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Believe it or not, this is the first time we have had internet access since my last post the night I was in Rome.  We have been having a great time here in Italy and are staying in some beautiful places. They just happen to be places that do not have internet access. 

I had a successful time submitting our visa applications in Rome the next morning after I wrote the last post on here, and then I rushed to the train station, hopped on another super fast train back to Florence and was there in time to meet up with the rest to see a museum we had reserved tickets for in advance (the museum with Michaelangelo's original David statue).  We had dinner that night down by the river in Florence.

The next day we checked out of our apartment there and traveled by train to a village where we are currently staying.  We are staying in a villa on the edge of a small village called Quiesa, which is next to a slightly larger village named Massarosa, which is near a small city called Lucca, which is in the Florence vicinity.  This place is definitely off the beaten track and is not even on the map as far as tourist stuff goes.  It is a great complement to our experience in touristy Florence.  We had to travel almost 40 minutes by bus to get to the nearest internet cafe, if that gives you a sense of things.

There is not time to write much more, as we are about to catch a bus back to the village from where we are, which is the seaside town of Viareggio.  We were here enjoying an afternoon on the beach, playing in the sea.  The boys loved it.  Yesterday Denyce, her mom, Malachi, and I visited an olive plantation where they produce their own olive oil, and got a personal tour of their olive press and got to see how it works.  We also got to taste their olive oil and, of course, got some to take home.  It was way cool, much cooler than I just made it sound.  

OK, we need to go for now.  Back to the village with us (this Friday we transition to our last stop, which will be three days in Rome, so maybe we will be a little better in touch there ... no promises). 

Man, Italy is amazing.  Wow.  End of post.

Really, there aren't many words to communicate much more than that, but for those of you who would like a few more details, below is an adaptation of an email I just wrote to our teammates, which will also suffice as a pretty good "first post from Italy."  As a reminder, we are here in Italy on vacation along with my (Rob's) mom and stepdad, as well as Denyce's mom.  We don't have internet access where we're staying (and won't anytime during the trip), so there won't be many of these, but through circumstances I've ended up in a hotel in Rome where there is internet (see below for explanation), so here you go...

Things are going well here. Our trip went smoothly, Denyce's mom was a champ at navigating international air travel solo for the first time, and we made it to Florence with only one delayed piece of baggage (one of Denyce's mom's ... it came today). Florence has been wonderful so far. We are staying in a flat right in the center, and it's great how everything is so close together; we've been able to just walk anywhere we've needed. Truly a charming place.

Denyce will have to tell you more about it, though, because I've actually been busy with visa stuff today, our first full day in Italy. (Background: Our current visas for Ukraine expire at the end of the month, and to get new visas we have to leave Ukraine and apply for them at a Ukrainian consulate somewhere else.  The timing of our vacation makes it advantageous for us to try to get our visa renewal done here in Italy since we're already out of the country.  BUT... in order to apply for new visas, we have to have some paperwork from the Ukrainian government that took longer than expected to acquire.  In the end it became available right as we were leaving for Italy, so we had to have someone express mail it to us in Italy.  A mutual friend put me in touch with the staff of the Harding University study-abroad campus in Florence, who graciously agreed to receive a piece of mail for us -- that being our visa invitation paperwork from Ukraine).  

After arriving and getting set up and doing some initial exploring in Florence yesterday, this morning I got word that our visa paperwork from Donetsk had arrived at the Harding branch in Florence, so I quickly showered, threw a few essentials into a shoulder bag, and took off.  I took a taxi up into the hills outside of Florence to the school, which is in really a neat location. I briefly met the director, who was very friendly and helpful, but had to turn down his offer to show me around the place because the taxi was waiting and I needed to get to Rome. The taxi rushed me back into town to the train station, where I went straight to an automated ticket machine, bought a ticket for the next train to Rome, which was departing in 5 minutes, found the train, sat down, and off we went.

