Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Happy Birthday Gram!! Happy Birthday Mom!!

Well, they switched things up on me - I thought I was going to be in Chernivtsy with Elder Kaufman, but I am with Elder Eskelcen. He is from Washington State, a really cool guy. He is 3 months younger then me on the mission (2 transfers). He is 20 years old, was a pole vaulter in high school, and we live in a really cool city. Chernivtsy does not have many of the big Soviet buildings that are in most cities. The ones here are spread out and are not much more then 5 floors high and the city is on hills; it's not flat like the cities I have served in before. It's really cool. The apartment in which I live is nice; it's really big. My USB does not work at this computer or I would send you pics. It has a big bedroom, a study room, kitchen and bathroom and a spare room; they are all really big and the ceilings are really high. We have these interesting heaters - I have to use matches to start them each day. They are like cement and tile and you can only have them on for 30-40 mins, then you turn off the gas and they stay hot for hours. We use them before bed and when we wake up and it's really nice all day.

So the first day here was interesting. I had to pack my luggage all night in Ivano and the power went off for a while, so I had no light. Luckily I had my flashlight that does not need batteries (thank you Heather!). Yeah, so I packed all night until about 2 in the morning and then went to bed. It took a bit to fall asleep because I was thinking about my new city. The alarm went off at 2:40 am so I could shower and make breakfast before heading to the train - yeah, I was sleepy. It was a morning train with a window to the rising sun, so we did not sleep on the train. But I get here and its all good. We get in the new place, and we ate breakfast at a cool cafe. It was my companion and one other missionarie's one-year-on-the-mission day, so we had plove (rice with spices) and put a candle in it for the one-year mark. I later went back to the apartment and crashed for 1 hour, then got up to do a few things in town. I have meet a few of our investigators and 3 of our investigators have baptismal dates and they are dang cool. One guy named Andrea, he is in his 30's, and one named Lubamir and he is 21. They are both really cool guys. The Branch here is cool. Tons of them speak English, more in this branch than any other I have served in. Its cool - they speak to you in Ukrainian for normal things, and then will joke in English, or if you don't understand they will say it in English.

My district is cool - Elder Kaufman is 2 transfers ahead of me and was trained by my trainer and he is the district leader. He is with Elder Horne from my last area; he is 1 transfer in the country. And then the sisters - there is Sister Mills, she is 2 transfers in the country after I came and she is with Sister Bloomquist (not sure how to spell in English) and she is from Elder Horne's group. My companion is from the same group as Elder Mills, 2 transfers after me, so its a fun district.

My English class is way fun, and its nice to teach English with someone else. Doing them solo was hard in Ivano - 30 Min's to plan English can be hard.

But anyhow, I am done for now. I will talk to you next week. Hopefully I will get a computer with a USB port so you can see a little about the stuff going on here - it's fun!