After cancelled trains, sleeping on the streets of Moldova and backpacking through the city, we finally arrived in Odessa, Ukraine. We were met at the bus station by our new friend Natallica who took us to an apartment in the outskirts of town to stay the night with one of her classmates. They fed us borsch, a Ukranian potato type stew when we got there. After walking what seemed like miles and miles, we were so happy to have a place to stay for the night. After an interesting night of sleep we woke up and decided our first order of business was to find our own place to live for these next 3 weeks. Natallica helped us, (after about 5 options fell through) find a 2 bedroom flat in the center of the old part of the city. Although we don’t all have beds, I cant tell you how nice it is to have a place of our own with hot water and heat! It is funny what gets me excited these days. Hanna, Kim and I are sleeping in the basement, it has no windows and is very quiet, kinda reminds me of our basement bedroom back in the states. We have a little kitchen and three TV’s. We already searched all the channels, and they are all in Russian, even MTV. Having gone a year without TV though, we don’t even miss it. I am really excited about our ministry this month, we will be working with college students from the local University. We went to “English club” last night and met several of them. A few of them came back with us last night to eat dinner and watch “Elf” with Will Ferrell. I don’t think they all quite understand American sense of humor, but they had fun just spending time together and with us. We have already been to the black sea and have plans to pick nick there tomorrow and at least stick our feet in. Our team in the only one here in Odessa this month and I feel extremely blessed to be here. God has taken such good care of us already. I am looking forward to the relationships that we have already begun to build and just enjoying this beautiful city.
