A Week of Insanity

So, this week was fun. We cleaned up the apartment a bunch, played a bunch of mandolin and guitar, went and tried to find a guy who is apparently from America that lives here, did English practice, game night, tried to do a big social media push. Kharkov is awesome, we're having a blast. We're busy basically always, which is awesome. It's way better than office work, for which I am glad.

This morning our district got together and I made pancakes for everyone, which was delicious. Everybody brought toppings and such, and it was a ton of fun.

We have a guy getting ready to be baptized this Saturday, so we're going to be preparing for that this week, among other things.

When we were trying to find that American guy we decided to stop by his apartment and see if he was home. He wasn't but one of the ancient grandmothers that guards the doors to the stairwells in some apartment buildings came out and talked to us. It took a while before she understand what we were telling her, but in the end we got her to take a note and give it to him once he got home. It must have worked, because he ended up giving us a call later that day. Guardian Babushka for the win!

So, that's just a little sample of my week. I'll attach a video of the apartment in the state that it was in when I came. It's a lot better now, but I forgot to take another video.

So, that's life. It's going pretty fantastic. Winter came back today, it snowed all morning. None of it stuck though.

So... Peace!

Elder Robison

P.S. I'll actually send the videos in a different email, it'll take too long to load right now.

Guess Who's Not in Dnepr Anymore!

This guy!

That's right! I'm now in Kharkov! Just like the majority of my previous companions! Kharkov is HUGE! It's absolutely crazy. I've already been in 3 of the 4 regions, but that's only thanks to the metro (subway?). This place is crazy.

There's this jank electric guitar that appears to be hand-made chilling out in the branch buillding. Also an amp. I may or may not have been playing on it while I waited for my companion to do his emailing.

Speaking of which, my new companion is Elder Downing. He's from Austin, Texas. He was serving in Russia, but he got set up and deported, so now he's here with us in Ukraine. He's a cool guy, really smart. We went and got a mandolin today for him. We're going to play bluegrass at English practices and it shall be grand!

Last week was just a lot of stuff. I don't know where to start/end. So basically, I'm just going to leave it on the fact that I'm now in Kharkov. Sound good? Sounds good.

There will be more next week! Hopefully!

Peace out!

Elder Robison

The way out of Dnepr 

Jank old guitar

And This Week...

We find out what's going on with transfers! That's right, transfer week! On Wednesday President released me from my duties in the language department, so I no longer have things to do in the office. That's pretty nice, but it makes me think that my time is at end here. Everybody is pretty sure of that, actually. I mean, I have been here almost 6 months, and that's the normal time I've spent in one place on my mission so far.

Who knows, though, anything could happen.

I finally bought an ushanka last week! For those who don't know, an ushanka is the classic Russian fur hat. I'll send pictures. We all wore our ushanki outside just to see what would happen (it's pretty weird to wear one not in the dead of winter). It was super fun!

This week was International Women's Day, something that's very big in Ukraine. We celebrated that. The branch had a Women's Day party on Saturday, and all of the Elders in our district once more adorned their ushanki to sing Katyusha, an old Russian song that is possibly the most Russian of all songs.

Yeah, that's about it. 

Oh, we found a circus lady with a crow! They put it on Elder Balyas's shoulder! Yeah. That was a strange night.

Peace?

Elder Robison

Spring Done Sprung!

So, Winter officially gave up last week! It is solidly Spring now! It's been like 50 degrees every day this past week, the snow is nowhere to be found, and the sun is out and bright.

We did a bunch this week. English practices were awesome, so was game night. We went to a museum with our friend Kolia and then to another English practice that we found. It was a good week.

Unfortunately, we had to say goodbye to Elder Jensen. He had to go back to America for a surgery on his sinuses. He's a good kid, and we'll miss him. Hopefully he'll get to come back once he's recovered from the operation, but nobody knows for sure about that.

There's a couple of videos here from Sunday dinner. It was super good.

That's about all as far as writing goes. Hope you guys had a good week!

Peace out!

Elder Robison