leaving today

We will be leaving nikopol tuesday eveneing - our flight leaves early thursday morning, and arrives thursday evening (local time) in minnesota.

On the Ukrainian Christmas (Jan 7th) We had our Christmas/New Year program. First, the children performed a short "play" - a five minute nativity skit. They concluded with a song (in Russian) which Benjamin also sang. After the skit I gave a slideshow presentation of the events of the last year. Some of you will probably see this presentation.

Joseph and Mary - Adele and Benjamin

The angels, Naturally - Veronica and Alina

our shepherds, Ephraim and David

We had a number of visitors for the play. Nastia's mother came and enjoyed our program very much.

New Sister!

Lena was baptized this afternoon after services. I had to arrive before 8 to start to fill the baptistry. There were some difficulties getting warm water, as our electric service to the building is only 20 amps! This makes it dificult to decide what we want to heat. We finally got it filled, but a few of the ladies thought it was inhuman to baptize at anything less than 80 degree water. Fortunately, Lena was not one of those women! Since it was so cold, and she has health problems, we did not waste any time with formalities, but did everything ahead of time and baptized her promptly as soon as she sat down. She will have to go to Dnipropetrovsk for surgery, and so it may be a little while before we see her again. please pray for her.

hot water - sort of

I installed an in-line water heater this week. unfortunately it cannot handle a large volume. Still it, should serve our needs. I put in a hookup so that we can fill our portable baptistry, although at a gallon a minute, it may take a while!

urgent prayer for Lena

Lena is a contact through Galina. She had a few studies with Stuart and Valerie, but didn't seem to progress very far. She has had numerous foot surgeries and is permanently lame. I have been informed by Galina that she has hepatitis B and C - probably contracted through unsanitary conditions at the hospital during surgery. Hep. B is not serious, but unfortunately hep C is. From what I can understand her liver has stopped functioning, which is a death sentence in Ukraine, if that information is accurate (I am not a doctor, so I don't know if it is a temporary thing while the body fights infection). I am trying to resume bible studies with Lena.

spring cleaning?

It was sunny and about 55 degrees for our workday. We got the garage cleaned out, about half of the burnable debris is gone. We also pruned the grapevines and raked. This week we have to have a truck haul all the stuff off.

Legal snafus

There is a possibility that we are going to run into some extra expenses in the near future.  When we did the property registration we were assured that "for a small fee" we would not  have to do some of the requirements that most commercial properties are required to do.  We understood this under the context of not really being a major commercial property like a business.  Now an official has told us that the main bureau in dnepropetrovsk is going to do an audit of the local fire and water departments to make sure properties are in compliance with zoning laws.  This official has said for another "small fee" he can make all of this go away.  I am extremely uncomfortable with these "small fees".  Currently, it appears we would need to install a fire alarm system, and put in a second exit (windows don't count here).  This will run in the neighborhood of $2500 (we are currently checking with a friend on prices). There may be legal fees to do the work and work permits that have to be taken out for the work, driving up the cost.  we will keep you posted on the developments