Hurray for Sunday!

Forgot to mention that we spoke to our friend Anya by phone yesterday. She was in the States when we left but is back in Ukraine and hopefully will come for a visit next weekend.

Slept in until 8:00, at least I waited to get out of bed until then. The apartment (and therefore the entire building) really doesn’t have heat. The radiator is cool and the lovely heated pipe that curves itself back and forth near the wall in every Ukrainian room/apartment bathroom I can recall was also cool. Sometime in the night John got up and switched our bathroom water over to the personal boiler that is in the bathroom so we had hot showers this morning. An egg and some yogurt for breakfast, then it was off to church. John reviewed the Metro directions with Alec yesterday, but we got a little confused when it was time to switch lines. We missed the first train that was immediately available because they show the stops along the line on the wall that is behind the train when it is stopped. After it left we could see the stop we needed, and caught the next one just a few minutes later. At the musical institute where the church rents space we were also a bit confused inside because the stairway under construction at our last visit was now repaired and the ascent was unfamiliar. Eventually we found people to follow and confirmed with the pastor, in Russian, that a church met here. We told him we were looking for Alec and Nadya and we think he was indicating they would be coming later. We found out after the service that Pastor Gnadi actually speaks excellent English. In fact that was his major and he is a teacher of the English language. We found a couple of seats and were greeted by a man who remembers us from last time (with Nick and Dennis) and had a nice conversation in English. Alec came shortly thereafter. He was the pianist today. We followed along as best we could. They started with several hymns, most were familiar including “Amazing Grace“, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”, “Come Thou Almighty King” and later “Take My Life and Let it Be”. A woman had a lengthy message for the children. They sang a song that wasn‘t familiar but clearly was about God being the creator of all things. Nadya arrived from a youth meeting after that and provided the gist of Pastor Gnadi’s message about training for a godly life. Another gentleman also spoke (I missed his name and hope to get it from Alec and Nadya). His message had to do with the gospel not being about a set of rules but how each person must have a relationship with God and seek what is His will for him/her - not one answer is the same for all (e.g. to marry or not marry). Each preacher used several specific Bible passages which we were able read along in our English Bible. We had prayers too, of course, and sang “happy birthday” in Russian to four people today. We met a few people after church including Nadya’s mother (who was just baptized in the previous year). She speaks very good English, too, and was Nadya’s first teacher although she lacked confidence today because she is out of practice. When we adopted Nick and Dennis we got to know a lovely young girl named Katya who had spent some time in America due to her father’s job and was eager to practice her English with us. Before we left we exchanged prayer requests and I have been looking forward to seeing her ever since. Today we learned that Katya and her family have actually been in Pittsburgh for the past year and a half and will return on Friday. Afterwards we were invited downstairs to a café that the church hosts after service. A gentleman behind the counter provided tea bags or instant coffee as requested (and he speaks English). They had some bread and cheese, bread and meat, many different cookies and a really wonderful napoleon tort birthday cake. A gentleman who speaks no English but was delighted to have us present made sure we each had a piece of the cake and we had a conversation with him thanks to Nadya. He said he once had an opportunity to learn English but he didn’t because he didn’t know that someday we would be visiting his church! Pastor Gnadi graced us with a good bit of time for conversation too. We had a good visit over lunch with Alec and Nadya at a multilevel mall and they dropped us off back at our apartment.

We had time to change clothes and call Nick and Dennis before heading over to the orphanage. Christine wrote about yesterday:
“As Dennis was getting ready for bed, he asked where we went again, "Medieval Times," and as he wore his sleeper on just his arms he declared that he was a king and put his hands on his hips. I asked him if he wanted to be a king when he grew up now, he said no, he was a king now.” [‘now’ in bold]

It remains warm outside - melting and melting and a just a little bit of rain on our way out. It turns out a couple of the snow-covered slopes we have been climbing en route are actually terraced stairways!

It was a nice visit with Daniel, mostly low-key but not boring. He was wearing a hooded fleece jacket and they showed us he should keep the hood up, so he may have just had a bath.
The Huggies wipes container has been a favorite ‘toy’ all week - today was no exception and he definitely knows how to open it now. Yesterday he first learned to spread his hand wide and flat to give us “five”. He had lots of opportunities to give/get ‘fives’ today: John created a game where Daniel sat on his leg, then stood up nearly all on his own strength, gave me five, and then fell backwards for Papa to catch him. The effort of standing was worth the fun of being caught and he did it 12 - 15 times. We haven’t seen him stand from a fully seated position before and so we were quite delighted. He still gets very sad when Mama and Papa tell him not to do something and then follow through after three tries by taking the item he is being naughty with away, but he is recovering a little faster now.

We stopped at the Billa on the way home for water, and bought 6 liters of water, chips, Coke, microwave popcorn (!) and chocolate. Supper consisted of the remaining two hotdogs, a shared orange and some chips. John had the multivitamin juice, I had two cups of multivitamin tea. Sergei called to check in on us. We had encouraged him to spend yesterday (and today) with his family since we really don’t need rides to and from the orphanage and we could always call if we needed something interpreted. He said the heat to the apartment buildings gets turned off sometimes and there really isn’t anything you can do about it. John gave me a down blanket for my birthday with this trip in mind (I really can’t sleep if I’m cold at night) - it has been wonderful!

Check the side panel for a link to the Google maps of Kharkiv which shows our exact location (Metro Stop).