Ready To Leave Again

Dear Family and Friends,

Just for those who took a guess. It is a ping pong table that one can use year round. Just need to supply the net, paddles and ball and you are ready to play. We think this is their version of tennis as we have not seen a tennis court here. Also, Brett would not survive here as we have not seen a golf course either. Maybe that could be a venture but probably only those in black clothing could afford it.

We went to L'viv last week and Sister Williams was there. If I had to walk with her my whole mission I would probably loose more weight. Her husband has had to take in his belt two times. Dad is to easy on me but I think he worries about my knees. It has rained solid here for the last week. It just does not rain for a couple of hours, there is a constant drizzle even if it is not raining hard. The soil is so saturated that there are inches sitting around every where in puddles. Dad says he will take a picture of the sun when it finally comes out - now, some have said that may be next year. Those drab, dreary days may have come sooner than we had planned. There had already been flooding in the West two weeks ago and over 200,000 people had been displaced from their homes. The water was higher than their heads. The last major flooding in that area was in the 1960's. Many of the homes are made out of mud and straw so they just disolved where ever the water touched. The church gave each of the cities over $50,000 but it was only to help the elderly through the Red Cross. The government also gave money to the people but they don't know how it will help as they have no help to rebuild thir homes. No construction people in their areas and they are to old to do it themselves. Elder Hinkle said it was the saddest sight he had ever seen. He went once and came back two weeks later and the elderly were just sitting in their yards crying. Not knowing what to do. It is cold here and fortunately we have an air conditioner/heater system as the heat does not usually get turned back on until 15 October. Natasha heard last night on the news that this year it will come on 1 Oct because of the temperature and the flu they are expecting from Russia. To many older people sitting around in these apartments with no heat - just to dangerous. We went out to buy a little space heater for our apartment but we wanted it to help dry our clothes. They dry out on the balcony but in the summer they dried in hours and they were still wet last night. So we just closed all the windows and hope that will help get the job done faster. When we came home from L'viv we saw two accidents, one a head on and the other a single car, both of them were upside down. People traveling to fast for the road conditions and probably drunk. We leave again in the morning for Frankfurt, hopefully that will be a fun trip and we have planned one day for sight seeing and another to go to the temple.

The political situation here is becoming interesting and somewhat unstable. The PM went to Russia and came back on the side of Putin. She had joined a Coalition with the Pres. and they won the election as not pro-Russian. Now there are plans to break up the coalition but the PM does not think a new election would benefit the country. Natasha thinks she is afraid that she would be thrown out. Will have to wait to see what happens. It is amazing that they just seem to have elections here whenever there is a change of position but maybe they are recall elections and I just don't understand everything.

We will leave in the morning aroud 6:00 will be back late Saturday night. Hope all the children are doing well, give them hugs and kisses from us. We miss you all. Luv M&D, GMGP, J&J.