Phone calls

It has been hard to talk to Garry on the phone since Sunday evening there (morning here in Canada) the time difference is a problem- either one of us is sleepy or he's too busy to talk because he's doing something- I think he was feeding the cows when I called tonight (it was about 8 am in Ukraine) and yesterday he was in (this morning here) a store with Victor and couldn't hear what I was saying. I booked the flight back for the boys and I for two weeks from today.

Tonight I was in Steinbach for a short presentation to the jr high youth at the Free Church- I was a volunteer for this jr high group for about seven years before we went to Ukraine, and there was a great group of kids out tonight (only the grade nines were there the last time I was.) I really enjoyed the praise and worship singing- they go all out with camp-style motions and lots of bouncing for some songs. It's so nice to worship in English when you spend most of your Sundays trying to figure out what you are singing in Russian or Ukrainian (even though some songs are translations of English ones - it seems so different you just can't remember what the English words are most of the time.) I ended up coming home quite late as I kept talking to adults as I was leaving church about what we're doing- but that was a good thing!

I was hoping to have something new to write about, but I can tell you that on Sunday Garry met with some businessmen about going to th church with Victor and fed the cows after he got back to the village in the afternoon, as Maxim left to visit his family for next week, since he missed going home for the holidays as they had hoped when we left last month.

He said the cows looked good, even the sick one. One calved either Saturday or Sunday and had another bull calf (its one heifer and four bulls so far I think) but it went right away as one of the villager's cows had had a dead calf and they wanted one to replace it. The pets were all alive, but he told me that the puppy Polo looks grayer than he did before- we'll see in two weeks I guess. Here's a photo of Polo back in December.

Got through to Garry at 1 am here- turned out he couldn't hear anything when I called earlier- and sounds like all is well there, except the satelite quit working this morning- he says there was a message in Russian yesterday- maybe no one paid the bill while we were gone. Guess he'll watch his new DVDs before we get back for sure.