Week 28:End of Transfer

Today is my last day in Gorlovka. I got my transfer call last night, and was able to pack all of my stuff up in one night, so that's good. I have finally started to feel better after my 2 weeks of absolute Hell! My level of sickness was similar to that of when I had my appendicitis attack, but 24/7. Constant sweat, fever, churning stomach..it was nooooot fun. Luckily it's over. As far as I know at least, haha. In total I lost 12 pounds over the whole experience, but I've gained most of it back because i've been eating like a mad man. 

On the brighter side of things, we finished up this transfer strong. I'm hoping that whoever comes in and takes my place will keep this area alive. It now has the most investigators, lessons, etc etc in the mission and it would break my heart if someone just came in and let it die! Luckily, the missionaries in this mission are awesome, so I'm sure it will be fine. 

Other than that, nothing big has really happened. I was still sick for most of last week, so there was a bunch of laying around wishing for death, and yeah. Like I said earlier, I went around the Kvartal and talked to a lot of the less actives and investigators we have and it was a really cool experience. It's hard to believe I've been here for 7 months. That gave me a lot of time to get to know people, and to be able to help them. I have a lot of good friendships here in Gorlovka, it will be sad to move on but at the same time I'm quite ready to get a change of scenery. I'm going to send some pictures your way, and I'll make sure to put some captions on. Those pretty much sum up the last week. Next week's email will be a lot more interesting because I will know where I am going. So yeah. Sorry to leave you hanging again! At least monday isn't too far away ;)

Proverbs 29:18

Where there is no vision, the people perish. 

Keep your eyes ahead of you. Always look to the future and have some sort of goal. How can you progress if you don't even know in what direction you should be progressing? Love that verse, definately one of my favorites. I could go on forever, but luckily for you I need to send these pictures ;)

Take care, I love you all.

Kyle

Also, the last picture is me standing on the bridge overlooking the kvartal. This has been my home for 7 months, and I love it!

I am the King of the Kvartal, Czar of Gorlovka. 

Our last District picture
Left to right
Yefoshkin, Myself, Nuzman, Johnson, Gittins, Goletschokov

So, a quick explanation about this picture. This is called DOM41. Anyone that has ever served in the Kvartal knows that this is the apartment building from Hell. We had to go visit a referral that lived there. Half the doors are broken down, abandoned, and infested by criminals, drug atticts, and RATS. Huge rats. Giant rats. While walking down a hallway, I saw a cat and was like "Cool! No rats in this hallway!" Then, I saw a rat as big as the cat run by it into one of the rooms. My face was similar to this :O. Yeah, the rat was too big for the cat to kill. So, I decided I would rather die than see that rat again. Hence the gun to my head. Yay for rats! For those of you that don't know, I have a phobia of rats.

This right here is what Ukrainian chicken can look like sometimes. And no, we did NOT eat that. Nooooooooo way.

So, this car is called a Lada. It's an old soviet era car. When people have cars here, they are usually lada's. There is one Lada in Gorlovka that is the king of all lada's. I've tried catching a picture of it, but never good. Then, on my second to last day here, I caught it in all it's glory. I couldn't stop laughing when I saw how perfect the picture is. I feel like Oscar and Sebastian will especially appreciate the creativity of the mods the guy thought of. Oh, the other day we saw a Lada that had 10 headlights. For what reason, I don't know. But it did. 

Someone just happened to graffiti "I love Christina" right outside our apartment door, so I just decided to use the bad for the good!

Of course I had to get a companionship picture on these tracks. Us walking back home. I really like this one.

Me. Railroad tracks. Buildings. I've been in every single one of those apartment buildings. Weird.

Almost getting crushed by 500 billion pounds of rock that are just chilling by Ukrainian railroad tracks.

Gittins and I taking a companionship picture in center Gorlovka. Good times, I love this kid! 

This doorway is all that's left in a field of ruins on the way to the Kvartal. I thought it looked pretty cool.

While walking to a lesson the other day, I saw somethign move by my feet. I thought it was a huge rat, but it turned out to be a cat with a bunch of little wild kittens! They were so cute! Loved them.

Week 27: Sick!

This week consisted of me feeling incredibly bloated and running a fever until Saturday. I lost 9 pounds in 2 days. The Doctor said it was salmonella or some really weird virus and ordered me to stay inside for two weeks, so of course being myself I took that as 1 week, and finally got out of the house this Sunday and Monday. I didn't get to leave my apartment once, and the one time I did there were rats in our dungeon of an apartment stairwell that were trying to break into our door. These rats are huge here. Probably the size of my 14 shoes. 

The weather here has been wet as well, but it's humid wet. Granted, we've had some rainstorms, but they usually clear up and move out pretty quickly. It's the weirdest thing to have it 80 degrees out and thundering with huge rain downpours. The worst part is that the rain is sticky. If it wasn't, it'd be fine. The wind wips and throws people around while the raindrops come down like bullets. It's quite the experience. 

As I said, I'm sorry I don't have more to write about, but this week has literally consisted of me sitting in my apartment doing absolutely nothing. It's been the worst! I am feeling a lot better, and I'm hoping to feel 100% soon. Things are going well  here, I'm pushing along as always.

Goldfish, yum.

Entrance to the park here in Gorlovka. "Park of culture and rest"

You can't really tell, but it was raining superrrr hard.

More nature pictures!

Week 26: More Pictures!

Pictures from a service project we did, out in a little village. I've become really lame and I really enjoy nature photography now 

One of our very crazy, very short, and very old investigators haha

We had the opportunity to go to a Russian circus. It was...interesting. They made little boys undress on stage and do weird things, had a person dressed as a cowboy marching a HUGE rat around, and pretended to shoot little kids on stage. It was a blast, hahaha. 

