Easter week in Ukraine

Sunday is the Orthodox Easter here and everything literally shuts down for a few days. It is a very important holiday for everyone and provides many opportunity to speak about the resurrection of Christ. The greeting that is on everyone's lips is "Christ is risen" to which the person being addressed responds "He is risen indeed" (all in Ukrainian of course).
So Sunday we all headed out to Lutsk as you probably read on Malcolm's post.
Monday we headed out to the village to Pustometey to visit Flo's relatives because we had received a special invitation to go eat the Easter meal with them. At the apartment boxes of clothing were sorted out and also shoe box contents redistributed to even out the contents to get them ready to give out at Bookva the home for handicapped girls.
Tuesday Gilles and I had our language lessons here at the apartment. Ruslan picked us up and off we went with the others to the Metro store to pick up diapers and other items for Bookva which we planned on visiting Wednesday. We were in Metro for a couple of hours and then headed out to Slavic's for an Easter meal! Little did we know what awaited us as far as food was concerned. There was no lack of anything and we were made to eat more than any of us probably wanted. They asked us if we wanted to see a "real" Ukrainian wedding. We were all willing to see that, so Slavic's wife took out the discs and started up the computer. 3 hours later and 7 dvds later we all knew what a Ukrainian wedding was all about. We knew what it was about after the first disc but there was no getting away from watching the other 6 discs!!!
Wednesday morning after reading and praying at Flo's we headed out to Bookva to distribute the shoe boxes. The girls there were all very happy to receive their box. Avrell had opportunity to take pictures and to mingle with the girls there. The director was not present so we had a cup of tea and then headed back home around 4. Tonight was meeting night so there was no time to lose. Howard and Malcolm had decided it would perhaps be a good idea to try a bible reading format for this meeting and it seemed to go over very well. The people participated and it was a very relaxed atmosphere. So John 3 was discussed and a lot of gospel was brought out.
Helene