Last night I was finally able to upload my journal to the blog. It seems that every time I went to the Internet café to upload to the blog that something would go wrong – My word document was in the wrong format (Vista), my jump drive went out, the Internet was slow (like dial-up), etc. Last night I went to the Internet café at about 10:30 pm. Cheryl and Natalie were not too excited for me to go, so Nadia volunteered to go with me. Both Cheryl and Natalie seemed relieved and to have her go with me and I was very pleased to have her come with me.
Today we woke up at 8:00 am to get ready for Church. From our apartment it is only about a 15 minute walk to the church. After about 10 minutes, we met Roman at the square and walked the remaining few minutes to the Church. As Roman is still the responsibility of the orphanage, we need to take him home every evening (usually about 8:00 pm). The Church here in Sumy is a small branch. I counted approximately 45 people at the branch sacrament meeting. The hold their church on the 2nd floor of a building with businesses occupying the first floor. There was a new missionary couple down from another town to visit with the branch and leadership. Their name was Brother and Sister Jacobs, from Orem, UT. They have only been on their mission for about 1 month. They mentioned that Elder Bednar was going to be in the town of Dansk??? on November 17?? to dedicate a chapel. It is about a two hour drive from Sumy – something we will try to arrange, if possible.
It was fast and testimony meeting today. One sister got up and showed pictures of the temple in East Germany (Dresden???). Although I did not understand her vocabulary, you could understand how grateful she was to be able to go to the temple and partake of those special blessings. Her voice and emotions transcended the language barrier. I was touched by her testimony. After the testimony meeting, we watched a session of general conference (Sunday morning) from October 2007. I hardly understood a word of their translated talks. I’m sure it was a very long meeting for Roman and Nadia. It was long for me, however, I sat still trying to remember the context of the conference talks and set a good example to them. With the fast and testimony meeting and general conference, it ended up being about a 3.5 hour block of meetings.
I was absolutely chilled to the bone after church. Apparently, no heat has been turned on to this building. According to Sister Jacobs, the time the heat is turned on is regulated by the government and they have not yet turned on this building’s heat. This problem is apparently affecting the activity level of the branch as certain members don’t want to come to the church until they can have some heat.
After church we came home and snacked – kind of FFY as we do at our house after church (fin for yourself). Cheryl and I then took a nap while Roman and Nadia watched TV. (Many of the TV shows here in Ukraine are dubbed over American shows – kind of amusing to watch). For dinner, our translator Natalie, was kind enough to prepare us borsch and veraneke. Borsch is basically vegetable soup with lots of beets to give it a dark red soup stock. The veraneke are rolled flour dumplings with either meat or potato in the middle. (We purchased the these frozen from the supermarket as it is very time consuming to make these by hand from scratch.) The dumplings are boiled to cook the flour ‘shell’. We sautéed onions in butter to drizzle over the top of them and complemented that with a dollop of sour cream. Wonderful food!
We took Roman back to the orphanage and was able to speak with Maria, Roman’s “mother teacher” . Natalie calls her the “mother teacher” as she basically is the children’s mentor/authority figure when they are not in school. Her typical day consists of two shifts. The first is from 7:00 am – 8:30 am. to get them up and to the cafeteria in the morning. She then gets them to their school classes. Her second shift is from about 2:00pm – 9:00pm. She has been Roman’s mother teacher since Roman was in the third grade (about 8 years old). She has truly been a blessing in these children’s lives and truly loves them. She is very perceptive in her “parenting skills” and knows these children so well. She told us a lot about Roman which gave us some insight into him – and confirmed what we already knew. I’m so grateful Roman has had a consistent, loving mentor in his life for much of his youth. In our conversations with her, it came out that she went about 6 months without being paid her salary (about 7 years ago in about 2000). She said there was not enough food for the children so she brought her own food to supplement what meager portions they had. She is one of those ‘salt of the earth’ individuals who will never be recognized through position or compensation for what she has done to bless the lives of many children. Through Natalie, we tried to express our gratitude for all she had done for these children and especially for Roman.
Before we left, she let me take 6 original DVD’s of pictures to copy. Apparently through one of the local Universities, there is some type of outreach program to the orphans. Somehow the scouting program is involved. When I got home, I copied hundreds of pictures of Roman at his scout summer camp for the past three years (2005 – 2007). He is in his scout uniform or tee shirt participating in many activities. There was also a DVD with many pictures of their class from about his third grade. He apparently went to a summer soccer camp. The majority of the pictures are of their soccer practices and games. Apparently the youth leaders had a digital camera and took these pictures and transferred them to a DVD.
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