Truskavets & Starry Rozdil

We headed out to Truskavets early Thursday morning. The school we were going to is actually quite a large school but we were able to speak to only the younger children, about 150 total. We will be going back to Truskavets next week when school resumes since this is Easter week for them here and there is no school for a week at least. When we arrived in Truskavets we picked up Ruslan. Here we have a very good example of the "fun" of learning another language. He probably knows as much English as I know Ukrainian so we both had a very good laugh at this. He got in the van and wished everyone a good morning and then turned to me and said "How old are you?" wanting instead of ask me "How are you". He immediately realized his mistake and couldn't stop laughing. He was so embarassed. It was a very funny moment.
We had a good reception at the school and Ruslan and Flora were able to speak on the true meaning of Easter, not only that Christ had indeed risen, but why He had died in the first place. The kids were all very eager to answer questions that were asked.

Friday our plans were to head out to Starry Rozdil to bring shoe boxes to the kids as well as medecine we had purchased for the kids there. Two boys in particular are epileptic and also one suffers from schizophrenia. For the past several years we have been purchasing the necessary medecine for this boy's home from the money that is given to us from Christians in Canada to help here in Ukraine. Yesterday the director was showing us some documents he was given for work that is supposed to be done at Starry Rozdil. He is being personally fined because this work hasn't been done. There are several items, one being fencing that is supposed to be installed somewhere. However the government is not giving him any funds to do it with. So the money is being taken from his pay every month! Not the money to do the work, but money to pay the fine! There is something terribly wrong with the system but no one seems to know what to do to fix it. Even for purchasing the necessary food to run a home with 85 children in it... the price of everything is rising but the funds given to purchase food hasn't gone up. To purchase the same food and supplies (soaps...) that were purchased last year, we were told that they are short $40,000.00. He has thanked us many times over for what we bring since they don't have to buy those things. We have brought countless number of pairs of shoes there, clothing, disposable diapers, bed pads, fruits, personal soaps as well as laundry soap.