My Awesome Week

This past Saturday was an unprecedented day in our mission - there were four baptisms on the same day! Two of them were baptized in Dnepr, so I was able to attend with one of our investigators. One of the people being baptized is a 20-something girl who is going to be such a solid member of the Church! She was taught by the sisters I live with. The other baptism was for a 40-something man taught by some elders in my district. The Spirit was so strong at that double baptism, and it just felt incredible to be joined there with so many members, investigators, and missionaries. There was such joy in the room, that after each baptism, everybody broke out into applause - that made me happy. I was able to play the piano again as part of a special musical number, which was quite enjoyable. It's so neat to see the work moving forward in this mission and see the increase in baptisms and investigators, even during the short time I've been here. There truly are incredible things about to happen in this corner of the world, and I'm incredibly excited to be a part of it.

On Saturday, we had gotten permission to attend a ballet as part of a branch activity, and we were all looking forward to that. Before the ballet, we decided to take our dinner hour and try out a new restaurant that had just opened by Center Branch. We were misinformed, however, on the amount of time this particular restaurant would take  . . . We anxiously kept checking our clocks, and by the time our food arrived, we had fifteen minutes to eat and make it to the other side of Center for the ballet. We had ordered two meter-long pizzas (yeah, I wasn't sure I believed it either when I read the menu - but they actually were three feet long and about a foot wide) for the four of us sisters, and I'm sure the people who work at that place have never seen 6 feet of pizza disappear in 6 minutes flat like that. It was a pretty impressive feat. ;) We did shove half of one of the pizzas into a bag to take with us, but I was still quite impressed with our eating skills. 

We made it to the ballet on time, and it was super entertaining! It was about pirates and there were some epic ninja vs. pirate battle scenes. I absolutely loved the live orchestra and suddenly realized how much I miss playing in group like that. The dancing was really impressive, as were the costumes. I definitely feel a little more cultured after that experience. It was a lot of fun to mingle with the branch members and other missionaries there. 

Also on Saturday we got a new investigator named Ludmila. She (like most of the people we teach) is an older woman and is very kind. We invited her to read the Book of Mormon, and she was like, "Of course I'll read the Book of Mormon!" She kept saying that she "of course" wanted to learn more and thought that the Restoration was possible. I'm excited to meet with her more.

The weather has been a lot cooler this week, which has been quite delightful. There's been a lot of rain. I love it when it rains here! The sky is so big and you can just see clouds from horizon to horizon. Pretty neat.

After about a week of some good workouts, our elevator was repaired! Definitely an exciting moment in our lives. Carrying all our groceries up 10 flights of stairs was a fun adventure I'm glad to not be repeating today. :)

Sunday night we had a lesson with Anya, who is one of my favorite people we're teaching. She loves to spend time with us, and I really feel like we're friends. She's been telling us for weeks that she wants to show us how to cook this vegetarian cake. So last night she finally did. It was pretty simple - it's like a butter, sour cream, flour crust that you roll out, fill with jam, and roll back up. They're quite delicious. We made probably a hundred of those and talked about life and the gospel as we did so. That was a really fun experience.

A couple elders are heading home this week, so this morning we had a farewell basketball/ultimate frisbee party at this epic park. It might possibly be the coolest park I've been to - there are huge plastic (or metal . . . I'm not sure - they're painted) animals, and a huge faris wheel, and tons of trees and flowers, and an amusement park area, and legit basketball courts - I quite like it. 

I'm pretty sure I've eaten more pickles in Ukraine than I ever have in my whole life. Mostly because I keep forgetting to learn the word for pickle, so I can't ask for a hamburger without them . . . so I'll either learn to like pickles, or I'll remember to look up the word. (Possibly the former, seeing as how one of the meter-long pizzas we ate had these cute little pickles on the top, and I actually kind of enjoyed them.) We'll see what happens first.