The month of October (holy smokes, where did the time go?) takes us to the port city of Odessa in southern Ukraine. Our 24 hour 
journey (which is very short compared to some teams) took us by bus to the capital city of Chisinau in Moldova. From there we took a van all the way to the border of The Ukraine, but the driver did not have the documentation to take us the rest of the way. We ended up waiting there until two taxis came that could take us the rest of the way.
We had no problems crossing the border and our taxi ride ended at one of the bus stations in Odessa. The fact that there is more than one turned out to be a small problem, as the girl we were meeting up with went to the other one in a differnt part of the city. While we waited for her, another Ukranian girl came up to us and began chatting with us in English about all sorts of things. She was simply interested in practicing her English and she seemed quite excited to give us information about the country we are now in. So, we made our first Ukranian connection there…it will be 
interesting to see if and how that plays our in our ministry.
We were finally whisked away to the far corner of the city where we spent the night in the house of an 18 year old girl and her mother. This was such a blessing since we had nowhere else to go! The following day, we headed into the downtown area where we spent the better part of the day hunting for an apartment. We finally found one in the downtown area in our price range that has quite a bit of room, which is another blessing from God!
Since we’ve arrived here, we’ve had the pleasure of meeting several university students that have already blessed us immensely. I will take some pictures of them and write up a blog introducing you to them. I’m pretty sure they will be our ministry this month – we can help them with their English and just love on them as much as we can. We’ve already made some of them dinner and watched a movie together. It should be a great month of
ministry! We will be doing teaching and things at a Christian University where all these students go during our time here as well.
When we arrived though, I was immediately blown away by the city of Odessa! It has the feel of a western European city and it’s breathtaking! Tree-lined streets with shops, lots of cute cafes and pedestrian streets to walk, along with neat older buildings, and it sits right on the Black Sea! They speak Russian here, and I have enjoyed trying to learn it thus far. We’ve really been showered with blessings this month. I wonder what the rest of it holds!
