P-town is not my favorite place by any means, but some of my favorite people live there. Stephanie and I have been friends since bonding cleaning bathrooms in the MTC. After our missions, we traveled through Europe together and stayed with friends we'd met while in the MTC. She's currently going to school in India. She's studying film, so it's cheaper to study in Bollywood than in Hollywood. She's home visiting her family in Provo for a month this summer, so I was happy to get the chance to catch up with her.
I was extremely excited to see Lena and Olya today. They are sisters from Dnepropetrovsk, my favorite area from my mission. Lena was 14 and Olya was only 10. They were already members when I served there and were really involved in activities. Their mom was baptized when they were, but hadn't been active for a long time by the time I got there. The other members of their family were heavily involved in drugs and alcohol and these young girls struggled. One of their older brothers sold a sweater I gave Olya to buy drugs and their mom sold the Christmas tree the ward donated to their family to buy alcohol. Olya shared a pair of boots with her best friend, Marina, who lived in an apartment in the same building. The rest of the time, she used worn out shoes that had cardboard in the soles and tried her best not to get her feet wet.
We were really close while I served in Topol and stayed in touch pretty well over the years. When Olya was 17 or 18, she married a former Elder shortly after he finished his mission and they moved to Provo. Within a year, Lena married a former Elder and they moved to Oregon, where he's from. About a year ago, Lena and her husband moved to Provo. Lena wanted to be closer to Olya and near more Russians.
Liliya, of course, is Liliya. She's smart, beautiful, talented, UKRAINIAN, and simply amazing. I love hanging out with her, though I don't get to do it nearly enough. I love Liliya enough that I was willing to post this pic even though my eyes are closed, simply because she looked cute in this pic.
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