Mondays

Mondays… It can’t be a bad thing to like Monday’s. 

 

Pris is two weeks into her trip… that means we get her and Angel back  in less than two weeks now.  Good. 

Got into the van to go to work only to discover that one of the drunk girls who came out last night had finally succumbed to the demands of her churning stomach.  Ugh…  sweet.  We load the students into it Friday and Sunday nights.  They love it.  That last trip must have put the poor kid over the top.  15 years old and drunk… I feel so bad for them.

Helped a neighbor with their dog this arvo.  Not a pleasant experience.  The dog needed to be put down.  A rabid fox attacked it.  Interestingly enough, I discovered that if your dog bites someone in Ukraine, the fine is 17 grievny ($2).  If you kill someone’s dog, you can get a year in prison!  Strike! 

We enjoyed Marie’s beef stroganoff for tea!  She is going to make some lucky bloke fat someday.  :)  Between her, Shane, Cheryl and Alexandra, we certainly haven’t suffered a lack of good cooking while Pris has been away.

Tonight, I played a game with the girls and then watched Pride and Prejudice with them.  It’s a good old movie.  Good?  I still enjoy the rather simple plot… with viewing #10 surely coming up soon.

During the movie, I discovered that I’d broken my phone during a drop this morning.  (I should never have taken that case off yesterday!)  So while I’m typing this, I’m fixing an old phone and transferring all my “stuff”.  It is fascinating how tied I am to a phone!  Who would have guessed it 10 years ago? 

Fall or Autumn are both here

IMG_0019Autumn… or Fall?  It didn’t take me too many months of knocking around with Americans to lay off correcting their English.  I guess it got old and a bit pointless making a fuss and laughing at the differences in language.  I was talking with Simbo this last week and we were saying that we’d got to a place where we didn’t even know sometimes what our mother tongue was!  And after 20 years here, it has become even more complicated by the addition of Russian and Ukrainian to my repertoire of words.  I regularly have to pause and search my memory for the English word due to the only world coming to the fore being Russian!  Will 20 more years see me become a mumbling idiot?  Nah, mate.  I’ll revert to what is most natural.

We are well. 

 

 

 

 

 

PB

This last week, 21 people went away for a weekend of paintball, games, relaxing, and three main lectures.  13 students came with us and heard and saw the gospel message. Few of them would have heard it before, let alone spent time with Christians.  No one dramatically became Christians, but there was no boredom during the lectures that Bruce and I gave.  They were taking it all in… hungrily, it seemed.  We had a good time and came away with relationships developed and hopefully a group of guys who want to know more about Jesus.  Here are some of the pictures I took:

 

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Strike a light

IMG_1771Something that no longer amazes me is God’s timing.  I’m used to seeing Him intervene with perfect timing to inspire admiration.  We’ve started studying the book of James for our Wednesday night groups.  “God sends problems to test our faith and to strengthen it.”  I recalled a time when our bike was stolen from outside while we were at a Bible study and the way God helped us to glorify His Name through the way we reacted.  Peace reigning and trust being the underlying attitude in our hearts made for a good testimony to God’s faithfulness.  5 or so hours following this teaching on Wednesday, some thieves chose to steal two windows and a fancy doghouse that we’d just made for a single missionary’s dog.  Upon discovery, I found myself starting to complain about the filthy condition of their hearts that they would do such a thing… and then caught myself.  Well, once again, God tests my faith in this area of trusting that He is working things together for good.  I felt like I scored a ‘B’, but not an ‘A+’.  Thankfully, He loves me and will probably give a heap more opportunities for me to prove my love and trust.  Good… I think.  :)