Sunday

Sunday morning there was a dusting of snow on the ground as we left for Dnepro, with the Lada loaded with three 50-60 liter jugs, one smaller jug, and 19 liters of smetana (sourcream) in glass jars and kilos of cottage cheese in plastic bags, filling three boxes sitting across the back seat. Victor sells these after his church, a lady across the street processes the cream and cheese for him, from our milk. She gets the milk warm right after milking in the morning a day or two before Victor needs them, and separates the milk, makes the products- the cheese is made with the skimmed milk, and the leftover whey is fed to their pigs.

Garry got pulled over by the police at the highway checkpoint on the way to church. The policeman said he was speeding, but Garry said he was goinfg the posted speed. He told us that the snow had made driving dangerous, and there were two cars off the highway ahead. he raod was wet, but there must have been some black ice earlier, because we saw first one banged up car with four guys standing next to it on a straightaway, and a second really banged up one loaded on a towtruck just past a curve.

We dropped off the milk, cream, and cheese at Victor's church except for one 60 liter jug we carried into the building where Morningstar meets and set it down in the hall.
We had a surprise when we walked into the room where church is held- it was warm- almost hot. Normally everyone is wearing both sweaters and coats for the service, since the building is as cold in the winter as it is hot in the summer. They had gotten a huge electric heater to use for the services this winter.

Since it was the first Sunday in Advent the first candle was lit during the first hour - the praise and worship time. We will miss singing in Russian next week when we are home in Canada. It got so hot in the room that they turned the heater off at the front of the room at the beginning of the sermon, but it cooled off enough that it was turned back on before it was over. Misha showed slides of his trip to Israel after the sermon. I was really wishing I had not worn my wool sweater, it was so warm. I guess there will be less sweaters at church this winter, although it felt really cold when you stepped into the hall. We said goodbye to many of our friends, since we will be gone until January.