Boxes in the Mail - Part Two

Yesterday was a very nice day, mail-wise. I am expecting something from amazon.com - a Christmas present for Mel, so I was not surprised that we had a notice in our mailbox that there was a box to pick up. I was surprised to discover that I had forgotten (forgotten!!!!) that two other people said they were sending us something. Sheeesh. Short term memory loss. Ha!

I took the slip of paper and went to stand in line. There was a guy standing there, probably in his late 20's or early 30's and I really wasn't sure if he was in line or not. I mean, he wasn't actually touching the person in front of him, nor was he actually standing close to that woman, but had at least 2 feet of room in-between. I asked him if he was last. Yes, he was last. I stood behind him. The older man at the counter finished his business and the next woman stepped over in front of the window, the gal behind her slid over beside her at the counter and the guy didn't move. However, one of the women sitting on one of the two stools at the table got up and stood behind the gal and in front of the guy. She was not taking chances that I was going to take her place! :)

Lyuda was there in the back office. Lyuda is the woman in charge of the whole operation at our little post office. She came out, said something to the older woman who was paying her bills, something about her pension it sounded like, glanced at me, nodded her head and smiled, then disappeared back into her office. She came back and motioned me to the counter, in-between the gal and the woman who had stood up.

Lyuda handed me two sheets of paper, both about 5x6 inches square and told me I had two (emphasis on the TWO) boxes at the post office in the center of the city that we needed to pick up. I smiled and said, "Thank you!" and we left.

Two boxes? Oh, that's right - I was notified that amazon.com had shipped my order in two separate shipments. But amazon.com orders are always picked up at my little local post office, so these must be something else....

Oh yes!!! How could I forget! I was getting boxes from my sister and Olya! Both had written to ask me/tell me about wanting to send something. Duh!

Mel and I continued on our way to the store, bought the groceries that we needed, brought them home and then he took off for the city center post office.

About half an hour or 45 minutes later he called me. "TWO boxes you said? You told me there were TWO boxes? Ha! I'm coming home in a taxi, meet me outside in about 8 minutes and make sure the door is open."

Boy did that arouse my curiosity. :) :) :) I took off my inside-only shoes, put on my outside-only shoes, grabbed a light jacket and went outside to wait. About 5 minutes later he pulled up in the taxi. The taxi driver got out, opened the trunk and there were 4 (four) boxes!

Mel would have been able to carry they all in except that the smallest one was heavy and kept slipping off the others and he couldn't see around it while he was walking. Not knowing for sure what was in it, he didn't want it to fall and possibly have something break inside.

So, I carried up the lightest one and he carried up the rest.

And then it got all Christmas-y here in the living room. :) Cheyenne jumped up on boxes and sniffed them real good, approved our opening of them and then inspected the contents very carefully.

I opened the first two boxes from my sister, Heidie, first because I knew what was in them and I was really curious to see them in real life and not just photos in emails (see Part One for photo). The other two - well, I had an idea of what might possibly be in the heavy one, so I opened it, wondering for sure as to what it would be. Olya had written and asked for suggestions and I sent her a list of things we cannot buy here, but would be nice to have especially this time of year. Ta Da!!! Powdered Sugar!!! (Christmas cookies here we come! Frosted, cut-out in different shapes that I love to make every year!!!) Brown sugar!! Shredded coconut!!! Yum yum - I love coconut. Construction paper (I had just been wishing 24 hours earlier that I had some for the craft project we are doing in Sunday School). Colored pencils. Oh hear a happy sigh!

I let Mel open the last box, from Grace Presbyterian Church in Yorba Linda, CA. They had also written and Mel had sent them a response. I had read the response, but it totally slipped my mind in all that has been going on recently. That is nice - forgetting things like this at this time of year - because then it really is a surprise. Peanut butter - lots of peanut butter. And 3 wrapped presents that look a lot, and feel a lot like books. Oh - we will wait till Christmas to open them, but I am already itching to see what they are! Now, the peanut butter we can buy here - sometimes - but it is really expensive when we do find it. I don't make things like peanut butter cookies with it, but use it sparingly. So, now at this holiday season I plan to make peanut butter cookies!!! With M&M's in some of them. Oh - and there was also molasses, which I've already put away in the kitchen - also an item that we cannot buy here, so molasses cookies are also on the menu for the holiday season.

Happy sighs. I look forward to having people over. Gals to help me make cookies. The English class to help us eat them. Making cookies to take to Sunday School and church. And so forth and so on.

Wow. This is FUN!

(Somehow I never dreamed before coming to Ukraine, that opening a box and finding brown sugar, powdered sugar and peanut butter in it would make me ecstatic. My, how life has changed! hahahahahahahah)

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!