FREEDOM DAY!!

YEAH!

AMERICA!

FREEDOM!

HECK YEAH!

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! 

Ok, now that that's over with, we can get into the actual email.

Happy 4th of July everyone! This week has been insanity to the max. I thought a lot happened last week, but this week lasted forever! We did so much this week. So much.

On Tuesday we hauled Elder Downing's stuff to Novy Doma. We called a taxi. Somehow, the taxi never showed up. After a few calls, they sent another taxi. This one showed up and took us to Novy Doma, where Elder Fuller and I had a good reunion. Elder Cannon and Elder Mayberry came and picked me up from there, and we went back to Saltovka. That day we went to do some slack lining with a friend we have from Turkmenistan. He's really cool, speaks a ton of different languages. Except English. He's trying to learn English right now. That night we sat down and made a plan for how to best combine our areas the most effectively. 

That was also the FOURTH OF JULY!! YEAH!!!

Sorry, that just came out. Anyway, we had lots of fun with that over the course of the day.

Wednesday we had district meeting and made plans for the sick BBQ that we planned for the 8th. English practice was fun that night. We combined the intermediate and advanced classes, which is working out pretty well. Unfortunately, I'm not sure all of the people in the intermediate class are really ready for that shift. We may have to suggest they join the lower group. They probably won't do it, but we'll probably at least suggest it.

On Thursday we went to a store called Caravan to buy the meats and such for the BBQ. We figured that we didn't have the right tools to make good smoked BBQ, but we could definitely make some good pulled pork and pulled chicken sandwhiches, so we bought pork butt and chicken quarters and all of the stuff we needed to make BBQ sauce, because they don't sell that here in Ukraine. That night we went to an English club that the other Elders normally go to. They appearantly go by first names there, so I got to awkwardly introduce myself as Stirling for the first time in an eon. I then thought it might be hard for them to say Stirling, so I said they could call me Doug if it was too hard. Doug ended up sticking. Thanks, Dad!

On Friday we took Elder Mayberry to Center for a leadership meeting that has been affectionately dubbed 'Jedi Council'. This left Elder Cannon and I to wander about a bit in downtown Kharkiv while we waited for a meeting that fell through on us. We ended up waiting in the branch building there, when a member approached us and asked us to go with him to give a blessing to an old man in a hospital. We agreed and got permission to go with him, because we don't really belong in Center, so we have to get things cleared. We get going and he only then explains that it's a 40 minute ride to the hospital that we're going to. You know, 40 minutes outside of already being 40 minutes outside of our area. We keep going when Elder Schwaighart texts us and tells us to come back. We ended up having them send 2 missionaries to take Elder Mayberry to us and then continue further with the member to go give the blessing. That was a fun adventure.

Saturday was the day of the picnic. That was about 2-and-a-half buckets of crazieness. Elder Cannon and I pulled out all of our cooking experience and made enough BBQ sauce and spicy ketchup for about 19 pounds of chicken and pork. Turns out, that's just the right amount to be able to feed 60 people. Thank you, Herbal Life, for teaching me how to weigh out portions of food for a meal! The picnic turned out awesome, there were a ton of people there, and everyone had a good time and enjoyed some really good pulled pork sandwhiches. I'm not even going to bother being humble on that one, those were some good sandwhiches. We spent literally all day running around to different stores and doing different errands, and then frantically shredding the pork and chicken and dishing everything out. It was super fun, and we got to talk to lots of great people.

Sunday was much more subdued by comparison. We were pretty tired from the whole ordeal of the picnic. That night we went out to a park as a district and talked to a bunch of people, it was really nice.

And that was my week. It probably doesn't sound half so crazy in this email as it actually was when we were doing it. I guess you just had to be there.

Peace out! 

Elder Robison

Here's some sick pics

 Me on the yard by our branch. The big blue-gold building in the back is a православный храм. As you can tell, I've been practicing my "I'm-too-cool-to-smile" face recently.

This is me with some bones at a museum we went to today.