Spring is just around the corner, but the cold temps and intermittent snow want to hang around just a little longer. I continue to watch the Bardwell kids on Mondays and help with school while Laurel takes Ukrainian language lessons and does some shopping at the bazaar. This past week there was a chocolate festival in town, and we walked around a bit and got some chocolate covered donuts. Pretty tasty, I must admit. While out and about we ate lunch at a relatively new place in town, and their calzone is delicious. March 8 was International Women’s Day, and though many countries don’t give the day much attention, Ukraine plays it up pretty big.  At church Alla, one of our faithful young ladies, gave each lady a homemade candy bouquet.  The correspondence Bible course continues to go strong, and in the month of February alone I registered  31 new students.  Most of these came from invitations from other students who are already taking the course.  They say word of mouth is the best form of advertising.  In an effort to improve my Ukrainian language  and reading skills I have been reading the book The Prince and The Pauper by Mark Twain in Ukrainian during my lessons. I finally finished the book, and look forward to starting another one soon.  We are looking forward to the summer, when we minister to the local kids through a week of Vacation Bible School. I am developing a week of lessons and activities based on a “seeking for treasure” theme, with the main idea that Jesus is the greatest treasure.  I am still helping Greater Grace church with their Saturday kids’ club, and this past week Edgar presented the parable of the sower lesson. After Resurrection Sunday we will begin a new series of lessons about the early Christians. Continue to pray for the ministry and ministers here in L’viv, Ukraine. Thank you, and God bless.

I love this picture of little brother reading next to big brother.

Edgar teaching the lesson at kids' club.

The fuse bead craft the kids made in club this week.

Anyone for a donut?

Just about anything at La Piazza is delicious.

Can you find the boy in the tree? I walked right past him.

Laurel modeling her candy bouquet.

Even in the midst of a cold and snowy winter we have several students who have been coming to English club faithfully. Now that Nathan has returned to Ukraine we have resumed the Bible study portion of the evening as well. It has been a blessing to meet with these young people and continue to build relationships with them, as our ultimate desire is to see them come to know the Lord. We do have a handful of believers who attend, but the majority of them are not saved. Below are some pictures taken at one of our recent meetings.

Dasha and Roman

Katelin hanging with Marion and Yarina

Nathan and Taras

Taras is a faithful regular and his sister Yarina comes when she can.

A man on the street walks away reading the John/Romans we gave him.

Zoie and Ashley realized they used to be best friends when they were 4 years old.

Everyone is exhausted by the time we boarded the last train of the trip.

Dan making sandwiches while waiting for the train out of Debrecen.

Here are some pictures to go along with the post from yesterday. I am sorry if they don’t seem organized. I have trouble figuring out how to lay out lots of pictures on the blog.

A nice dinner with the Henolds. They have Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew in Romania.

A good gathering for church in Baia Mare.

The kids kept a journal of what they did throughout the trip.

Fried dough on a roll at the Christmas Fair. Very tasty.

The kids swam several times at the resort pool.

Silas, Zoie, and I went into town on our own for a few hours one day.

Our accommodations at Petnehazy Resort in Budapest.

Eating lunch at a local Burger King

All together on one of the many public transportation rides. This was the subway.

Dan gave his testimony at the church we visited in Budapest. Afterwards the Prangers fed us a wonderful lunch.

Silas loved the Hungarian goulash we had at the restaurant Monday night.

It has been a month since I last wrote, but most of that time I was away.  My vacation started on Dec. 4 with the Bardwells and me traveling to Budapest, Hungary and then on to Baia Mare, Romania the next week and staying with the Henold family, who are missionary friends with Dan and Laurel. Our overnight trip to Budapest went smoothly, and after a little trouble meeting up with our escort to the resort, we got to our lodging on the west side of Buda around noon on Saturday. Since we had no personal vehicle for transportation we bought week long passes for the public transport and didn’t have to worry about getting tickets for every ride we took. It was gray and cool most of the week, but not uncomfortable, and we did a lot of walking and riding. We scheduled a personal tour of the city on Monday and capped the day off with dinner at a restaurant that caters to tourists and provides food and entertainment with an authentic Hungarian flavor. Highlights of our week in Budapest include visiting the Winter Christmas Fair and Advent window in the city center, visiting the Palace of Wonders Science Center (highly recommended), eating at the American restaurants like Burger King, KFC and Subway, and swimming in the resort pool.  Our accommodations at the resort were very nice and homey, and it was a blessing to just kick back and relax and not feel that we had to be somewhere at a certain time.

