Have been crazy and difficult. As a result we've been inconsistent with our communication, and this will be news to some of you, but not to others:
1. We're pregnant.
2. We're likely in the process of miscarrying (but don't know for sure).
I'm not going to go into detail here at the moment, not because I don't want to, but because of time constraints. Thankfully Denyce has just taken the time to type up a quick summary on her personal blog, which I'll link you to. As it is I have probably less than 4 hours to sleep before we start getting ready to take an early morning train to Kiev tomorrow. So I'm going to leave it at this for now. We'll try to keep you posted. Those of you on Facebook have the best chance of keeping up with us because that's where it's easiest for us to post little updates here and there.
To read the aforementioned post on Denyce's blog, click here. Please pray for us.
It's been good to hear from some of you friends and family of ours about how your season is going. This week we worked through Wednesday, although we found some time to do some Christmas shopping during that time, and then took today (Christmas Eve) off. It's been a nice day and, of course, we're looking forward to our day tomorrow. It looks like we'll have a white Christmas ... sort of. It snowed here quite a bit starting almost two weeks ago, through last weekend. Since then it has warmed up and some of the snow has melted, but for the most part it has turned to ice as snowmelt has refrozen, and some freezing rain has fallen also. So while there is technically snow on the ground out there, it's not the fun powdery stuff you'd like it to be. It's more like aged, hardened snow encased under a coating of ice.
The driveway behind our building where we park. Currently more or less solid ice. That's our van on the right.
And in the front of our building, this is the walkway up to our entrance door in the courtyard. Again, solid ice, although some kind soul has gone to the trouble of spreading a little sand on it.
As I said, we've had a nice Christmas Eve. We went shopping out at one of our city's malls earlier in the day, and had lunch while the boys watched people ice skate (and repeatedly fall). Then we returned home and rested and played all afternoon. In the evening Denyce made some awesome homemade pizza, we wrapped presents, and played some more. We listened to some Christmas music and took some photos (see below), and Denyce read Twas The Night Before Christmas to the boys. They're now asleep in their beds, although the two adult creatures in the house are still stirring -- me typing this post, and Denyce getting ready to make some cookies. When I think hard enough about what our Christmas Eves and Christmas Days were like in past years, I realize that this seems kind of lonely, since we have spent the whole day on our own, without family. But on the other hand I think we're used to that somewhat and have learned to make the most of it and appreciate our time with each other as a family. We definitely miss you all though, and have so many memories of Christmases in California and West Texas... it's sure not the same! Tomorrow (Christmas Day) we are spending Christmas morning together as a family, and then in the afternoon and evening our teammates are all coming over, along with the other ladies' parents who are here visiting. Looking forward to that too.
I'll wrap this post up with some of the photos we took tonight. These are not polished or anything, just us having fun with the camera before the boys hit the sack. I didn't even bother to sharpen them, because I don't want to spend Christmas Eve editing photos. Also, when it came time to get a photo with both me and Denyce in it, we entrusted that task to Malachi, and so credit for the last photo goes to him.
"Это настоящая зима" ("This is true winter"), my Russian language teacher told me yesterday morning. It was cold yesterday morning when she said that. It is already much colder now, 36 hours later. I wonder what Russian word she would use for the current conditions out there. As I write this it's -17 C (1 degree F). I just took Kona on her (very brief) nighttime walk a little while ago, and for the first time since last winter I experienced the sensation of my nose hairs freezing.*
The forecast for the next week or so looks like this, in summary:
Tomorrow: Partly cloudy, high of -14 (+7 F) Thursday: Blizzard Friday: Blizzard Saturday: Snow, low of -22 (-8 F) Sunday: Partly cloudy, high of -16 (+3 F), low of -19 (-2 F) Monday: Blizzard
This weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) is the 3-day seminar we've been planning and for which we've been preparing for quite some time. It will be interesting to see how it plays out with the weather.
We take Wednesdays as our day off, but I think my priorities tomorrow will be pretty dominated by winter: 1) Get winter tires put on the van. 2) Buy some kind of insulating foam lining for our apartment's very old windows, which let in drafty cold air like no one's business.