It was great timing, and on the train I finally had a little time to breathe. The train I ended up on is the fastest type of train they have here, and it makes the Kharkov-Kiev "express" train seem pokey! I loved the high speed trip, which was in and out of tunnels the whole way to Rome (the only way they could possibly make a high speed track in the hilly terrain of Italy, I guess). Once in Rome I headed to the Ukrainian consulate, which is not in the center but in a more residential neighborhood that is nostalgically reminiscent to me of the Pink House neighborhood in Mexico City. The residential areas of Rome definitely remind me of what I like so much about parts of Mexico City.

At the consulate I was definitely the only person whose native language wasn't Russian or Ukrainian. If there was another English-speaker there I wasn't aware of it. Stepping into that building was like stepping back in time a couple days, and all of a sudden it was like I was in Ukraine again. The lines worked like Ukraine, the people behind the windows worked like Ukraine (meaning, of the almost two hours I waited in line, there was actually someone behind the window maybe 10 or 15 minutes of that time, total). In the end, by the time I finally got my turn, the guy informed me that the bank I would need to go to and pay for the visa processing was already closed. Which means, I'm overnighting in Rome ... more on that in a minute. But, he did look over everything and confirm that it all looked good, they'd be able to do the visas, etc.

Our interaction was all in Russian, and I held up pretty well. Then at the very end, when he was telling me what bank to go to, he suddenly started speaking English. Oh well. I could have started the conversation by asking if he spoke English, but chose to launch right into Russian instead. I wondered whether, if my first words were "Vyi govoritye po-angliickiy?" ("Do you speak English?"), if that might start things off on the wrong foot when I had only limited evidence that this consulate was willing to do visas for Americans, so I played it safe. Anyway, after leaving there I tracked down the location of the nearest bank branch where I could pay for visa processing, so I could have it all scouted out for tomorrow morning, and then went and sat down in a little hole-in-the-wall cafe to think about housing for the night.  

I called back to the Harding guy in Florence and asked if he knew anyone in Rome who might be interested in taking in an itinerant missionary for the night. He mentioned one family but said they're gone a lot, so it's probably best to call a hotel. Then he said there is a hotel in Rome that he uses a lot, and that he would find their contact info and call me back. A few minutes later he called me back and not only gave me the hotel information, but said that a room is reserved for me and that I wouldn't need to pay for anything, that he had already "made arrangements." Wow. I thanked him and told him I am honored that he is helping me in this way. What a neat guy.  

So, then through a combination of bus and metro I made my way back to the center and have been exploring non-stop for the past 6 or 7 hours, with the exception of a brief 10 minutes when I was in the vicinity of the hotel and dropped in to check in and unload a few things. The center of Rome is incredible. Even though most of the time I've been down here this evening has been in the hours after things like museums, churches, etc. are closed, even what I've seen and experienced from the outside has been mind-blowing. Really hard to put into words how off the chart this place is (Florence too, based on my briefer time exploring it so far). I love all the history, and I feel like literally everywhere I turn down here I'm practically tripping over history, and learning about it as I go. Really I could make this post three times as long as it already is if I go into what all I've seen and done, so I'd better not.

The hotel I'm staying in is right in the thick of it, about three short blocks from the Pantheon, with a major bus stop right out front. The room that the Harding guy arranged for me is actually the only one they have available, and I got the impression that they only give it out for special situations. It's actually in the basement, but it's really big and luxurious. A large (maybe king size) bed in one room, and two twin beds, and a sitting area with couches and armchairs in the second room. It's about 1:20 AM so I need to get to bed.  

Tonight we have some neat guests over.  A couple of weeks ago, Denyce was at a cafe with Lucy and Liv for their weekly meeting together when they heard some English being spoken.  It was an American family of 5 (one daughter, two sons) who had come to Kharkov to adopt ... not just a child, but a set of two brothers.  Since then we've been spending time with this family off and on, enjoying getting to know them and even assembling together on Sundays.  

