The snow followed us

After one day of lovely rain on our arrival it has been nothing but snow ever since. We enjoy the snow however we were hoping that it would have been left behind in Calgary for the rest of the year. So far we have been in Donetsk for a week and it has flown by...probably cause we slept through a lot of it. We are normally early birds when it comes to going to bed but jet leg has caused Bruno to hit the sack by 7pm for two nights in a row.

Our appetites were quite small while we were struggling with jet leg but they seem to be picking up now. That's probably in part due to the amount of exercise we are getting. We walk almost everywhere here unless it is really too far or the weather is bad and then we take a taxi. We still haven't tried the trams yet, but we are hoping to experience that soon.

We have been attending chapel with the rest of the students at the Ukrainian Bible Institute. It is an amazing time. You can tell the students are really close and care for one another deeply. They are also very humble and honest with each other. Usually chapel begins with a prayer and a song. Then there is a message given by a student, teacher or guest and then a prayer closes the time together. But many mornings a student will stand up to make a birthday announcement and present a gift to the birthday person. Sometimes a student will go up to the front and tell the group that they are struggling with something God is teaching them and ask for patience from their fellow students as they work through these issues. It's really neat to see a group of young Christians opening themselves up in such and honest and vulnerable way.

On Sunday we went with the Jay Don and Mary Lee Rogers to the church that Sasha and Natasha Maluga attend. Sasha is the preacher in this congregation. They own their own building and even have an area for a teen class and another room for the children's class. It is rare for a church here to own their own building so they are all very excited to show it off. From church Jay Don and Mary Lee took us to AMSTOP (Amstor – a 'P' is an R sound in Russian). I had such a tough time concealing my excitement. It was almost like a Superstore. They even had meat that was wrapped in individual packages like a Canadian grocery store. We even found pasta sauce there ... well, it's more like tomato paste, but I can work with that. Our only purchasing error this time was that we bought loose leaf tea instead of bagged tea which is a little more challenging to make without a strainer.

On Monday we went on an adventure to find the University and try to find a tutor. Bruno did really well at figuring out where to go and we found one man with broken English who showed us where the International building was. After talking (often in the form of charades) to several people we learned that we had come to the school on a holiday so the people we needed to speak with were not in. They told us to come back at 9 on Tuesday.

In the afternoon we went with Jay Don, Mary Lee, Taritsia, and Alona to the cardiac treatment center. Taritsia is a woman who is very connected with orphanages and hospitals and such here. She finds out what they need and takes people there to help out or just to visit. Alona is a part time translator for UBI and her husband takes classes at UBI. From what we understand, the cardiac treatment center is a place where children live before and after they have heart surgery. The director of the center took us on a tour of the building and we got to see many of the children. They also fed us a wonderful meal that we were not expecting at all. It was chicken noodle soup and bilinis. A bilini is like a crape that is served with sour cream. Delicious. One room that they showed us at this institute was the room where the children practice music and sometimes give performances. It was under construction. A man was donating money to fix up the cracking walls and ceiling, but when they started the project the man all of sudden stopped donating money. So they have several of the supplies they need, but no money to pay workers to finish the project. This may be one of the ministries that we join in if one of the students from UBI will go with us and show us how to do some plastering.

When we got back to the school we joined the students in the kitchen for some cake. Alona was there so she was able to help out with the conversations. Alona and her husband have a 1.5 year old daughter named Masha who is absolutely adorable. She has her mom's blonde hair and her dad's dimples. Masha stays with one of the Natasha's in the nursery upstairs from the school when her dad is in class and her mom is working. So after cake Alona showed me the nursery. It was the first children's area I have seen here that would meet with most of the standards that I studied about at Mount Royal College. It looked like a fun place. And I think the staff at the school really enjoy having a good place to leave their children.

A couple of the boys also took Bruno to the students center to play ping pong. Some of them are good at the game, but I believe Bogdon is the best one. I watched some of the games and attempted to talk to one of the other boys. He and Bogdon knew maybe 20 English words and I know about the same in Russian. So we started drawing pictures and then I would write the English word and he would write the Russian word. It was a fun way to learn the words and we had quite a few laughs. It was really nice to have some time to hang out with people about our age even if the language barrier was high.

Today we returned to the University and enjoyed playing a bit more charades until we got connected with a lady named Marina who might become our Russian tutor. She is looking to see if she has enough time in her schedule to tutor us as much as we would like to be tutored.

We also started looking for our own apartment today. This is a challenging process with the language difficulties, but also with the cultural differences too. There seem to be some differences in how renting works here though we aren't entirely sure we understand what is going on. So we are excited to be making progress on setting up our Russian lessons, looking for our 'home', finding service opportunities and interacting with people a bit more. But we are also finding each of these things to be different than what we are used to and so we do ask for your prayers in each of these areas.

This last picture is the ecco store we walked past today. I took it for our friend Rachael who works for ecco in Calgary. There are actually quite a number of nice shops here for those who have the extra money to spend.