We spent the last two weeks of the Ukraine in a small town outside of the large city of Donetsk. We were with Marina, Vika, and Igor who are the Christians reaching out in the Krasnormisk and Dimitrov areas. Marina and Vika started in January doing an internship that finished their Missionary Training program. So, they basically started their full time missions ministry in July of this year. These two girls are amazing. They love to host people in their home and have people hanging out at their flat all the time. They are gifted in hospitality. Please pray for Marina and Vika as they develop their ministry in the neighborhood.
Here’s a picture of Marina and me on our last day. Marina is looking for a part time job to help support herself. I think she needs to do skype-based Russian language conversation practice for western Russian language learners. If you know anyone who wants to practice Russian, let me know!
We spent a few days in a school in Dimitrov teaching classes, answering questions, taking pictures and even signing autographs (silly huh?) for the students. Here is a picture of the class of well dressed pupils eager to learn English and more about America.
We shopped at the open market about 10 minutes down the street in our community. The first day we were shopping for a team dinner, the woman in the picture struck up a conversation with Ellen. When we finished shopping and tried to pay, she gave everything to us for free. Not only is this woman generous, she’s smart, because she gained customers for the next two weeks. Ellen and I had just committed to eating vegetables for 10 days straight. We shopped with our new friend exclusively from that point on. Isn’t it funny how doing a random act of kindness can turn back to bless you?
It turned off really cold for most of the two weeks were in Krasnormisk. The heaters in our old communist flats were not turned on yet since it was an early cold weather blast. So, we lived in our flat with all our clothing layers on and I slept in my 15 degree sleeping bag. It was cold, but thankfully I stayed warm! Our thermometer inside read 12 degrees Celcius…I don’t know what that is in F, but it’s cold.
Even the dogs had to dress warm for the weather we experienced!
We did a day of sightseeing in Donetsk and took this picture on a tank near a WWII memorial. It’s weird for me to think that we were on different sides back then.
