Report #9, Oct 18

Report #9 Saturday Oct 18 2008

We didn’t need to get going too early this morning as we were going to meet Dana and her son and daughter at the Meeting Room. Her son just got out of prison and had no clothes to speak of. I did not know that she had any problem like that, she had never mentioned to us before. Dana is the woman whose husband went to Chernobil to clean up and now has radiation sickness.

While she sorted clothes, we sorted the New Testaments and children’s bibles and put them into the book cases so that we could see what we had to give out.

We were then taken to Vadym’s apartment for “breakfast” at noon, more like brunch!!

We were quite distressed to see what Vadym, Svetlana and their baby were living in. Because the woman who owned the nice apartment they rented before, sold it to someone else at an exorbitant price, they had to move in with Svetlana’s mother and father.

They live in one room and share the kitchen and bath room. The room is no bigger than 12 ft by 14ft. with cupboards all along one wall. The baby’s crib was across one end and they slept on a pull out divan.

This did not prevent Sveta (short for Svetlana) from preparing a magnificent meal. We were stuffed!!

We had plans to go to a town near the Carpathians to visit an orphanage and an old folks home. We decided that we would need two vehicles, as we were taking Sveta to help us assess the needs in both places but we wanted to take bedding sheets, bibles and 3 boxes of clothes and we could not get this all into one car, Sveta has a car and so we took hers as a second vehicle.

We arrived at about 3pm and were greeted by the lady administrator of the orphanage. We were surprised to find that they had 130 children from ages 6 -17. There were only about 80 in that day as some can go home for the weekend to spend with relatives.

They gathered them into a small auditorium and we spoke to them and gave out bibles according to their age as well as suckers and other things. We were amazed at how well behaved and attentive they were. As they left we gave almost all of them a toothbrush and toothpaste. (Donated by my dentist, Dr. Hans Staziuk).

We left what clothes we had and promised to come back next week and bring more. The building had been renovated and they had sponsors for that but none for clothing, so we agreed to help.

We then went to the old peoples home and, again some were away visiting but we got to speak to about 9 people plus 2 staff. We fitted several of them with glasses but we are still waiting for the stronger ones to come from David Brand. They were very grateful for the bed sheets and clothes. We gave them all New Testaments and John 3 :16.

We left very happy to have made the new contacts and then Sveta led us to this dumpy looking café. She had phoned ahead and ordered supper for us. Well once inside, were we amazed. It was very nice and the meal outstanding. A cold salad, fresh mushroom soup (not my favorite soup!!), then a big platter with pork chops in a sauce with the neatest roast potatoes that looked like little houses or big mushrooms, hard to describe.

Well it was a good day and we arrived home very tired and went to bed before 10pm.

Thanks for reading my prattle

.In Christ.

Malcolm