In other news, we've been buzzing with activity here, particularly in our apartment. Last Thursday was our team's weekly small group time together, which we hosted this time around. Then Friday we had a young lady over for the first time, named Katya, with whom we will be studying weekly. Saturday was Silas' birthday party, for which we welcomed about 17 guests who were able to come. It went extraordinarily well. Saturday evening Eileen Emch moved in with us. She is a friend of ours who is a missionary in Russia and is in Kharkov for a while to renew her visa for Russia. Sunday we had both our morning English, and evening Russian, assemblies in our home, feeding lunch to the gang in between. Monday morning, our friend Nadya came over for our weekly Bible study with her, which was immediately followed by our team prayer time, which we also held in our apartment.
_______________________ *OK, to be precise, it's actually the moisture on my nose hairs freezing, causing the hairs themselves to be held rigid by the frozen moisture encasing them. And now it's clear why I just prefer to call it "my nose hairs freezing."
There have been nearly countless firsts of various kinds since coming to Ukraine, which in itself was a first for us. First this, first that -- some predictable, some not; some humorous, some happy, some sobering. All that aside, tonight was not only a new "first," it was one that surpasses the others in most ways -- the first disciple brought to the Lord. Our friend Andrei was baptized into his Lord Jesus Christ tonight.
We all first met Andrei over a year ago, when our friend and fellow missions worker, Valeriy, introduced him to us. We didn't see him often, but occasionally enough to maintain some contact with him over the months that followed. I got his phone number and called him up a few times back in August and September for various things, and some others on the team occasionally spoke with him too, I think. He started meeting on a weekly basis with our teammate Mike (Dougle), and was already at a pretty deep level of decidedness and readiness that he wanted to become a Christian, but he had a few concerns that he wanted to talk through and find some answers for himself. Dougle's meetings with him helped with that, and David and I each have spent some time discussing things with him as well.
We're excited about the decision and commitment that Andrei has made, and grateful to have had the opportunity to be a part of his story, and to be able to grow together with him now that he is a brother. Here is a photo of the three of us guys with Andrei (second from right):
So I'm just on the computer here for a few minutes in the hotel lobby on my way to find a grocery store, but thought I'd post a short note. Actually, I had intended to just do a status update on Facebook but the web browser on this hotel computer is not firing on all cylinders, so I'm doing this instead. At least this way I'll end up sharing much more, and my mom will get to read it too ;-).
I'm totally digging the Euro-American Family Retreat so far. We had smooth travel from Kharkov to Kiev to Frankfurt yesterday, then transitioned to a rental car and made it to Rothenburg ob Der Tauber, Germany. Got to see a few very familiar faces before bed last night, and we're getting to know some great folks today that we're just meeting for the first time. This (so far) has included some native European church leaders from Germany and Romania, as well as several neat American missionary families whose ages and stages of life are similar to our own -- families working in Austria, Italy, and Romania. There are also some really neat folks here who are stationed in Germany with the military, or who were stationed in Germany in the past and for whom this retreat became so meaningful that they still come back to it even though they no longer live in Europe. We're the only representatives of our team here this year, and didn't expect there would be anyone else from Ukraine, but were delighted to get to meet two Ukrainians who traveled all the way here for this as well.
We got to hear and participate in a couple of good lessons this morning, including an excellent study given by Mike Armour, the leader of Eastern European Mission, about the meaning and uniqueness of Christ's incarnation/manifestation to us as a human being. It was laden with fascinating and relevant historical and linguistic insights and, had there been any price for admission to this retreat, that lesson by itself would have been worth the price of it. I also found myself getting a little teary and borderline choked-up in some of the singing this morning; anyone who knows me well will know that's about as emotional as I get, so that says something.
There is a great program of kids' classes here too, and Malachi and Silas had such a wonderful time in their class this morning. They are enjoying playing with the other kids here that are around their ages, give or take, and there are a good number of kids.
Anyway, it's only half-way through the first full day here so we'll see what else comes of it; we're looking forward to more.
