Cold

I made some negative comment about the silly traditions of these Ukrainians and their mystical frost. Yeah, I'm eating those words. I have never been so cold in my entire life.

The thermometer dipped below negative 30 degrees Celsius multiple times. The average was about negative 25 degrees Celsius. For those of you who have trouble with math, that's really really cold. Ha ha, we're talking "you-walk-outside-and-your-snot-freezes" cold. Eye-watering, eyelash-freezing paralyzing cold. It's the kinda cold that messes with your emotions - one minutes you're so incredibly angry because you can't comprehend how cold it is, and the next you're laughing because it's so absurd. Some elders heard a news report that it hasn't been this cold in 50 years here. Apparently we get all of the weather patterns straight out of Moscow, so whatever they're experiencing, we get a few days later. Last week they were reporting thousands of deaths from homeless people freezing to death. It's the kind of cold that makes people barricade their doors and turn all the stoves in the house on. It's the kind of cold that makes bread lines frantic as people dart in and out before the temperature of their blood drops. It's the kind of cold that causes all the windows on the bus to frost over, so you have to make a little hole with your finger to look outside and watch for your stop. You feel like you're in a submarine or a space shuttle. It's the kind of cold that makes elders lose their sanity. In short, it's kinda cold outside.

It seems when it's this cold the entire city sort of shuts down, except for missionary work. It's really interesting trying to tract when people absolutely refuse to open the door. It's pretty sad when your highest numbers for the week are "times fallen on the ice" and not "contact received" or "copies of the Book of Mormon given away." We've seen some pretty good falls this last week. Last night I had a pretty good one - served as a good reminder of how beautiful the stars are as I lay on my back not really wanting to get back up.

Our branch asked my companion and I to go visit an inactive family and deliver some Christmas/New Years gifts to their children. We decided to fit it in after our planning session on Friday, which ended up being one of the first days of this cold madness. This family, the Kharchenkos, live about 20 minutes on bus from us, then a 45 minute hike across farmlands. It was one of my most memorable missionary adventures thus far. We got to the end of the busline and looked at the vast expanses of frozen tundra we had to cross to get to the Kharchenkos and then asked ourselves if we were really going to do it. With a resounding "Let's go!" we charged off across the Ukrainian taiga, running as fast as we could to stay warm. I don't think it would've have been so bad if the wind wasn't blowing so hard. I really thought we'd been teleported to Siberia. An hour later we arrived at the Kharchenkos and delivered the items and tried to thaw a little before we headed back out. It was marvelous.