Spring 2013 - Report No 5

Ukraine report #5.
April  6th 2013

Saturday.
Nothing much planned for today as Sveta cannot be with us until evening, so I hope you don’t mind that we cleaned up and took it easy. Do we lose our reward??
I am very happy to share high speed internet with a photo studio next door. They have a router and they will not take anything from us for using it. Well the other day it went off completely at 5pm, but came on again at 19 a.m. I thought I would go and see the owner, a very nice young man, and offer him some money towards the cost. We he refused vehemently and apologised that he forgot to tell his secretary not to turn it off. He said if we wanted to we could buy his girls some chocolates, which we did.
Howard and I sorted some boxes and then went up town for a walk in the drizzle. We were invited out at 6:30 to Yaroslav and Halia’s son and very expectant wife’s apartment.
What a spread. How do these people think we can eat this much food? We were ready to go home at 10:30 but then dessert arrived. By the time we were done, we were quite uncomfortable.
We headed home at 11pm and tried to get to sleep, Howard with Rolaids, me sitting up reading.
So much for Saturday.

Sunday.
We had decided that it was too hard on us and the vehicle to go the morning meeting in Lviv, so invited some of the save people to a prayer and bible study at 11am. We had a nice time and spoke a little on what we do each Lord’s Day and then spent the time showing some of the O/T prophesies concerning Christ and his death. They seemed to really enjoy the time.
At 5PM we had our regular meeting and the room was full with about 28 people. It was good to see a new man out as well as many old friends.
We took our new friends Ruslan and his wife (I need to get her name) out for Pizza. We had a good talk about the assembly and have great hopes that they will see themselves part of the assembly one day. They are both baptized believers with no church affiliation right now. Please pray for them.

Monday.
Well we went for our longest trip today into the mountains to Virhovina, on the Romanian border. We were not sure what the roads would be like but they were some of the best roads we have travelled so far. One of the reasons was that they have had very little snow in the mountains this winter, which is very strange.
We were happy to meet with Oxana and hear about here challenges in running a school of 420 students, over half who board at school all week and some all the time as orphans. What a challenge for one woman.
We got to speak with about 40 of the children in a class room and they listened with rapt attention.
It is so good when you know they are interested in what you are saying and interact. I have used my passport several times this visit and tell how important to have a “passport” to Heaven.
We left some boxes of clothes, had lunch and headed back. On the way, we stopped at an orphanage and left some more clothes. It was too late to speak to the children. We stopped one more time and made contact at a home for mentally challenged females, not sure what ages, and left a box of ladies clothes off and will get back later.
As we got closer to home, the road was very bad and I was pushed way over to my left, when a speeding Honda clipped my mirror and broke it. He or she didn’t stop, nor did I but we will have to get it fixed.
Home safely but very weary, it is a 3 hour trip either way.

Tuesday.
I went early in the morning to our repair shop and they found a new mirror after numerous phone calls. I picked it up and they installed it and washed the filthy van while it was at the garage. Of course it started to drizzle on the way home!!
This took all of the morning. In the afternoon Howard needed to change money while Sveta and I went to the railway station to buy a train ticket to Sevastopol. I plan to go there during my last week here.
More about that later.
All for now.
Your prayers a valued highly.
Malcolm and Howard.