Hello again family! It’s been a good week, and in large part that may be because of my birthday on Sunday! It’s interesting how birthdays work for missionaries; except for our elders quorum spontaneously singing the Ukrainian version of “Happy Birthday” (literally, just the English words “Happy Birthday to You,” but with a thick Ukrainian accent—“Khappy boorzday to you!”), the rest of the day was…just like any other. That evening, in fact, was spent pleading with some of our investigators to save their marriage. Oksana and Ruslan, about whom I’ve written a few weeks ago, are once again on the verge of falling to the divorce wolves; this time, because Oksana feels that Ruslan hasn’t been showing her enough love, and so she’s going to run away with her lover and start a second family. She tried justifying it by saying that her second family would join the church, but we reminded her that her current family is pretty close to joining, and that if she breaks apart this family unit—especially by means of adultery—that’s not serving God’s will, by any stretch of the imagination.
In happier news, we’ve been having some Iraqi guys come to our English classes, and they’re cool. One of them is from Fallujah (that name should ring a bell), and apparently that city’s calmed down a lot. The other guy’s from Baghdad. They’re really funny guys. Actually, all people I’ve met from Iraq and Iran are really cool guys. Even the Iraqis who don’t like Americans—far and away the minority—are really nice about it. I have a lot of respect for people from the Middle East. I would LOVE to go visit there one day.
Well, that’s how my week’s been going. I love you all, and I’ll write again next week!
--Elder Hurst
elder crunch
This is a drawing of me done by a kid in Verkhovyna. Like many Ukrainian kids, he confuses my cyrillic name, "XYPCT" (Khurst) with the Ukrainian word for "crunch," "XPYCT" (Khrust). For many people, I'm Elder Crunch. It's not as glamorous as it sounds.
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