Adjustments and Blessings!

This has been an eventful week for Mom and Dad! They are adjusting to their new life in Ukraine and loving it. The work they do as missionaries is so rewarding and fulfilling! If anyone would like to e-mail them, they have decided to keep their e-mail address from home which is ademolady@comcast.net. They are busy as missionaries, so they may not get back to everyone individually, but they will do their best. Here is their letter this week--

Today is 18 November 2013. It is Monday, P-day and we are writing a letter about the week here in Gorlovka, Ukraine.

 We have no sisters here, just 3 sets of the best elders ever. They are incredible! They are working all the time to bring the gospel to a people who have only a soviet background. Alcoholism and drug abuse is everywhere, but the society as a whole gets by quite well. Our elders are from the western part of the US. They are from Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Washington and Arizona. They all work together extremely well. With the new influx of missionaries, three have been here for some time and speak Russian very well and three are still learning. In any case, they are each far ahead of us.

 This week was transfer week. For those who may not know, transfers are every six weeks and they correspond to the days when new missionaries arrive or leave. Those involved in the transfer in this mission come to the Donetsk mission office. Each is interviewed by the president and introduced to their new companion. The president and others give short instruction. Then the new companionships are placed on buses or trains and sent to their places of work. One of our sets was involved this cycle. They knew a week in advance, so there was time to let the investigators know and to clean the apartment and pack. From our side, it is interesting losing one of our young men and hoping to get another good enough to fill the vacancy. We did.

We had a district meeting in our apartment this week on Saturday. Our plan was to have lunch together and visit for about an hour before. We had started on Friday and cooked potatoes and grated cheese and got the hamburger ready to cook, and we were glad we did. Cooking here is different. Imagine no pre-prepared items at all. Potatoes are as they come out of the ground. We can select if they still have dirt on them or for a couple pennies more the dirt can be cleaned off. Cheese is only in solid blocks, no shredded, and no sliced. Bread is as it comes out of the oven and is GREAT, but it isn’t sliced. Bob likes the kind with hard crust and soft inside.

 We decided that fresh bread and ice cream were in order for the meeting, so we went across the street to the corner store to get them. Alice missed a step and fell on the floor hurting her left shoulder. It still is very painful, but getting better a bit at a time. When we reported the mishap to the mission office, the president told the elders to cancel the district meeting. He and his wife brought another senior couple who have been working with sports injuries for years to evaluate where we were. The diagnosis was a muscle problem, not a break of any kind. Treatment was Advil and Tylenol, an arm sling and cold to keep the swelling down. Alice was out of the team for meal preparation, but the meal was more than half ready. After the president left and things were settling, Alice said, “Call the elders and let’s have the meeting.” She gave instructions and Bob followed orders, well most of them anyway. And the meat was cooked and the shepherd’s pie assembled and baked (oven instructions in Russian temps in C – use your best guess) ready to come out when the elders arrived.

The meal went well. District meeting went well with a cameo appearance from Alice. Goals are now set for this transfer period and they are ready, set, gone.

 This week we are looking forward to getting Alice better. She has found on the internet some exercises that seem to work. We have another district meeting on Wednesday.

 Notes:

There aren’t many sunny days this time of year. And even at noon the sun is not very high in the sky. It gets light at about 7am and dark by 3:30pm. We are just 33 days from the shortest day of the year, and then it will start getting brighter again. Satellite dishes look strange. They are nearly horizontal.

 There are babushka (“grandmothers” - generally older women who have lost their husbands) taking care of everything just because it needs taking care of. We already know that even a drunken man will not stand up to a babushka. They seem to always get their way. When Bob didn’t have his coat done up enough for the cold, it was a babushka who loudly told him to button up and stay warm.

We are still new here and learning our roles. Every day we ask ourselves, “What can we do more?” and “What can we do better?” So each day is better than the one before. We are studying Russian, we are always in for a new adventure.

Elder and Sister Preece

Gorlovka

Donetsk, Ukraine mission