"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.