MERRY CHRISTMAS! (a little early)

I figure that last time I talked about Thanksgiving late, so this time I'll talk about Christmas early. That works, right?

Anyway, Merry Christmas!

This week I said goodbye to Elder Peterson, sent him across the river. He's Left Bank's problem now.

Also said goodbye to Elder Ditty. That was a lot more sad, we've been through a lot together, me and Elder Ditty. He's already home now, doing whatever it is that Elder Ditty does when he's not the branch president of a small city in southern Ukraine.

Elder Cannon is my new companion, like I already said last time. He's super cool, he's from Honeyville, Utah. If you don't know where that is, it's OK. I don't either. I know it exists though. He's a pretty cool guy, and I think we're going to have a sick time together. That might end up being only till Sunday, it might end up being unil the end of next transfer... No one knows, the transfer cycle has gotten way weird now, you never actually know when a mid-transfer transfer will happen. Twice. It's probably a nightmare for President to organize it all.

So, that's what's going on with me. It's really cold, but the snow is back, so that's acceptable.

Peace out!

Elder Robison

This is me and Elder Cannon. We found out that the high that day was supposed to be -7 Celsius. I think the low was -15? Not sure. It was cold though, I can tell you that. We walked all day.

Another Transfer!

So. first things first, the snow is all gone. This is sad.

On to less important things, Elder Peterson is getting transfered. It may seem harsh to call that less important, but he's still going to be in Dnepro. He's going across the river, it's not a huge change. It's like he isn't really leaving, I have the option to call him in if I need help with the language program.

Elder Cannon is going to be my new companion. He's from Utah. He's from my MTC group, but he was in a different district. Should be pretty fun.

I don't know how many of you have heard of this, but there's a movie that the Church put out called "Meet the Mormons". It's a pretty good documentary, but the problem is that the Russian tranlation is... not fantastic. It's not bad, it makes sense, and it works, it's just not very good. What's bad is the Russian subtitles! Those make no sense at all.

The reason I bring this up is that this week we wanted to show it to our English practice goers, but we wanted to have Russian subtitles, because not everybody at our English practice understands English very well. I won't lie, some don't at all.

We knew how bad the subs were, so I had to translate it again in order to use it. 

The old subs were so bad. There wasn't a single line that didn't require reworking. To give an example:

What's said in English:

-"I'm the bishop here, I can help you."

-"You're the bishop?"

What the Russian subtitlist got out of that:

-"I'm the elephant there, helping you."

-"That's you, as an elephant?"

I'm not making this up.

Other than that, I got told an interesting anectdote by a less-active member while we were helping him move a pile of logs. He was talking about Stalingrad, and he told us that the people who live there say, "If the world were a giant butt, Stalingrad is the hole."

I can't say that I've often had people compare the world with a butt in a philosohpical way before, but something about Russian just makes it possible.

Well, that's a lot, so I'll stop here.

Peace out!

Elder Robison

It was Elder Litchfield's birthday this week, and so we had cake for district meeting.

 This is what happened to the cake.

This is apparently one of Sister Savran's traditions.

SNOW!

It's snowing. I'm looking out the office window right now, and there's big ol' snowflakes falling. There's snow everywhere, it's fantastic! I love it so much! We've been covered in snow since Friday, and I don't think it's going away this time! Several snowball fights have broken out, I won't claim responsibility for any of them.

Elder Ditty is staying with us for a little bit, his companion had to go back to Kherson because of registration thing. It's been fun having him around.

I think that's pretty much all that's interesting. I've gotten to the point where people are starting to guess that I'm from somewhere in the Baltic states when I talk to them, so that's pretty cool.

Well, that's all for now. If I remember something cool, I'll send another email in a bit.

Peace out!

Elder Robison

 This is our footprints in the snow. I was impressed by how cleanly footprints came out in the snow, especially because it was such pristine snowfall, so I turned around and took a picture. Then I realized that Elder Peterson didn't leave super crisp footprints.

I drew this, and then we decided that it's Elder Peterson.

This is what Elder Peterson will look like in 20 years though...