The Second to Last Email‏! E-mail - May 20, 2013

Hello All,

Well, there isn't much to write, we had a fun week, finally got some rain. Most of my time is up because I had to figure out some emailing and picture stuff on the computer. I'll be in Kyiv next week.

Because our group is so large going home, President and some of the departing missionaries in Kyiv have organized a going away FHE for us. So Monday night we're going to have this big FHE for all of us that served in the Kyiv areas. It should be really fun. Then the next day I'll see MOM and JOHN! Plus this Thursday we might be going to the theater with our less active. It should be really cool.

So funny story and picture for the week. We've been out of hot water for about a week already going on two, and we've had to figure out how to deal with it. Now the cold water in Ukraine is like ice chunks cold. So we've got a system down that includes sponge bathing with water heated in our automatic teapot and washing our hair in the large basin in our kitchen. I'm so glad I cut my hair last summer. Sister Old's hair so long so she has a bigger problem than me.

Have a good week!

--

Sister Daniel

The Post-Skype Email...‏ E-mail - May 13, 2013

This is always the hardest email because I often don't know what to write. I guess I could write some funny stories.

Side note first: Mom you will be eating Borshch when you come here, you have to, it's like the only food that's actually Ukrainian. It's actually really grown on me...I really like it. The plans sound fine. It's going to be so cool staying in the hotel in downtown Kyiv. It sounds like Sister Olds and I will actually be in Kyiv that Monday. But I don't want to see you until Tuesday. So you would just need to be at the temple at 230 at the latest on Tuesday, but if you wanted to come a little earlier than that please do. 

I got emails from Jolene and Joyce this week...that was a nice suprise!!

Okay...funny story time. So we were here in our little town of Khmenitsky and we were with Sister Olds' sister and her friend and this pack of little girls come up and ask "where are you from?" (we had been speaking in English) We said..."America"...all of the sudden we were the celebrities of Khmelnitsky the little girl and all of her little friends wanted to give us a tour and show us around. It was so funny, she walked forward a little bit to a tree and said, pointing to it "This is a tree". Apparently that's as interesting as it gets in our city LOL.

We had a great time in L'viv hanging out there, and doing missionary work. It is a gorgeous city!

That's about it...It was good to see you. I'm excited to see you in person! Love you!

:)

Pictures: the view from a tower in L'viv and the running team in the morning.

--
Sister Daniel

Easter in Ukraine...a cultural experience‏ E-mail - May 6, 2013

Easter in Ukraine is an interesting phenomenon. Basically everyone actually goes to the Orthodox church and they walk around all day saying "Jesus is Resurrected" and then you say back "Yea, he's resurrected." We decided to go contacting with the tactic of just saying the normal greating and giving people the "Living Christ". It works extremely well, but I couldn't decide if it was almost inappropriate to do that and if most people think that we're actually orthodox. Maybe we'll have a ton of new people at church next week expecting an orthodox church and they'll see how absolutely true our church is and we'll convert a ton of people.

We went to shashlik this Saturday. Shashlik is Ukrainian for shishkabobs and I'm sending you a picture of the event. So normally we have about 20 some people at church but we had over 40 for Shashlik and about half were investigators, it was really cool to see everyone interact.

So for this last week we've been trying to invite all of our members including the less active ones to the shashlik event, needless to say, some of them were not super happy to see us. We went to a village to see one of them. Turns out 3 of our less actives live out there, one of which tried to sick her killer German Shepherd on us. Kind of scary. The funny part is that I couldn't understand every one very well in the village and that was freaking me out. I've been here long enough that I understand just about everyone. Then we figured it out...they were all Polish! There is a village here full of Polish Catholics...and 3 less active Mormons. They were all really nice and it was my first experience with Ukrainian/Polish rather than Ukrainian/Russian.

My companion is great we've become like best friends. She's just really cool. And really fun, and really supportive. AND this note is specifically for John...my companion's best friend/cousin is married to Marie Osmond's son. My companion has met her, talked with her, spent time with her family. And she says that Marie works a lot in the temple in Las Vegas, so maybe when you move out there, you should increase your temple attendance :).

I'm excited for skyping on Saturday...12pm your time.

Love you!!

PS...I almost forgot, I'M GOING TO L'VIV!!!! We're going this week for zone conference, I'm so excited!