounds every time I get pictures of them!

All right, enough about that. So, the inside door handle on our apartment front door, being the best in Soviet manufacturing, broke off a few days ago. Tired of having to use the pliars on my leatherman to open the door, we gave our landlady, Lidiya, a call. She comes and takes apart our remaining handle and then leaves and buys a new one. When she comes back, she finds out that the new one doesn't actually fit, and it won't work. She tried to put the old one back on, only to remember that when she bought the new handle, the place kept a large portion of the old handle; so, in order to put the old one back on she used the caps to a Pepsi bottle and a Fanta bottle. While cutting holes in these, she cut her thumb. Then, she went to check our water meter readings, only to end up breaking a piece of loose tile. And then she left. Lesson to be learned: No matter how bad things seem, things could always be worse. Especially if you live in a Ukrainian apartment.

But, as a matter of good news, we finally have a progressing investigator again! It's been about two transfers since I've had one. Her name is Valentina Ponomarenko, and we hope to get her husband, Sasha, and her daughter, Alyana, interested too. Things are definitely looking up!

Well, I need to run, as usual. I love you all, and I'll write again next week!

--Elder Brett

So much for my ldsmail...

Well, once again myldsmail isn't working, so we're back to our backup emails. Once again, I don't get to read most of the emails from you, so once again, I have the fun experience to get to miss almost all contact from my family. Wonderful! Boy do I like myldsmail.

All right, well, less sarcastically, something incredibly interesting happened this week. On Saturday, the Kharkivsky ward went on a picnic to this place that's basically a gigantic park with a lot of little historic ancient-looking Ukrainian buildings and villages. It was really pretty and really cool (and it made us wish a little that the rest of Ukraine looked more like that...), but that's not what's so cool. What made it so exceptional was that while we were there, we decided to go to a souvenir area, and we noticed a large crowd. We got a little closer and noticed that, strategically throughout the rest of the crowd, were people with ear-phone and radios. Wondering who was there, we made our way into the crowd, and who did we see not five feet away but Viktor Yuschenko, President of Ukraine! If the crowd was a little thinner, I could have taken two steps and touched him. There he was, shopping for pottery. That brings my number of heads of state personally seen up-close to...1. Unless the governor of Idaho counts...which he probably doesn't...

Well, we're going to head off a little early and try back again later, to see if myldsmail is working then. I love you all, and I'll send some pictures then!

--Elder Brett

Pictures!

Well, myldsmail's working again, so thanks for the emails! Here's some pictures:

Elder Hurst - This is at the historical village museum/park. It's really, really pretty there.

Brother Slepak - This is a really cool member of the ward here.

Vashenko Family - This family is amazing. They're in our ward also. They are also the largest family I've ever met in Ukraine--most have one to three kids.

Yuschenko - The President himself!

Yuschenko Shopping - Apparently, not only does he love coming to this museum/park place, he also really likes collecting pottery, or at least so some of our investigators tell us.

True Ukrainian - Me in Cossack clothes again. The Vashenko family really likes dressing missionaries up like this. It's fun to get to dress like a Cossack in a traditional Ukrainian village.

Until next week!
--Brett

Another transfer's done already!

Hello again! Well, transfers are this week, and due to a larger than normal group of missionaries going home, most of the transfers took place on Monday instead of Thursday, when they usually do. Basically, I'm still in Kharkivsky, but Elder Walk was moved somewhere else (not to be mean to him, but...it'll be a bit of a blessing for the area) and another elder, Elder Miles, is my new companion. Elder Miles is a lot more optimistic and upbeat than Elder Walk, so I hope that'll help the work in our area a bit. So far it's been fairly dead.

So we had an...interesting experience tracting the other day. We went out to an apartment building and started knocking it down without any success, and we were starting to get a little frustrated. Finally we reached one door where we could hear music playing on the inside, and we could tell from the electricity meter in the hallway that someone was definitely in there (one of the little tricks you pick up here); but, the first time I rang the doorbell, no one came to the door. Being, like I said, a little frustrated, I decided that letting them ignore us wasn't going to be an option, so I knocked, and we heard the music get turned down and someone walk to the door. We stood there, hoping that this was a change in our luck, and only felt more so when the lady who answered invited us in. We came in and I started to try leading into a lesson, but she kept saying, "Don't teach me yet, we haven't had tea yet!" So, a little apprehensively, we followed her into the kitchen, and after a brief struggle to make sure we had herbal tea instead of green tea, we once again tried teaching her a lesson. Unfortunately, the woman--who, by the way, was no doubt well into her sixties--wasn't so much interested in our lesson as she was...in us. So, I can now officially say that I have been hit on by a sixty-something year old Ukrainian woman. Yeah. I glanced at my comp worriedly, to which he comfortingly responded, "You got us in here, you get us out." Thanks Elder Miles. Anyway, we had a bitter struggle to leave. She kept offering us cookies, candy, salo (which is, literally, a block of straight pig fat that people here eat like cheese), and borscht--never mind the fact that borscht takes several hours to cook!--so finally, FINALLY, I just said, "Thank you, but we NEED TO GO." She laughed and asked us, like she did a lot, what our home address was, and so we just ignored it and left as quick as we could. Yikes.

Anyway, other than that...experience, things are going well here. I've got high hopes for this transfer. Good luck with everything on the home front, and I miss you all (especially my nieces and nephews...even if I've never seen them yet...)

Have a good week!
--Elder Brett

Dobriy vechir!

Hello again! Well, because of a few weird occurances today, we weren't able to do email until a lot later today, and myldsmail, being far from perfect, wasn't working at all. So, here I am back on gmail for the week.

Well, this was an interesting week. Unfortunately, I also don't have much time here, so I'll have to only say the top two things.

First, on the way to an appointment last week, Elder Walk noticed something sticking out of a dumpster. Upon closer examination, we found it to be a large lawn gnome. I decided that, if it was still there when our appointment was done, we were going to have to claim it as our own. The appointment went well, we visited a less active member and showed him the movie "The Testaments," which he greatly enjoyed (he even copied it to his computer...probably not the best thing with a church movie, but I'm not going to say anything to him about it, since he's a political bodyguard and outweighs me by probably almost double--in pure muscle). Then, on the way home, we passed by the dumpster, and the gnome was gone. "Oh well," we thought, "it was a good idea anyway." Then, a few steps later, who should we see but the gnome itself, standing off to the side as though it had climbed out and was enjoying its former career (although, judging by the group of drunk young people nearby, that probably wasn't entirely accurate). Acting quickly, I snagged it and we struggled back to our apartment, where we cleaned him up and spray painted him silver. He now has a place of honor in our front hallway, a small Ukrainian flag in his hand.

The other thing that happened was only earlier today; it was, in large part, what kept us from doing internet until later. President Davis has a friend in America who taped the Fiesta Bowl game and sent it to him on a DVD; he then gave permission to the AP's and whoever they invited (as long as it was a very small gathering) to get together in center and watch it. Guess who got invited? In case you don't know, the Fiesta Bowl college football game this year featured Boise State against Oklahoma, and was an amazing win for BSU. It was probably the best football game I've ever seen. Needless to say, it was a very, very good day.

Well, I've got to run again. I love you all, and I hope you all have a good week! Hopefully next week I'll be back to normal on myldsmail (well...hopefully soon we won't have to use myldsmail anymore...but oh well...)

--Elder Brett

PS-This unfortunately means I wasn't able to read any of your messages this week...trust me, it's not fun to have my only pipeline home temporarily cut off. But oh well...