My Week - July 30-August 5, 2006 -- Part One

This week started out pretty much like usual. A normal week.

Sunday – church here in Kherson. But after church, we took a walk with Melinda over to look at an area that the church might be able to purchase later this year (if we can get the approval from our mission and then raise the financial support). We are kind of stuck right now because we have to wait until the “big committee” of our mission agency meets this fall before we can get approval to start raising the funds. On the other hand, the property is available now and it is a wonderful property – located right in the area our national pastor had hoped for and big enough to build a small church and have room left over for a park type area, which hopefully would keep the neighbors happy. The good news is that we know our God is Sovereign and if we are supposed to have this property, HE will provide it for us, one way or another. Two things I’ve learned in my 52 years – God never hurries and He tends to surprise me in how He answers prayer and provides for our needs (personal or ministerial).

Monday Mel was gone much of the day meeting with some of the church leadership, paying a couple bills, exercising. I did some housework and worked on my cross-stitch. I also did two loads of laundry, which caught me up for the week. Now if you live in the States, you may say, “so what? You did two loads of laundry – big deal.” But here laundry is a whole ‘nother thing. First – we are on a water schedule, so I can only do laundry when we have water, one of three periods of time each day. Second, we have a European front load washer that is some kind of water saver. It also was boiling the clothes instead of heating the water to a good wash temperature, so while we were gone, someone took the heating element out. But the thermostat is still in there somewhere, so when the washer gets to a certain point, it quits and waits for the water to heat to boiling point again. I have to go in and manually turn the knob every so often to keep it working. Plus, I don’t like the tiny amount of water it uses (how can clothes get clean AND rinsed when they are only sopping wet, not IN water that they can slosh around in?). So, I add additional water at every cycle – until I’m satisfied that they are sloshing around (and around and around) good enough to actually get clean – and rinsed! One load of laundry, just to wash, takes over an hour. Then I have to hang it up, in summer out on the balcony, in winter some on the balcony but most on the drying rack in our bedroom. One load of laundry usually takes a minimum of two hours for me to do each time – sometimes longer if the water goes off.

Tuesday Mel was gone part of the day again in meetings, and I spent a couple of hours on Russian before my late afternoon Russian lesson. Oh boy. It was great last week, kind of pitiful this week. I have hope though, that someday, when I open my mouth, beautiful simple Russian will come out instead of whatever it is that stammers and stutters out of my mouth right now. I have a hard time reading Russian due to my eye sight, so I really need to get a magnifying glass to see it better. Maybe then my reading out loud would sound a little better …. Hope springs eternal…

Wednesday evening our Ukrainian Daughter, Irina, came over for dinner. We sat and talked until 11 pm or a so. She is going through some real struggles right now. Mostly, we listened and then prayed with her. I love this girl to pieces.

Thursday I was supposed to have a “Cindie all alone” day. Melinda needed to go to Odessa to meet a teammate and fly out for a week of vacation in Poland, so Mel went with her to Odessa, along with Sergei and Olya K. They hired Sasha to take them in. Mel went to the office, then the K’s went shopping for a cement mixer, which they found for $20 less than they could buy here – so they bought it, Sasha and Sergei loaded it into the back of the van, and home they came.

Mel told me later that he saw something he’s never seen before on the way home, a real “only in Ukraine” happening. It is now the middle of winter wheat harvest and Odessa Oblast has thousands and hundreds of thousands of acres of land in harvest process. This we have seen many times. But what surprised Mel was the road to Yuzhni – he was able to count 198 big trucks, each with a second trailer behind it, all heaping full of wheat, lined up along the highway to Yuzhni, a city located on the Black Sea. There is a port in Yuzhni where the wheat is loaded on ships which then carry it many places in the world. Mel was told that there is only one place for the wheat to be unloaded and then reloaded onto the ships – one truck at a time. He counted those 198 trucks before the road turned and he could not count any further. He guessed there were 3 times that many, maybe more, before the road reached the port. All up and down that line of trucks were little cars zooming here and there – people out selling drinks, food and other items to the drivers. Mel said, it was a whole different form of commerce going on. I pictured a huge queen bee (the truck line) with all the worker bees buzzing around it (the little cars). Every so often, the trucks start up and move forward the length of a truck/trailer. Soon harvest will be over and the whole thing will disappear until next year – or until there is a new, more efficient way to deliver the wheat to the port. The farmers have also begun burning the harvested wheat fields. Between the dust of harvest and the smoke of the burning fields – it’s no wonder I am waking up with a headache and allergies most mornings right now.

I have to shake my head in wonder. The US is criticized all the time for the amount of air pollution we produce each year. Yet here they burn the fields every year, burn leaves and other trash all the time. In fact, the only time there is not smoke billowing up into the air somewhere is the dead of winter. And even then – there are still the factories, cars and other man-made polluters working away, spewing it up into the air.

My Thursday was completely different. It was supposed to be a day at home alone. It ended up with me meeting Irina in the city center, going to the post office to pick up a package and carrying the package around town all day (we opened it and divided the contents into two bags so both of us could carry some of it). I needed to exchange dollars for griven, so we did that, then went to a little cloth store where I bought some tatting thread. Then I suggested we go get something to eat. I thought she was hungry – and I was correct. We ended up sitting and chatting at an outdoor café on the main street of the city, for almost three hours. Her roommate came to meet us, and then the three of walked over to an office where I turned over our passports to have them translated into Ukrainian. We are in process of getting registered here in the city and this is one of the steps in that process. It was a good day, although not what I had planned. The package we had been carrying around had several jars of peanut butter in it, so along the way I gave away 3 of the jars – one to Irina and Natasha, one to a church member and mother of 3 kids that we met on the street and one to the taxi driver who brought me home. The taxi driver was, to put it mildly, surprised. I asked him, do you have any children? He laughed and said no (he was a young guy and had no wedding ring, but that doesn’t mean he’s not married). I handed him a jar of peanut butter and said, “this is for you.” “What is this?” He asked me and then opened the jar, ran his finger across the paper seal on the top to check the seal. He still didn’t know what it was when I got out of the car and went inside. I hope he enjoys it!