By 8:30 a.m. the following Saturday we were out of our resort and on the road again to catch the cross-country train to Debrecen that would eventually connect us to Baia Mare, Romania.  We got to Debrecen with about 3 minutes to get the connecting train to Romania, and we jumped in the train and found an open compartment to settle in before taking our second breath. When we handed the steward our tickets she informed us that we had only paid for the tickets and not the reservation fee. The ticket agent never even told us about that fee, so we had to shell out some more money to make peace with the steward and be allowed to stay on the train. We are pretty sure it wasn’t a bribe, like is so common in this part of the country.

We were greeted at the train station in Romania by the Henold family, and grabbed a bite to eat at McDonald’s before going to the house and crashing for the night.  During the week we had 3 opportunities to pass out John/Romans; twice in Baia Mare and once in Sighet after we visited the Communist Resistance Memorial Museum, located in a former prison where the resisters were held.  Our first Sunday in Romania we went to the gypsy village where the Henolds are trying  to get a church started. We had a good turnout the for the service, and a solid gospel message was given.  It snowed hard the second weekend we were in town, which made the mountain roads difficult to traverse.  Dan was looking forward to preaching that week, but instead of going to church we listened to Pastor Sowell’s message on the internet.

Other than Silas getting his foot caught under the car at the science museum, our trip home proved to be the most dramatic part of the entire vacation.  We weren’t sure what kind of connections we could make at the Romania/Ukraine border, so we thought our best bet was to take a train back to Debrecen, Hungary and then up to L’viv.  So our journey started at 3:30 a.m. Monday morning, the 22nd.  By 9:30 a.m. we arrived at Debrecen with no trouble, but through a series of events we ended up having to hang out at the train station all day and wait until midnight for the next train to the Ukrainian border town. To make a very long story short,  in the dead of the night, with 6 sleepy children and lots of baggage we changed trains 3 times, until finally, at 5:30 we caught the train (almost missed it) for the final leg of our journey. God blessed by allowing us to have the compartment mostly to ourselves, letting everyone stretch out and get some real rest, and giving us some beautiful scenery through the Carpathian Mountains. Just about 40 hours after we started our return trip from Romania we finally arrived in L’viv. A taxi driver gave the Bardwells a great deal to take them home from the train station, and I had a quick and easy trip home on the bus. Overall, I think our trip was a success, and I praise the Lord for an opportunity to “come apart and rest awhile.”  Check back in a couple days and I will have added pictures to the story.

Well, part of it anyway. I will be leaving today with the Bardwell family for a 17 day vacation. We will be boarding the evening train to Budapest, Hungary and will be staying at a resort there for a week. Laurel and I have spent many hours surfing the internet for interesting things to do and see in Budapest. At the end of next week we will get on another train and ride east to Baia Mare, where we will be staying with Bob and Tina Henold, missionaries in Romania. We look forward to the time away from home, meeting new people, and trust God for health and safety along the way.

For the time being, all food service places are required to wear masks.

It was reported to be everything from biological warfare, to the pneumatic plague, to simply a campaigning ploy by the top political leaders. After the smoke has cleared and the information looked at, it appears that Ukraine, especially the western part, was hit by 3 different strains of the flu virus, including the swine flu, or California flu, as they call it here. One of these viruses quickly attacks the lungs and it can take a life very quickly if not attended to immediately. At this time of year and in this part of the country the death toll is higher than usual. It seems that everyone you talk to has family or friends, or knows someone, who was sick or died from the flu. Just this week my next-door neighbor was found dead in his apartment as a result of the flu. By the grace of God, none of the missionaries in L’viv have fallen sick, and we are taking measures to stay healthy. We didn’t have kids’ club or English club for a couple of weeks because of the quarantine, but school is back in session next week and our ministry schedule will be back to normal. It has been a blessing to hear our church members testify how they have been able to speak of Christ and the peace he gives in these times of life’s uncertainty.

