The craziest week. Ever.

dear family and friends, I am pleased to tell you that I am alive and that I have been repenting a lot and that I will never take anything for granted in America ever again! ever. So last week started off a little rough with our dirty apartment and no food and whatnot, and we thought, monday it will all be better. We will go buy lots of food and things for the apartment and all will be well.  We were wrong! We had no money so we just bought a few things and made due with what we had.  We just decided to wait until our next month's money came in and then go from there.  All would be good after that.  Tuesday morning comes around and I'm just enjoying my studies in the Book of Mormon, and all of the sudden--power goes out.  That's normal in Ukraine, like randomly you won't have water or power or such, but it stayed off for a long time.  Luckily i took a shower that morning.  So we made a few calls and our office dude that is the visa person and person you can ask anything, was going to be in Nickolaiv the next day.  His name is Vova, he is great.  So we survive tuesday and vova comes on wednesday and we go buy mattresses at the ukranian version of costco (love that store), and we head back to our apartment to fix the electricity.  He messes with it and gets it going, all is well.  Wrong again!! It turns off like 2 minutes after he leaves and so he says he will send an electrician over the next day.  Let me take a step back--tuesday when the power went out, my laundry was in the middle of a cycle--so my laundry was basically molding in the washer.  So anyway, the electrician Paul comes over, and he stays for 2 and a half hours and asks us all sorts of inappropriate questions and tells us we should wear shoes in our apartment because we are young girls and going barefoot will make us sick. hahahaha (huge ukranian superstition). So after paul gets the electricity going, it goes off again after he leaves. When it was on, we tried running the washer and then all of the sudden there is a flood in our kitchen.  So at the same time we have no power and a flood. It was awesome. So the elders kindly let us do a load of laundry at their apartment, that was good.   Then on friday, we had district meeting in a nearby city, Hersone, and there is a senior couple there. I took a shower at their apartment after district meeting so that was good. But it was quite an unfortunate week. We bought some groceries and they all went bad because the fridge doesn't work without electricity. We can't take showers (unless we want hypothermia because the water is sooooooo cold). I have taken like 3 showers in the past 2 weeks haha.  A plus was that we had a few packages and a lot of candy, so i survived on carmels and tootsie rolls.  We had a few meals and such, so we aren't like starving, but we had like a small meal once a day creating random things with what we had haha.  Long story short, we still don't have power.  Paul the electrician is coming back tonight because he all too convinently left a tool at our apartment, but I don't think even paul can fix our problem.  The best part though was yesterday President and Sister Nielsen came to church, we had interviews with president after church, and then they wanted to come see our apartment.  We took them there and they both just walked around shaking their heads saying "this just isn't going to work. what is this!" hahaha we almost died laughing.  They apologized up and down and thanked us for our patience haha. The best part was, President Nielsen called us "rugged" haha.  They offered to buy us a tent because they think that would be better than our apartment hahah. Sister Johnson and I just laughed a lot, complained, repented, read the area books by flashlight, and ate a lot of candy.  It's just hard because we can't really use our sink because it floods the kitchen, we have no power to keep food cold, so we are resorting to a lot of interesting things.  President is working on getting us a new apartment, so I see an apartment move in the near future.  At least it's summer and not winter, I would have already died haha.  And it's a good thing I really love being a missionary and representing Christ, or I would have hopped on a plane home (just kidding kind of). We learned a lot! I learned how to be grateful and I learned that laughter can cure anything.  A few interesting/funny things: there is this american guy that has been coming to church and he is here looking for a bride.  Sister Nielsen gave him the run down and told him "You should just go home.  We want our church women to stay here to build up the kingdom. A marriage of this kind won't work, and a 25 young attractive ukranian girl won't make you happy and you won't make her happy.  She won't be completely comfortable in america, and you are the kind of people that we don't need here." hahaha i love her so much. she said it a lot nicer in like a grandma chastizing her grandchild kind of way, but it was awesome.  Also the branch president called us the other day (he speaks english) and he was like "sisters! i have the funniest joke i want to tell you. so barack obama calls mitt romney on the phone and says, i have good news and bad news. romney says i want the good news first. barack obama says,  it's about time for america to have a mormon president.  mitt romney says, oh yeah? well thats great! but what's the bad news? barack obama says, my baptismal date is set for saturday." hahahaha he laughed so hard and sister johnson and i were dying. little things like that make a day better haha. It is getting HOT here and let's just say, ukraine gets crazier in the summer. people wear interesting things haha. let's just say, we look at the ground or have "bouncing eyes" as sister nielsen calls it.  it's like people here hibernate in the winter and go crazy in the summer. i love it haha. So, we are slowly surviving and we will continue in the work.  We went on a great run this morning in a beautiful park, and we have tons of goals to rock this city.  I felt like laman and lemuel all combined into one sister missionary, but i feel better and we are doing great.  i love you all and i hope that everything at home is great!! sister demille