Monday November 12, 2007

This morning’s run was great! The weather consisted of a light-medium snow storm with wind gusts of 5-10 mph at times. After my run, I went to the Internet Café to engage in some communication and read about the Utah and BYU football games.

At noon we had the missionaries over for the second discussion on the plan of salvation. They drew the familiar map of the pre-existence, earth life, spirit prison/paradise and the three degrees of glory. I sat through the entire discussion, looking interested, but not understanding hardly a word that was said. The occasional “Joseph Smeeth”, or “Easoose Cristo” seemed to perk my interest enough to keep me from falling asleep. At least I was able to offer some silent prayers on behalf of our new children and the missionaries. After the missionaries finished their discussion, we set up another appointment for Thursday at 1:30 p.m. They indicated this Sunday; a bus would be leaving at 6:30 a.m. for Donesk, for the regional conference where Elder Bednar would be speaking. We already promised Nadia she could go to a birthday party to say good-bye to a lot of her friends the Saturday evening prior. Having to roust her and Roman up at 5:30 a.m. seemed like too much of a struggle. Throw on top of that a 3 hour commute each way for the conference seemed like a lot for these children. Although I really wanted to go, we felt we would spend next Sabbath going over the For the Strength of the Youth pamphlet with our new children.

We try to incorporate some English lessons into our daily activities. At lupper – or sunch (late lunch/early supper), we asked everyone who their favorite movie star is, and why. Also, what super-power they could possess if they had a choice.

After lupper , Roman, Nadia, and I went out and had a snow ball throwing contest. Roman and I would designate certain targets – a sign, post, tree, with the first person hitting the object winning the contest. I think the score ended up being Roman 4, Dad 1. After Nadia waited and waited for us to finish our snowball throwing contest, we went to a little kiosk and ordered crepes. Nadia had a meat-filled crepe. Roman had caramel in his crepe and I had banana in mine. After our crepes, Roman and I went to the Billa supermarket to purchase a few groceries. Nadia went back to the apartment.


Roman and Nadia Ordering Crepes


Making Crepes at the Crepe Kiosk

After we took Roman back to the orphanage, I stopped by and put 50 Ugr ($10) of cell phone credit on my cell phone. (Over here, all cell phones use the GSM platform. You purchase phone cards, scratch off the code with a coin, call in the code to load your prepaid minutes on your cell phone. All incoming calls are free here in Ukraine.) We let Nadia call her French family. She was able to talk for only about 5 minutes until the phone ran out of money.


Night Time - Walking Down the Lane to Catch a Bus from the Orphanage


Cheryl and Nadia