Happy New Year's Eve

well, today is the last day of 2008, we had a pretty good day. We went to see the catacombs in the Pecherska Monastery and the WWII Monuments. The sun was shining every-once-in-a-while...but it still was a cold day. (pictures follow)

New Year's Eve celebration here in Ukraine is much like it is in Russia, it is the night when Grandfather Frost comes with presents for all. All day long the women prepare the delicious dishes that the family will feast on. Families stay up until midnight, when the firework display begins. It is a beautiful show and keeps on going through the night. Many stay up all night long celebrating the new year, dancing and singing.

Our doorbell rang at about 8pm. Our friend Galina, our neighbor, came with a New Year's gift for us, a beautiful tort that she made to welcome our kids here. We gave her and her husband a little German nutcracker and some Christmas cookies.

Our plan is to go to the center tonight before midnight to watch the fireworks from the center! I am really excited!

Happy New Year to all, may God bless you this year!

~kim

on our way to the Catacombs and WWII monument...

Standing outside the Pecherska Lavra, the caves containing the catacombs.

The sun was peeking out from behind a cloud, first time in over 2 weeks!

Jerry and Beki at the monument

WWII monument at Mother Ukraine

close-up of the WWII monument

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2009!

We have been enjoying our time with Beki and Parker home! We had a quiet Christmas day, complete with turkey dinner. We missed having Laurel and Trent here with us, but are happy that they were able to celebrate their first Christmas in their own home and with family!

The kids have met our neighbors and the little grandmas that we know. We are hoping to get together with our neighbors sometime while the kids are home. We will see...

We hope that your Christmas was a blessed one, one filled with special times with family and dear ones. And we wish you a wonderful year ahead in 2009!

(The pictures included are of our evening of culture. We enjoyed an evening listening to the beautiful music of Johann Strauss. We sat in the cheapest seats, but enjoyed ourselves.)

We sat in the last row on the 4th balcony, yeah, it was hard to see the musicians, but the sound was fabulous! Yeah, we are some sillies!

the National Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet

the Rundstroms on the way to the Strauss concert

the Christmas tree at Independence Square.

Christmas shopping in Kiev

today we realized that there are only 2 days left before Christmas, so we needed to do a little shopping. We hopped on the metro (subway) to the center of Kiev to shop in one of the many underground malls. Of course we had to stop, regroup and replenish at McDonalds. Then we went on to historical Independence Square to see the large Christmas tree. It was a fun and successful day!

May you have a blessed time together with your family and loved ones. We are loving our time together and yet missing our family and loved ones who are far from us...

~kim

Parker, Kim, Beki and Jerry at Independence Square on December 23, 2008

Parker holding up the monument

Christmas time is here...

Beki and Parker are here! it is so wonderful to have them home...3 glorious weeks.
We enjoyed a delicious spaghetti dinner made by Parker, he is a spaghetti epicure...and he makes yummy sauce too.
I am savoring the moments, cherishing them, finally I am learning that we live each moment of our lives only once.
We are getting snow here, it is looking like Christmas...tomorrow we are going to make some cookies with the chocolate kisses that Beki brought with her. MMMmmm
Christmas cookies!!!! I'll eat some for you.
~kim

click the link

HI all,
Below is a comment that someone made after clicking the link in the post below.
Trust me: click on it, watch it, and think it over...

"wow... interesting! How much do you have to hate someone to not tell them about the amazing gift of eternal life...? Thanks for posting this guys- where in the world did you run across it?! Have fun with Becky and Parker!!!! Hope it's warmer there than it is here :) Hugs to all!!!"

An Athiest speaks out

Check this guy out. This should make it into a Sunday morning service somewhere.

http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=245243

No probs

Hey,
Nevermind the questions about the internet. Started working on its own.

a little help?

Hey,
Does anyone out there know why certain sites (Yahoo is the main one) suddenly won't open on a computer? Can an anti-virus program do that? Why only to some sites? I'm at a coffee shop doing free wireless right now and everything is working fine. At home it's all messed up. Any one ever solved similar problems?
Jerry

"We're freezing!"

Well, it's cold here.
But not as cold as the temps we're seeing in the US. Sorry so many of you are ch-chattttering.
I came back from the store yesterday and saw one of our friends, Pasha, an older woman who, as usual, was selling produce and home-made food out on the sidewalk. "We're freezing out here" she said.

Inside all the apartments and houses in the country it's cold as well as Ukraine tries to keep its debt to Russia for natural gas at a manageable level and so keeps the heat turned down. Russia still promises to cut off supplies on January 1; someone just told us that Ukraine will then steal gas that is going to Europe through pipelines in Ukraine...we'll see.
The current economic crisis (the Ukrainian Griven has lost nearly 50% of it's value against the US dollar since we arrived in October) has only served to highlight problems that run deep in Ukrainian politics: Slavic culture values unity but the evil, flip-side of that positive attribute is that everyone demands that everyone else compromise and so much of government function is at a standstill. This is making coming to workable agreements across party lines or across borders very difficult to achieve.

Well, anyway, to continue that thought, God patiently asked Jonah, when that missionary/prophet was whining about losing his shady little vine, whether he realized that there were 120,000 people in a nearby city who didn't even know right from wrong. I've never thought too deeply about what the point of that story was. Now I'm pretty sure I understand a little better and I think the point is this: "Let the hardships you face keep you aware that other people have it worse".

Well, I think that's what God said to me yesterday as I returned from the freezing street to my cool apartment. There are 10s of millions of Ukrainians who are in cold houses and apartments who've never heard God speak at all....Thanks for your prayers to Him that He will use us to be His messengers.

Home for the Holidays...