The Lord blessed me with this beautiful sunset yesterday as I was walking home and this verse came to mind.

Sometime you have one of those days that just stands out from the rest. Yesterday was like that for Laurel and me. It all began when we arrived at the Ukrainian church to take part in a craft class and when we got there realized it was part of a major seminar, which we’re pretty sure they didn’t tell us beforehand. Since it was supposed to last all day and entail much more than we planned we decided not to attend. So instead of the seminar we headed to the train station to check on schedule and prices for our vacation trip to Hungary. Laurel bought the tram tickets and after punching the tickets I put mine in a pocket. One stop from the train station the ticket control officer came by and asked for our tickets. Laurel showed hers right away and I started looking for mine. I searched my coat pockets and briefcase bag several times, telling her all the time that I have one, I promise, but I just can’t find it. The lady was just about to write me up and charge me a fine when Laurel noticed a little piece of paper sticking out of my sweater pocket. Then I remembered that I specifically put it there so I would have it if someone checked. Didn’t I feel like a jerk. Well, we got off the tram at the train station and headed for the main entrance. We hadn’t walked far when a man started staggering toward us. I realized that he was drunk and moved to the side so we wouldn’t bump into him. As I moved he lunged toward me trying to grab me or my bag and saying something we didn’t understand. At that moment Laurel and I started running away across the street, right in front of a bus that was slowing down to stop. I guess that long honk was for us. I’m pretty sure we lost him at that point, but we were looking over our shoulders the rest of the time we were in that area.

We got our needed information at the station from a very cheerful and helpful young lady at the desk. NOT! Customer service still needs some work here in Ukraine. Even our trip to the restroom was an adventure, but I will not go into details here. After finding beans at the bazaar and finding out that we didn’t need to visit one of our church members at the hospital because she was coming home later we decided to stop at the coffee shop for dessert and a “much needed cappuccino”.  After ordering a very delicious looking struedel the waitress returned to tell us that they didn’t have any more. Our replacements were delicious and we were rested and refreshed after walking several kilometers since  starting out that morning. Time will not permit me to recall the events that Laurel and I encountered separately as we split from each other and headed home.

Last week Bible Baptist Church had its first service at my apartment, its new location for the winter months or until we find another building in which to meet. We had a full house with 19 folks, but we are praying that we will burst at the seams and have even more. Pray with us for this outcome.  It was also a good week for our Kids’ Club on Saturday. We had a good group and a great time learning the books of the Bible. The kids and leaders split into two groups and raced against the clock to put the Old Testament book cards in order. It was lots of fun and a great learning experience.

Olena and Laurel

Genesis, Exodus,...

Strange as it may sound, I have always wanted to dig potatoes with Ukrainians. I thought it would help me accustom myself to the people and their culture better, and understand first hand the physical hardship it involves. I suppose, if you have done this every year since you were 9 or 10 years old, you would be used to it, but for a first timer, it was pretty tiring and painful. Most families don’t have modern equipment, so it means taking a horse-drawn plow row by row, gathering the potatoes that have been unearthed into buckets,  and then emptying the buckets into 70-80 lb. sacks that the men will load onto a horse-drawn cart and take home to store or sell.  There is a hand tool used to break up dirt and find any potatoes that aren’t seen on the surface. It involves a lot of bending, reaching, and lifting.  Don’t get me wrong, I really did enjoy doing it, and it was a good time and a testimony to the Bardwell’s unsaved neighbors. Four of the  Bardwell kids, Laurel, Olena, and I all came out to help them that day. And next year? We’ll see.

row by row, potato by potato

The 92 year old grandmother worked right beside us.

Praise the Lord for great weather.

All in a day's work.