Doug’s Journal for November 1-15, 2007

Thursday, November 1, 2007
From my last journal, we are in our 2nd day at Hartakov. Our young people wanted to sleep in, so I cooked breakfast as the got up. I cooked French Toast with bringing some of my own ingredients from home and also from buying necessary food items in a grocery store. At 11am, we met Anton and went to the National Historic Museum, the 2nd largest in Ukraine. We had an English speaking Tour Guide that did a pretty good job. We were for 2 hours and then had to leave and go back to Kremenchuk. We arrived back about 5:20pm and went to the church building to rest before evening class began. We had 8 present for this class.
Friday, November 2
The traffic is always heavy on that road to Hartakov and back and it is a very stressful driving so I was pretty tired. When I turned on my laptop computer, it had an error message saying that my windows execute file or something like that had been corrupted and it wouldn’t work. It looks like I will lose everything on that computer! Besides, my internet is set up on that computer, so I don’t have internet again – at least for now. I worked around the house today, did lessons preparations, read and studied and had my evening off.
Saturday, November 3
My busy morning of preparations for Bible Clubs was the same as usual. We had 1 come for the University Bible Club – a couple called and said that they couldn’t come. Then at 4 Kelli, Olya and I went to the Church discussion and we had a good fellowship with the church and a good Bible discussion about the Church. At 6 we had 5 for our evening Bible Club with the Teens. People stayed around until about 8:30pm. One girl came tonight who I hadn’t seen for a long time – Mariana. It was so good to see her again and have her with us!
Sunday, November 4
We had a good worship service today. Then we had our 2nd monthly Tea and Fellowship. Actually it was more of a meal today as the ladies all came early and prepared many sandwiches at 9am for us all to eat. We also had fruits, cookies and candies as well. About ½ way through this time, James Vaughan (who came as an AIM student in May of 2005, got married to one of our Ukrainian girls, Anya, and has stayed on) got up and announced that next Sunday would be his last Sunday in Ukraine working with us!!! It took us all by shock, for he had not said anything about this to prepare us! He will go back to England, get a job and Anya will stay here and finish her last year at the University and then join him in England. He will come back from time to time to be with her as he can. So within a span of 2 weeks, I will be loosing my last 2 workers that have been working with me as Kelli will leave for the States – moving back on Dec. 4th. It will be just me, again. We had 15 for our evening worship and that was good.
Monday, November 5
Mostly a day off and that was good. In the evening Olya, Oksana, Kelli and I went to be with the Orphan family and that was a good study and fellowship time. We usually spend 2 to 3 hours here. The Grandmother Zoya is much worse tonight and they have called the ambulance/Dr. service to come and see her while we were there. She is no longer eating or drinking.
Tuesday, November 6
No one came for our morning 6th grade class. Oksana and I were almost to the village, 37 miles north of Kremenchuk for our weekly Bible Study with our younger kids when we got a call from Inna, the mother of the Orphan home family, telling us that the Grandmother had passed away in the late morning and could we possibly come and help them. So we went into the school in Bugkivka and told them we had an emergency and that we would see them next week and turned around and went back to the eastern part of the Kremenchuk to the village where they live and spent the afternoon helping them out with my car. We then had evening singing with 10 people present. James spoke tonight and will speak Sunday night. After this I will have nearly all the lessons! It is a bit overwhelming to pick up all that he has been doing, then all that Kelli is doing as well as try to keep up with what I am doing. God will provide the way, I know.
Wednesday, November 7
I left the house at 7:30 this morning to go and help the family in preparation for the funeral this afternoon. (Oh, yes, our water is shut off so no shower or shaving today! Wonderful, huh?) Ksusha has gone with me to help me out in translation and to assist the family in any way she can. I returned for about an hour to get cleaned up the best I can without water and return for the funeral. I did a lot of driving people around, assisted in the funeral and took the Orthodox priests home after the funeral and then came back. Finally I got home around 6 and then had English Univ. Club from 6:30 to 8:30pm. I was really all in at the end of the day!