Missionaries in the Gorlovka Branch

Week 25: Pictures!

Some of my friends on the street!

"Another shot"

"Ukrainian Fertility Cakes, now I'm even more fertile. ;) "

"Sprite, without alcohol. Because there's more things WITH alcohol, so they have to clarify what's without, haha."

"Nuzman, Irena an investigator and myself!"

"Picked these up from a friend here. Thought Dad would like this."

"Eggs for the family + Christina!"

Kyle's new mission president. "I'm going to miss Campero a lot, and I love him with all of my heart but I think I'll have a pretty special connection with this guy." 

"Nature :)"

"So out in the middle of some small house area, we found a castle that someone lives in? It had turrets and everything. Hahaha it was awesome."

"Yes, I ate smoked fish. Video to come."

"She made it for you [Christina]..."

"..but you weren't here so I wore it for you :)"

Week 24: Service Projects!

This week was really rushed. But, we still had some cool opportunities to do service. The first one was with a babushka named Lyudmilla Shootko. It was pretty morbid though. We went to the graveyard and helped clean off her parents, brother's, and husband's grave. Then, we helped clean off her future one. Wasn't the most fun thing for her I would imagine. 

Then, like you saw in the pictures we had an opportunity to do service for some members out of Gorlovka in a little village. It was really fun! Well, really fun except for the ride home. In short, this is what happened. He took the other 4 elders of our district to the busstop down the road, and Gittins and I waited for him. Then, he came and got us and took us. Turns out the bus already left with the other elders, so we sat there and waiting. The bus is supposed to come everyhalf hour, but the guy for some reason just flagged down the next bus he saw (Maybe 5 minutes later), told us to get on, and drove away. As soon as I sat down I was thinking "Well, with our luck this isn't going to Gorlovka and he just wanted to get rid of us". Sure enough, I was right. Well, somewhat. The bus went to Gorlovka, but it went straight through it. I asked the busdriver to stop on the Kvartal where we live (As we were driving through it), but he said since I didn't have a ticket that he wasn't going to stop until the final destination. So, we sat on this bus going through several ukrainian villages and towns for a little over an hour. Then, the guy dropped us off at some random spot in a random city and charged us 40 Grieven. So, at that point we were down to 35, our phone was about to die, and we didn't have any money. With a big grin on my face we started to walk around the city. "Think of this elder Gittins! We are lost in a city in the middle of nowhere with no way home. What an adventure!" hahah. It was great. We managed to hop on a trolley bus, and made it to the bus station. I went to the front and asked when the next bus leaving to Gorlovka was, and the lady told me it was outside. We got on the bus, and I was like "We made it! Woohoo!". So I ask the people siotting behind me "can we pay on the bus or do we need a ticket". They said that we could pay on the bus, so all is well, right? nope. The driver calls us off the bus, and I try to pay him there but he says we "need a ticket". He promises to wait there. As I get to the ticket window, the lady says "you don't need a ticket for that" and we see the bus drive by outside. So yeah. At that point I was just shaking my head as we walked outside. I watched some Ukrainian kids try to BMX (they were awful), and decided to sit down on a bench outside. Then, a random un-numbered bus came up and we found out they were going through Gorlovka! Woohoo! We got on, and about halfway through the trip the bus broke down. Then, the bus driver said "don't worry, another bus is coming!" Whew. Well, 10 minutes later he said "nevermind, it's not". So, once again, we just sat there waiting for something to happen. THen, this awesome old guy I was talking witht he whole time hopped under the bus and somehow hit the axel with a piece of metal, or something ridiculous like that and it fixed itself. So, alas, after a long day and with 2 grieven (about 25 cents) we made it home. Just another day as Kyle Litzenberger. I'm pretty sure this stuff only happens to me. I'm cursed, haha. On the bright side, we had a ton of lessons this week and everyone is doing awesome! Our zone is killing it here, I love every single one of the missionaries here. They are fantastic! The best of the best.

Oh, also. I forgot to mention that when I wear my glasses outside, people no longer think I'm American, and instead of getting "HELLO AMERICA MY FRIEND" or "GO HOME YANKEE" I get "SPRECHEN SIE DEUTSCH" and "DEUTSCHLAND UBER ALLES". 

I love you all! Hope all is well back on the homefront. Keep kicking it.

With love,

Kyle

Last monday after Basketball we went home to find the tree outside our building just randomly fell over. I had to take a picture on it.

Yeah, that pair of mismatched socks has finally hit the trash. I've done a lot of walking here, haha.

Just a picture of some of the food here, I know some of you might want to know what it's like. Lots of soups, breads, potatoes. In the words of elder Gittins, "This is what I imagine a rug tasting like"

I found a ridiculously huge Ukrainian lighter. I call it my torch.

Little Tanya and her daisy head thing. Love her family!

Finally getting green outside, just like good 'ol Washington :)

Part of the mine by the graveyard. That huge tower is where the lift goes down into the mine. The only reason ukraine even has "hills", if you can call them that is because the mine pushes the dirt up. It's super flat here!

Spring graveyard flame tree.

An overlook of part of the graveyard where we did service. It was the biggest graveyard I've ever seen in my life.

More green! Woohoo!

Our apartment building is the one on the left. Concrete Jungle.

Beautiful Ukraine!

We did service in a little village this last week, and they had a legit well! It was so cool! 

We caught a lizard during the service project.

Trying to look tough with a sickle and "broom", but I was trying my hardest not to laugh. I don't think I would make a very good intimating person, haha. 

Me on a Dacha! (Ukrainian farm cottage)

District eating at the service.

With easter around the corner, I decided to buy everyone in the family +Christina Traditional Easter eggs.  If anyone else back home wants one, let me know! They're hand painted, and some of them say "Christ is Risen" in Russian. 

In just one week my garden has already taken off!