Where I live

I was chatting with a friend online this afternoon and she asked me "is where you're living nice?"

I thought that was a neat, very open-ended question.  So here goes...

Yes.

If you've seen some of my January posts then you've already seen the house I live in.  Here it is again though.

The bottom floor is the garage/basement.  I live on the first floor (where you see the steps).  The family that owns the home occupy the top two floors.

I live in a fairly new neighborhood.  The street is one big mud-hole.  I think the city basically doesn't provide any maintenance until the area is well established (which it is because the whole street is lined with 3-4 story homes like this one).

I guess I live about 2 miles or so from the center of the city.  You can look it up on Googlemaps (24 Nikitina, Uzhgorod, Ukraine).

I usually walk about a 1/4 a mile and catch public transportation (Marshrutka) into the center...it costs 25 cents.

There are good, western style grocery stores about a mile from me.  Again, a combination of walking and riding the Marshrutka).  I just have to be careful not to buy too much stuff at one time because you can't carry half a dozen bags at once and it's a pain to carry stuff on the Marshrutka.

For Church, I catch the bus into the Center and then walk another 1/2 mile or so.

I don't have internet at my house, although I do have 3G on my Ipad.  I can usually check sports scores and facebook with it but it's too slow and unwieldy to do any kind of long internet sessions like research.  I go into town and find a cafe with internet wifi for that.  Wifi in cafe's is everywhere, but there aren't many places that have plug-ins for a computer.

Food is fairly cheap.  I can usually get a pizza and coke for about $4.00.  I  eat a lot of pizza!

Of course where I'm living is very historical and it's on the western edge of the Carpathian mountains.  Prior to WW1 this area was actually part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  It's not really been a part of Ukraine very long.  So there's quite a mixture of cultures and it's evident in everything from food, to language, to architecture.

Greek Catholicism is as dominant here as Orthodoxy.  It seems to me so far that the whole area is more open to religion than was Kyiv or eastern Ukraine where Orthodoxy is overwhelmingly dominant.  The Church in Ukraine is going through a growth spurt.  This is a good time to be here.

It's been too cold to venture out much, but I am close to the mountains.  I'm looking forward to some hiking, camping and even rafting this summer.  I'm already thinking about how to get a Kayak here!

There's more to say but that's enough for now.  Just a short disjointed view of where I'm at.

a week in review

Thought I’d give both of my readers an update on my past week starting with last Saturday.

Igor Minenko is both the President of Ruka Dopomogy (Helping Hands), which is the ministry through which we coach churches in Jesus Focused Youth Ministry…and he’s a Rabbi at a local Messianic Church.  Last Saturday (Sabbath) I spoke at his church and stuck around for their youth group meeting afterwards.

I shared my testimony and gave an overview of missions from Genesis to Revelation.   Umm, apparently several ladies in the church are convinced that I’m Jewish.  I had a great time with them and especially enjoyed the youth group meeting, although the walk home was FRIGID!

There was a lady visiting from another church in town who spoke wonderful English and asked me if I’d be willing to meet some youth leaders from her church.  Of course, I said yes!  Sure enough, she called me a few days later and set-up an appointment for me to meet two young guys from her church.  Turns out, they go to the same church as a guy named Norby.  (Norby knows my friend Darrel and Norby and I have been communicating via Facebook since my first week here but haven’t been able to meet).  Anyway, the two Sasha’s invited me to one of their small groups this past Thursday night where I finally met Norby and got to hang out with a handful of high school and college-aged kids.  I’m going to visit their church this coming Sunday night.

Thus was my week.  Doug was out of town all week but his wife hosted a welcome party for me and two American Couples also working in the city.  It was fun to meet them and learn a little about their ministries and passions.  I met with our Pastor a couple times during the week to talk about the Young Adult Ministry (college age) and the worship band.

And I had some time this week to write and study.  I’ll help coach my first church the week after next I think.

My VISA application has been started.  Pastor Vadim thinks it may only take a week or so.  Be in prayer for a positive outcome, that is, me being granted a 3-5 year Religious VISA.  So much hinges on getting the VISA.  The next steps would be to get “Registered” as a resident alien and then get a bank account and start looking for a car.

How can I pray for you?

It's COLD

Well I completed my quick trip to Kyiv to retrieve some of my "stuff" from storage.

For those of you who were dying to know what was left, well, most of it actually.  My friend gave the Bed away as I expected...and I didn't see my boots either.  I didn't even bother looking at my old guitar after suffering summer heat and winter sub-zero x2; I actually bought a newer, nicer guitar while in Kyiv.  I was happy to retrieve my heavy coat and I had more clothes here than I thought I did.  I can almost dress up now!

My trip to Kyiv was fun.  It was the best train ride I've ever had.  I had a bunk (1 of 4) in a coupe and one of the other passengers spoke English.  That doesn't happen often!  There was married couple too who expressed a lot of interest in what I am doing here.

The big news though is how cold it was in Kyiv (and now is all over Ukraine).  Windchills were/are in the negative 20's.  The Kyiv Post (an English paper in Ukraine) is reporting over 100 cold-related deaths, mostly of homeless people on the street.  There's been several hundred cases of frostbite.

Thinking about the homeless people in the cold...along with having finished A Hole in our Gospel by Richard Stearns has me thinking a lot about my response to beggars and homeless people.  There's a blog brewing but I'm not ready to go there yet.

I also have some other ministry-related thoughts brewing.  I don't know if you've seen it, but the Super Bowl is getting a lot of attention in regard to Human Trafficking.  If you're not aware of the spike that takes place surrounding the Super Bowl, then you need to Google!  So...here's my thought:  If the Super Bowl is such a huge trafficking magnet, then how much more so the 16 Eurocup Soccer Games that Ukraine will host in June and July?