Carry the corpse downstairs

приветствую! как же туха?

merry holidays everyone! i congratulate you with christmas!

we have been decorating our apartment. lets just say, we bought a christmas tree. a real one! they are pretty cheap here. we got it for less than ten bucks. in our apartment were already some lights and other decorations too. and thanks to my PACKAGES!!!!!!! i put up the merry christmas sign.

THANK YOU FOR THE PACKAGES!!!!!!! i am so excited for everything! they are so good. i think they got a little bit....ukrained...but hopefully everything important is still there. i'll send a picture. i love the pictures and letters!! that’s probably my favorite part. and the beef jerky. and mexican spices. mmmmmm. also, a big thank you to everyone who sent me christmas cards! thank you the pews! thank you the stauffers! i love getting letters.

we had a good week. one of the more interesting days of my mission was thursday. there we were, sitting innocently in the morning. suddenly our branch president calls us and asks us for some help. so we go over to this member's house, and it turns out that his mom has died (no one was too surprised, she was like 95 years old). I hope this doesn't sound like i'm taking death lightly. so the help that was needed was for us to go up four stories, and carry the corpse downstairs. one of their weird traditions says that family members aren't allowed to do anything with the dead body. so first of all, the stench was aweful. she was laying there on a bed in their apartment. we picked up the four corners of the sheet she was laying on and started walking. ukrainian stairwells, if i haven't told you this before, are not very spacious. just imagine trying to be respectful of the dead while carrying her down stairs in bedsheets. just outside the door was the coffin, where we laid her. we sang a few hymns, and they nailed the coffin shut. then they shoved in in the back of a car, me and my comp got in with it, and we drove to the cemetary. once we got there, we waited a bit for some more people to come. about ten people were there. we just kind of tried to stay out of the way. some workers came and took the box and everyone followed. they put it in the ground. they threw some dirt on as i watched from a distance. they said a couple of words, and we walked away.

ok so i just talked to you on skype, which took a lot of time away from writing. i'll be brief. tuesday was a really good day. we got two new brother investigators! one named philip, the other festos. both are way legit, festos says he already knows that the book of mormon is true and that our church is the true church. they are a spiritual race, i tell you what.

unfortuanately hales got sick for his first time in ukraine (aww) on friday, so we didn't get much done. but it was my 18 month mark!! so i burned a shirt and tie.

saturday was a day of business. i signed all the contracts and paid all the money for a new apartment in alexeevka. it was interesting...luckily it wasn't too complicated. i just signed all the papers, and now we own the apartment.

yeah. i'm now out of things to write. it was great to talk with you. i can't wait for sunday. I love you!!!!

love, elder derek brimley