Mariah, Week 11, Nikolaev

Lesson learned this week:

• Never let two one-week old greenie missionaries go out on splits with each other and expect them NOT to get lost.

Hello from Ukraine, everyone!

I am currently sitting next to a man at a computer who is sipping a beer and reeks of sweat. Yup, they really do not use deodorant in Ukraine... so it's been a really fun internet time.

Anyway.

This week has been crazy. And this is gonna be a short e-mail, only because I really don't know how to effectively spend my e-mail time yet.

Okay, so. A lot of things have happened during my second week here. It rained for two days and I found out that I am so unprepared and out of my element here... Seriously, I go from living in a place where it's 100+ degrees 8 out of the 12 months for more than half of my life... to here. What. am. I. doing. Bleh. But meh it's cool.

Earlier this week, on Wednesday, the missionaries in Nikolayiv traveled down to Xherson, a smaller city an hour south-east of Nikolayiv, to attend a zone training. It was cool to see and talk with Sister Meyers again... even though I saw them just a week prior. But anyway, the zone training was awesome. Someone mentioned it being like a MTC devotional. And they were right. Afterwards, we all felt super energized and ready to hit the goals that we set during the training. Wednesday was also the day that Sister Dickison, who is the Sister Training Leader for the southern cities in our mission, decided to do exchanges with the sisters in Xherson. So... that meant that Sister Meyers and I were on exchanges with each other for the whole day... which was really fun! If you count out the times where we got lost in Xherson. Which wasn't fun. But I ended up learning a lot.

Snap. Time's running out.

But other random things worth mentioning:

• Ukraine has probably beat Canada on the things that are bagged. There is bagged milk, bagged yogurt, bagged sauce, bagged ketchup, bagged laundry detergent, bagged everything.
• There are SO many stray cats and dogs here. It's insane. The dogs basically rule the streets. They are everywhere!
• Squatting toilets. Yup. I won't abbreviate on that one.

All in all -- Ukraine is awesome. It's still awesome, and I love it's crappy bumpy streets with it's crappy sewer-drainage system and all the stray cats and dogs. And most importantly, I freaking love the people here. Even though I don't really know what they're saying most of the time, I know that it's the place where I'm supposed to be right now. I love it here, and I feel so honored that I get to be part of the Lord's special forces and teach the people of Ukraine the gospel. Even though I don't speak Russian very well, I know that I don't need to speak Russian to be able to help people feel the Spirit.

TTFN!

Сестра Макрей 

(Sister McCea)