30 Days of Blogging. Day 1. It's my birthday.

I still don't know what my "theme" will be for this 30-days-of-blogging exercise, but today is my birthday.  I'll start there.  It's 4:55 am and any minute now the 17 year-old son of my landlord, Roma, will come downstairs and he and I along with his sister Ira and our friend Katya will go catch a train to Lviv for the day.  They promise we'll take lots of pictures.  We're going to a Waterpark and to see the IMAX Ukrainian premiere of the new James Bond movie.

Last night I received my first non-family birthday wish via Facebook.  It was from my friend Ivanna.  I doubt I'll receive anything sweeter from anyone else.  She asked me back in the summer to be facebook friends (she had heard of me from other friends) and the very next week we were together for camp and got to know one another in person.  Here's what she said:

hi , Clinton! I know it is your birthday tomorrow. A lot of your friends will congratulate you , so, i want to be first)))) I have never met as good person as you. You love God and it is wonderful. I thank God that i have been at this camp , and had a chanse to speake with so lovely person) I am very grathful for your love , peace... I love you sooooooooooooooo much))) I miss you sooooooo much. Thank you for everything) Congratulation)))))))

That's not a bad way to start a birthday.

bureaucracy

Sometimes you just gotta laugh.

I finally received my Absentee Ballot in the mail the other day.  It took a full two weeks for it to get here.  I have no idea if it will get back in time.  I'm not terribly confident my vote matters much anyway- let me rephrase that...of course, every vote counts...it's just that regardless of who is elected President I don't think it'll make much of a difference in the direction America is going.

But I digress.

So I received my ballot along with an Affidavit swearing that I need an Absentee Ballot.  The fancy envelope that holds the actual ballot is itself an Affidavit of sorts.  You have to sign it across the closed flap and have it notarized.

Therein lies the rub.  There are "Notaries" everywhere here in Ukraine.  I had to use one to certify all sorts of paperwork when I went through the Registration process to become a temporary resident.  But I learned something this week:  Whatever else a Notary does in Ukraine, he/she can't certify my signature on an American document.  As best as I could tell, IF I had the document translated into Ukrainian, then they could certify WHAT the document said...but still not certify my signature.  I tried to explain to them that I just need an official witness to my signature.  NO GO.  One Notary asked me what the document was and I told her it was my ballot for the Presidential Election.  She then told me that she couldn't certify my signature, but I could write...ON A BLANK SHEET OF PAPER...who I was voting for and she could stamp and certify that I wrote it.  WHAT?  I'm sure any US Election Commission would accept that, right?

But alas, my ballot is on it's way.  Ukrainians really like stamps and seals.  Almost every organization uses them.  I was tempted to go to a grocery store and have them stamp it like they do a receipt!  Technically a Notary does not necessarily have to stamp/certify the signature, but rather anyone that is authorized to administer oaths.  Therefore my Pastor is my witness and our church has a Stamp.  That should be good enough for the Smith County Circuit Clerk.  I'm sure he reads Ukrainian.

So there.  Signed, Sealed and being Delivered.

It probably won't make it there in time to count anyway.

I'm wide awake so why not add a new post

I see that it's been more than a month since I wrote a blog so since it's 4 am and I'm not asleep I guess it's as good a time as any to write an update.

I've been fairly busy.  By that I mean, there's plenty going on to keep me busy...but I will also admit to sleeping a lot lately and not being as productive as I need to be!  The weather is changing- leaves are turning, there's a chill in the air, the days are shorter.  The past week or so it's just been dreary and gloomy and rainy and cloudy and almost cold a few times.  It's weather very conducive to pulling the comforter over my head and staying in bed 'till noon.  Most days I don't have that luxury, but I find myself taking naps at the end of day and then being awake at, well, 4 am!

It doesn't help that I'm LOVING watching some college football on weekends.  Almost every game is on the computer these days and my internet is good enough to watch the games.  The bad thing is that all but the earliest played games start really, really late with the 8 hour time difference.  This coming weekend's big match-up between Mississippi State and Tennessee starts at 8 pm central.  Yeah, it won't start until 4 am my time.  So tonight isn't the only night this week I'll be up at 4!!  Hail State!

What's keeping me busy when I'm not napping?  Our Ruka Dopomogy Re-Fresh regional youth ministry conference is next weekend in Kyiv.  Originally I was going to deliver two presentations (re-runs to boot) about involving teenagers in Missions.  But now my Team Leader is missing the conference so I picked-up his three seminars about advanced youth ministry topics.  So, I have a lot to prepare for.

I finally hired a Language Helper.  Our first meeting was short and it went really well.  It's only for one hour twice a week and at this point I think I can say that's PLENTY.  I'm trying to implement the strategy we learned in our ITeams Linguistics class...which is, I'm the one that dictates the teaching.  I choose a task I want to be able to do and we work on the language I need to accomplish that task.  I think our first meeting threw my Helper for a little bit of a loop...I think she was prepared to start at the basics and teach me grammar and common phrases.  Hopefully we'll both get the hang of this strategy and it will help me build my language skills.

Last week I met with some University Students and some other ministry leaders to pitch our plans for starting a Coffee House Ministry to University Students.  We want to create an environment where we can meet and build relationships with them, especially the "international" students who live here.  We have a free location where we can meet and it's a great location really.  It is a functioning cafe.  However, our "focus group" of students that I met with don't think it's a great geographical location.  It's kinda hard to get to and they'd prefer something more central and closer to the public transportation hubs.  So...there's a prayer request.  We need to find a cafe or coffee shop maybe with a back room they will allow us to use once a week.  We are launching the ministry the first Tuesday of November.

Here's the logo we're using for our Coffee House.  Credit and Kudos to my friend Scott Haney for manipulating some coffee foam with some photoshop magic.

I'm also coaching a new church in Kalush, Ukraine about 5 hours from here.  Our first meeting last month was great and I think the meeting next month will be even better.  I'm looking forward to our RD colleague Christina Oleksyuk going with me and sharing the teaching load this time.

Finally, I'm working on an IPhone/IPad App to help two of my IPhone wielding family members and 3-4 friends keep up with me.  When I'm finished with it, it will be available for download for fee from the ITunes App Store.  Really, I don't expect more than a handful of people to look at it but I'm enjoying putting it together... although, I have thought on a few occasions that working on it is really a distraction to keep me from studying for my seminars or doing language homework.  To know as little as I do about computers and technology...I really do enjoy tinkering with it.

You can play with the test version here:  http://ibuildapp.com/projects.php?action=info&projectid=351468