Sunday April 6th.

We had an interesting day on Thursday, driving all the way to the Truskavets area and then a little further to some small town in the Carpathian mountains. A young Christian we had met last year (his name is also Ruslan) was able to line up a school for us to visit to give out bibles and speak to the students. While Truskavets itself is about 90 kilometers, it took us well over two hours to reach our destination. I had previously made a statement about the roads to Bookva being the worse ones I had ever driven on....well I have to change that statement and say that these roads in the Truskavets area are absolutely the worse possible. It is a strange thing to see. Everywhere buildings are going up and old ones are being given a facelift. This is a very successful tourist area. While the buildings belong to someone and are being repaired by individuals, the roads are something no one wants to take responsibility for. Back to the school......we were very warmly received in this school. There were about 300 students there and we spoke to them in two groups in the very very cold damp auditorium. First the grades one to four came and then the older kids came about an hour later. They were all attentive and all received a new testament. This young Ruslan who was with us, was saved from a very troubled life. He was saved at 24 and had spent some time in jail and did the drug scene. He speaks to the older teenagers and manages to catch their attention quite well. Of course I can't make out everything he is saying but you can tell he has their attention. He spoke to them in the gospel and told them of the One who saves and changes lives. There was another man with us, his name is Vasyl. He wanted to feed us before we left, so he brought us to his "cottage" area. This little building was just a place to eat with a small fireplace/oven. If the auditorium had been cold, this building 12 x 12 was many times worse. It warmed up a bit when we finally got a small fire going. We were fed sausages cooked on the coals of the fire, bread, tea, cheese, tea. It was a nice way to finish our time there....though a bit more heat would have been nice. Before we left the area, we stopped at this place where you can get "special water" from a spring of sorts. The Truskavets is very famous for its water. It was explained to me and it was also shown to me that when the water comes out of the pipe you can actually light it on fire!!!!! It burns!!!! Obviously more than just water coming out of that pipe. They don't cease singing praises about this wonderful water that cures all ills. After we smelled it (!!!), Flo and I concluded that there was no way we were going to drink that. It smelled very bad. Well, they sure thought we were strange. The even more strange thing was the fact that this spring comes out of the ground right where there is a very dirty river. Anyways, our day ended with a long drive home and very thankfully a warm apartment.
On Friday we brought some clothing to a few orphanages in the city. We had an over abundance of babies clothing... The orphanages in question were very happy to receive everything. There is one of these orphanages that is for young children. We will return there with some of those shoe boxes we received from Timothy Sloan on Tuesday. Ola and Volodia came for supper and we had a nice visit with them. I feel very keenly my inability to converse in Ukrainian. I am able to understand quite a bit, but to speak is another story. It is very slow going when learning a language but there is consistent progress.
Today, Sunday we had our meeting. After we were done, we headed out to the airport to pick up some very tired men. Howard Pratt and Malcolm Stanley arrived safely from Canada and will be with us for four weeks.
Helene