Mikkelsen Muzings: надо верить в себя

Тче Шеек оф април 12

"надо верить в себя", the title of our blog this week, was taught by the most wonderful Russian teacher ever. A sweet, wonderful, investigator has taken pity on us and is trying, very patiently, monotonously, painfully, to teach us to pronounce Russian words. This week I caught her shaking her head and saying (in Russian), "How will I ever teach this?". She was trying to get us to say the soft sound for "L" (ль) in the word normal -нормально. She thought of every word she could think of with that sound, then would say (in Russian, еще) another, still another, over and over till we would finally get it. About halfway through the lesson said, "надо верить, надо верить в себя", or "You must believe, you must believe in yourself". Then she added, especially "в нашем возрате"- at our age. =) We all laughed. We love our lessons with Alexandra. She is delightful. She even brought us some delicious apple pancakes (for which we had to have the recipe! I get these recipes but I'm sure it will take me longer to get them right than the language. These ladies are amazing cooks!).
We were able to go out to the Branch Presidents house again this week. They live in a beautiful village not too far out of town. They shared a spiritual though and a meal with us then we went out to see their garden. It was amazing. Put our "obedience garden" to shame. They had six different varieties of everything, along with an orchard of prize winning trees, all in the space of our backyard. Their growing season is so short that they have to get everything started early and then when harvest comes, they bottle, or preserve somehow, everything they can, because you either won't be able to find it till spring or you just would never be able to afford it. I haven't decided if their canning process is just better than ours or the fruits and vegetables grown in this amazingly fertile Ukrainian soil is just better than American produce. Everything we've tasted so far is outstanding. Bottled raspberry jam is as good as our frozen. I've never liked pickles but their pickles are great... Like I said, we have a lot to learn.

Wonderful evening at the Branch President's house.

Their beautiful village. We can see that now. We'll send pics when it actually turns green.

She makes her amazing bread with a kind of sourdough start made with no yeast.
Haven't figured out which plant they use to activate it but I'm on a quest to find out.

For a city of 400,000 people there are very few cars on the road (comparatively). That's because of the amazing public transportation. We spent a lot of time traveling on public transportation this last week. We can choose from an автобус (regular bus- which we rarely ride), a маршрутка (a little mini-bus. We haven't learned these routes yet so we only take those when with the Elders), a трамвае (kind of like the trolleys in San Francisco. They are longer with an accordion spot in the middle. Ours are used ones purchased in Germany, the only other place in the world with the same kind as Vinnitsa), or the one we take the most often, the тролейбус which is like a bus but hooked to power lines and rides on tires. A couple days ago we came back home on one that we thought could not fit another person. Each time it stopped, only one or 2 people got off but 10 more would get on. Everyone would just keep getting closer and closer. It felt like you were sitting on people's laps. (there are seats on the sides and people standing in the middle holding on to rails above). I'm sure we could have fit a few more people in but..... We take the tram's to the far edges of town but the Trolley-buses drop us right where we, and everybody else, need to go in town.

Tram-vi- the one like a SanFrancisco Trolley

Using the main form of transportation- walking, we pass this tower
almost every day on the way to the church.

This is a trolley bus. Someday, when I learn how to add pictures better
I'll add a picture from the inside. It's lost somewhere inside the hard drive right now.

So what else did we do this week? We taught some teenagers the lyrics to "Happy" in one English class, taught prepositions in another English class, bore testimony in two other English classes. We studied. We learned how to cook potato pancakes and baked a lot of apple bread. We met people on the street, tried to get to know them and invite them either to church or to English class. We visited families in their homes, with the Elders in tow to translate (actually we were there most of the time just as support). We answered a lot of questions, ate a lot of yummy food, offered a few very important challenges, gave a little advice, gratefully received advice, taught about American Easter traditions at a RS activity (the deviled eggs were a hit), shared a few гревен (dollars), went to some great meetings (learned a lot), did a little shopping, a little cleaning, and our favorite- visited with family on Skype. I guess the most important thing that happened this week was that our testimonies of the truthfulness of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ was strengthened. So many times in a week
we see our Father in Heaven's hand in our lives and the lives of the people here. We also see how the gospel could help each one of them if we could only share it in a way that they would understand. We have much to learn and much to do.