In our adventurous lives we have many "hellos" and "good-byes". Many of these are pretty major ones...at the end of August we said good-bye to our son as he headed off to BFA, and in the middle of October we said good-bye to our daughters and son-in-law as we headed to Kiev. I don't want to count how long it has actually been, it hurts... But, I can say that we are anxiously waiting to say some pretty glorious "hellos" this week!!! Beki comes on the 18th and Parker comes home on the 20th. Laurel and Trent will be celebrating Christmas together in the States. I am missing them already...but so happy for them.
If you are wondering how our Thanksgiving went with our neighbors, we haven't had it yet, don't worry, we will blog about it after it happens...I just had to write about how excited we are and ask you to pray for safety in all the travels, good weather and smooth connections. Beki tells us that it is snowing in Oregon...please pray for them... thanks.

preparing for Thanksgiving.... December 14th

Today we spent the day getting ready for our Thanksgiving dinner with our neighbors from upstairs. Jerry shopped for last minute food items and cleaned the apartment...I baked an apple/raisin pie, put together green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole and cut up the ingredients for stuffing.
Tomorrow is the big day!
Please be praying with us...
I will let you know how it all goes and hopefully get a few pictures....

today was a goodie day

It all started this morning after we prayed that God would help us find a good sized turkey at a good price. We went on the subway to a market on the other side of the Dnipro River. We found a lady that had turkeys that looked better than ones we had seen in the central market and they were $2 a kilo cheaper than the others. We were so thrilled. We bought this turkey for our dinner date with our neighbors. Did we mention that we have set our Thanksgiving dinner date with them for December 14th? So, we were interested in getting a nice turkey. We have been praying and trusting God, trying follow His lead with how we go about meeting people and all. When we found these really nice turkeys for a really nice price, I felt like God was saying "keep on going with these plans...I am blessing it." That is a great feeling, to know that God is putting things into place.

...So,... when we returned to our apartment building and found that we had a package slip...well, that was it. If you could have seen our faces, you would have seen the biggest, silliest grins. I felt like I was 10 years old again. The Menomonie Alliance Church has blessed us with a Christmas goodie box for many years now and that was what we got today!!!!!! Thank you Menomonie Church! you made our day even more special...we baked a celebration cake just in your honor and yes, it was so yummy!!!

Today was a really good day!

our post office

The goodies...cake mixes, chocolate chips, hot chocolate, jello and puddings!

our American cake mix baking!

Our yummy celebration cake! whoo-hoo!!

crossing paths

Ok, I have been thinking about this ever since we went to Moscow for Thanksgiving and decided that I needed to blog about it. Ever since we have moved here to Kiev, we have been praying that God would bring about divine appointments with people that He has already been working in and that are already seeking to know Him. So, after praying, we go about our business each day, anticipating that God will bring these people into our lives.
Now, instead of seeing people, like those who stop us to ask directions, or the mother pushing her baby in a stroller as only props the scenery of our lives, we are seeing them as the people that God has put into each day for a reason.
I haven't felt this excited about ministry for a long time. I wake up each morning expecting God to bring into our lives folks who need Him.
So, why am I blogging about this?
After pondering this for a week, I began to wonder what our world would look like, if each of us looked at our days and the people that God brings along as divine opportunities.
So, anyway, these are some thoughts...

Geo-politics and a hot bath

So here's the deal: it's getting to be winter; cold and foggy has been the weather for a few days now. In Russia the way you get the chill out is to go to the sauna. It's a big part of the culture there, but not so much in Kiev.

Anyway, a fitting substitute after a day out trying to practice our Ukrainian and meeting new people is a hot bath. Bathtubs here are still generously proportioned so it's a little like having a small hot tub, which can be nice.

But then there's the water.

All of our water is centrally heated. This means that somewhere in our neighborhood is the 'physical plant' where boilers are housed. ALL of the hot water that either goes through our radiators or into our tub is heated there (and so is all the water for all the other buildings in our area).

This system was instituted during Soviet times when it was easier to keep things under central control.

Now, in a return to soviet-like politics, Russia has threatened to shut off the natural gas supplies to Ukraine starting on New Year's Day. Russia says it's because Ukraine won't pay its bill for gas; Ukrainians tell us it's because Ukraine wants to be a NATO member.

I don't know either way. For us the upshot, day to day, is that Ukraine is conserving the natural gas it does have, and this by making sure I don't waste any too-hot bath water. At this point luke-warm showers are still possible so we'll be content with that. We just wanted you to see into our world a little.


(The painting is of a site in Kiev, Andreevski Monastery, by Anatoly Tartakovsky)



Thanks for reading.

Fogged in

Hi Again,

Weather in Kiev- Pea Soup

Seems there is more time to write and more to write about than in our recent past. We're enjoying the work here, and not just because the neighbors invite us up to eat stuffed carp. Every day is a challenge-what to do? who to try to meet? what questions need answers? The fun part is being able to take every day as an opportunity to see God do something special.

Right now we're trying to kill two rabbits with one bullet (as the old saying here goes): We need to get visas and establish a basis for ministry. Right now we (ok, Jerry mostly) are thinking that a business platform might be a door to establish numerous contacts with people.
We are in pretty close contact with a lawyer who mainly helps westerners with adoptions in the Ukraine but is also knowledgeable about these types of questions.

We could use your prayers, not that visas are so hard to obtain, but so that we have wisdom in how to proceed and if the whole business-to-ministy approach would be best here.

Thanks
Jerry and Kim

p.s. For those of you looking for a World Cup update: Bode came out of his skis in the Super G and was a no-show in the Downhill at Lake Louise. I might have to send him an email and offer some pointers.