Adopting children in Ukraine is a process that takes several weeks in-country, so the father and middle child returned to the US while the mother and the other two, ages around 11 and 15, stayed to complete the process.  The two kids stayed with us earlier this week on the busy and important day when the mother was acquiring the kids' birth certificates.  That night the two boys went home with the family for the first time to the apartment where they are staying here in Kharkov.  

Tonight we have them all over -- mother, daughter, American son and two Ukrainian sons.  What an interesting and special time we are having.  We ordered pizza and all enjoyed that, and the boys are hard at play.  The newly adopted brothers, ages 8 and 9, speak maybe 10 words of English right now, and of course the American family speaks no more than that in Russian.  It's the first time Denyce and I have been in the position of "translators," although we're not really qualified to be considered that at all.  But it's been interesting for all.

Here is a shot I just took of all the boys playing.  The adopted two are the ones on the far left and right. 

Just an update on how things are going here.  Since the team retreat a couple weeks ago, which was very good, we've been clicking along in more or less our normal routine of language study.  This has been going well.  I feel like I'm making good progress, and feel like every hour I put into the language right now is producing results.  I've felt that way, for the most part, the entire time I've studied Russian, but have been feeling it especially lately.

Tonight Dougle and I had dinner with a local friend of ours here.  This friend is from a region of Georgia (the Eurasian nation, not the southern US state).  He took us to a Georgian food restaurant and it was great.  As much as I miss having readily available Mexican food, it has been great to get acquainted with the various Eastern European, Eurasian, and Central Asian cuisine that is more common here.  Lots of good stuff that folks in North America are missing out on.  Our friend also speaks virtually no English, which is fine with us, of course.  It was a good evening of Russian language practice and use for us -- mostly in comprehension, since our friend did most of the talking.

Denyce and the boys are doing well.  One thing we've been doing a lot of is spending time outside, including going for walks after dinner.  The changing of the seasons is very evidently taking place right now.  It was almost like clockwork, as soon as September 1st rolled around, it was clear that summer was on its way out.  We still have mostly pleasant temperatures, but definitely on the cooler side of pleasant, and there has been a lot of rain the last week or two.  I don't know if I'm ready for winter yet, but hopefully I will be by October or November when we'll have to start wearing coats and such.

We and our teammates here in Kharkov are all about to begin what will be an intense few weeks of travels (hence this post's title, On the Brink).  The McDougles and Nelsons are leaving tomorrow for Donetsk, where David and Dougle will each be teaching a two-week course at Ukrainian Bible Institute.  As for Denyce and me, we still have most of next week to continue in language study, and then on Friday next week my mom and stepdad will arrive in Ukraine.  They'll be here for several days, and then the following week we'll travel together to Italy, where we'll vacation together along with Denyce's mom, who is meeting up with us there.  It will be great to see them all, to get to show my mom and stepdad a little bit of our life here, and to enjoy a vacation in Italy together.

Our time in Italy will double as a work trip because there we'll be applying for our new Ukrainian visas, as our current year visas expire the first of October.  We've been doing some preparatory work for this, and ask for your prayers as visa renewals (especially doing it for the first time in a new place) always have some element of unknown.  As far as we know so far, it should go fine.  Meanwhile, sometime around the end of the month the McDougles and Nelsons will be traveling somewhere to do the same with their visas -- I think their current thinking is Budapest, Hungary, but I don't think they've nailed down their plans for sure yet. 

These are interesting times, in an interesting place.  And it's especially interesting in the Russian language.  Thank you Lord for the blessing and challenge of what you're doing with us here.  We proceed by Your grace, in Your hand. 

One more thing, random and unrelated... I just don't like text-only posts.  Here is a photo of the Kharkov train station that I thought I'd share.  This photo was taken by Tim and Rebecca Brinley when they were here a couple of weeks ago for our team retreat.  This is one of my favorite buildings in Kharkov, and I think the people here should be proud of it.  At least, as a resident of Kharkov, I'm proud that this is our train station.  It's much cooler than this picture can represent, but it is nonetheless a neat picture of it in the glowing early morning sunlight.  I'll be traveling in and out of here on three separate train rides over the course of the next two weeks.