Ukraine 11 – Day 14 (October 12)

If fatigue dictates the length of this post, it will be a short one!

The Next Few Days

Tomorrow we’re going to be buying enough shoes for thirty kids in Ukraine (or one woman in Canada!). Then we’re going back to L’Viv for Saturday night, so that we can be with the assembly in Lutsk Sunday morning. Then back to L’Viv for the Sunday night meeting, and then back here to Ivano on Monday. Please pray for safe travels for us.

Update on Today

We visited four homes and one halfway house today. The first two visits were with people who come faithfully to the meeting. One woman (Anya) had had eye surgery three weeks ago for her cataracts. Another brother had brought funds from Canada for the surgery. After an encouraging conversation with Anya and her daughter (Marica), we prayed with them and left money to pay for her medications.

Our second visit was to Diana’s flat. She’s about 35 and has Hepatitis C. She has one son, and no husband to speak of. Had a real nice visit with her. We were encouraged to see how well worn her New Testament was, and we encouraged her to read a passage to her teenage son each day. Please pray for her health.

Then we visited a halfway house, which is a place where kids with no homes stay temporarily until a more permanent lodging is found for them. Malcolm has purchased shoes for the kids before, and we are going to do the same thing this trip. We will go to the market tomorrow armed with a list of shoe sizes for 21 little pairs of feet! We gave the kids suckers, balloons, and did a rope trick and talk. The staff were pleased to receive pens and Canadian pins.

Next we saw an old woman with poor health. Her young granddaughter looks after her. The woman cried from start to finish. She says that the hospital gave her a wrong treatment that has completely spoiled her health. Apparently she has cancer, but no one has told her this. We wonder if the “wrong treatment” was actually chemotherapy. How sad. Unfortunately, many religious experts do a similar thing: they never tell the ones who trust their “expertise” about the spiritual disease they possess. At least these Ukrainian medical doctors are trying to administer a cure.

Our last visit was a happy one. Natalia is the mother of five but looks as young as her oldest daughter, Tanya (23). She was too shy to tell us about her needs, and she ordered Tanya not to say a word about them! We left some money with her anyway, which she was very humble about. We told her we felt the same way when our Canadian brothers and sisters gave their finances to us so that we could distribute them to her. When we learned that she has to walk in the dark to work, we also gave her one of our Mag flashlights. She was inexpressibly thankful. Tanya is very sweet. They promise to come to our next meeting on Tuesday night.

For supper we got a real treat. We went to a shish kabob restaurant with character. What a delicious way to end the day! We all remembered how fortunate we were to enjoy a nice meal in this world of hungry people. God is good.

Hmm, I guess fatigue didn’t dictate anything!