I will live next door to these people in
Heaven.
This is the Tesla family:
Maxim, Olga (pronounced Olya), and their four kids:
Paulina, Igor, Christina, Timothy, and their niece Nastia. I never knew I
could love a family after four days as much as I love them! And we
don’t even speak the same language!
But we just connected as brothers and sisters in Christ. Olya
especially– she
would just hug me and tell me she loved me, and I absolutely made a fool
of
myself crying in the van as we pulled away from their house for the last
time.
Ukraine is a pretty dark place, and this family is an absolute
lighthouse in the
darkness. Maxim is a surgeon, and I think like the top dog in the
regional
medical “scene”. Doctors make around $250 a month, which is just not
enough for 6-8 years of medical school. As a result, there are very few
doctors
left in Ukraine– they all go to Russia or Western Europe where they can
make a
decent living. But Maxim is called to stay here and serve his people,
and he
throws his heart and soul into it. He and Olya are absolutely broken to
see
their people come to know the Lord. Maxim used his vacation time so that
he
could be with us this week, and one morning we came outside to find him
scrubbing the mud off of our shoes.
The medical director for this
entire region was scrubbing our shoes.
I’m telling you, I’ve never met people who have followed Christ’s call
to serve
quite like they have. Olya would stay up until all hours, waiting for us
to get
back so that she could cook us these huge, scrumptious meals. From
scratch.
With fruits and vegetables that she picked from her garden that day.
Everything
was perfectly fresh, and absolutely DELICIOUS– I will miss her cooking!
And we
would stay up late talking about how the day went, asking questions,
trying to
figure out the best ways to reach the community for Christ. The time we
spent
at their house was unlike any other time in my life, and I will never,
ever
forget it!
As a sort of thank you for everything they did for us,
I just took a ton of
pictures of their kids for them to have. I LOVE these pictures!! These
kids
have such big personalities, so they just went nuts when I got my camera
out.
“Zhessica! Svotka!” (Jessica! Picture! and I’d look over and they’d
be posed in some crazy position on the jungle gym.) They had been
playing
outside for hours when we had this little impromptu photo shoot, so they
are
filthy, but I think it just captures them even better 🙂
OH, and they all sing and play instruments. Perfectly. This is like the
Mary
Poppins family, “practically perfect in every way”. One night we were
all just sitting around, and they all played for us. Paulina is a
top-ranked
pianist in Ukraine, Olya plays and has an unbelievable voice, Maxim
plays
guitar and sings, Igor plays the recorder (and is freakishly good at
it– I
never got past Hot Cross Buns) and the two little ones sing. They all go
carolling at Christmas! Seriously, can I just spend the whole eleven
months with them??