Thursday, November 8
Mostly a day of study for me and catching up. I rested some extra in the morning as I was pretty all in from yesterday. We had our Thursday evening Bible Study at 6 with 8 people present – 3 adults, James, Kelli, I and just 2 Ukrainian students.
Friday, November 9
Studied in preparation for Friday class at the village with our older girls (11th grade). We are studying the plan of salvation with our 4 girls and the class went very well! They are very open and such good students – excited and interested in all we study together. Nothing extra tonight!
Saturday, November 10
As you know if you read this regularly that Saturday mornings are always very full and busy for me. We had 2 for our Univ. Bible Club, about 20 for our Church Discussion, and 4 for our Teen Bible Club. The good part about the Teen one is that 2 of the girls are new!
Sunday, November 11
Morning worship went well and afterwards 5 came home with me and I fixed Spaghetti and we spent the early part of the afternoon together. There was much planning and preparations for James good bye party in the afternoon too. At 6 we had 15 for our evening worship and then we had the party for James good bye and even though it was sad saying good bye to him, we had a good time together. I finished the day and got home around 9. I don’t want to fail to mention that we woke up to the weather giving us a heavy wet snow and it snowed all day and night, leaving us with between 4-6 inches of snow on the ground. Our first real snow, even though we had a couple of days with very light flakes falling earlier.
Monday, November 12
Day off. In the evening we went to the Orphan family with our girls buying a gift for Liza, the oldest true daughter of the family whose birthday was yesterday – she is 16. When we came the family was also involved with a day of remembrance for the Grandmother and had a big meal prepared (I counted at least 15 different dishes prepared!) and we were the guests of honor. We also celebrated Liza’s birthday – strange combination! She is a very sweet and kind girl and so it was good that we could celebrate with her! The driving in the snow covered roads in the village was a real challenge, even though the main roads were all clear. We got home around 9:30pm. Next week we will resume our serious Bible Study with the family again.
Tuesday, November 13
This is always a difficult day for me as it carries a lot of memories. No details, but just prayers, ok? It is also a good day as it is my sister Ida’s birthday and one of our friend’s birthday as well. Again our 6th grade kids didn’t show up for class at School 11. So I had more time and went to market after going to the school today. At 1pm Oksana and I went to the village and 14 for our kids class today. Then I spoke for our devo at 6pm and we had 12 present tonight. One of our girls that are at the Univ. in Hartakov came in this evening at 8:20pm on the train, so several of us went to meet her and I took her home and with some other errands for others ended up getting home around 9.
Wednesday, November 14
I don’t talk about it much, but my day usually starts between 4 and 5:30 in the morning as I wake up then. Study in the morning. I had 10 at 1:30 for my 5th grade Bible Class at School 11. The children are a lot of fun and full of excitement in this class! I had a very hard time finding a translator today, but Nastya who is town from Hartakov translated for me – thank the Lord! At 6:30-8:30 we had our Univ. English Club that went well and was fun. We had 7 for that tonight. Again, my work day ended around 9pm.
Thursday, November 15
That’s today! I had breakfast about 7 this morning, cleaned up my kitchen (major undertaking this morning – been a little lax here lately!). Then I baked 6 dozen home made chocolate chip cookies for my birthday party tomorrow night. That’s a double batch as we never seem to have enough of these delicious cookies! Then I studied on my Hebrew lesson (James had been teaching Hebrews on Thursday night, now I take that over too). I was very pleasantly surprised when Angelina (she moved to Moscow in May) came to my door at 1:30. I went to the train station with her as her and her mother made a very quick trip to Kremenchuk today. I was with them until about 2:45. Then I sat down to catch up on this so I could get it mailed out to you! It is now 4:15pm. I will finish it tomorrow morning and email it out and put it on my blog tomorrow morning! We had our Bible Class tonight with 3 people present. Kind of discouraging, but God always finds ways of lifting us up and I know He will. Kelli and I had pizza out tonight after the class and that was a good time.