Sunday

Last week we attended the Manitoba Milk Producers meetings in Winnipeg and Garry spent much of our time there talking to fellow farmers about what we are doing in Ukraine. After church on Sunday he heard from someone who happened to be at one of the exhibitor booths, that people really can't understand what would make someone with a large dairy farm in Canada leave their children in charge of it and go off somewhere to spend money on a farm with no expectations of making a profit on the project.

This Sunday we were at our home church in Steinbach and got to participate in the services, answering some questions during the sermon about our time in Ukraine as part of the advent sermon series. If you have half an hour to listen, you can hear the audio of the sermon - Re-gifting Love on the church website at http://eefc.ca - Garry answers three questions and I answer one.

We got to church around 8:30 am, set up my computer with a 4 minute video about what we've done this year, participated in the prayer meeting before the first service, reset the computer so the video ran on a loop, and attended the first service, the traditional one with the choir. Garry was so excited he promised to come to choir practice on Wednesday as he misses singing in the choir, it was one of the reasons we joined this church when we moved from Ontario in 1997. We answered the four questions near the end of the sermon, got many hugs and handshakes, and talked to many people we know, and some that we had not met about our project between the first and second service time, during fellowship time in the gym.

Then we went into the second service, which had already started, sang praise songs in English (instead of Russian- both are worshiping God for us now- but it feels like home) and listened to the sermon again- it's actually the one on the website- I can tell because Garry and I did not say exactly the same thing during both services.

Then we talked to many more people as they were getting ready to leave church and went out to a restaurant with two couples, one we didn't know who had invited us for lunch and one we do know from before- Garry played on the church softball team with him. More conversation- both woman had been to Ukraine on summer mission trips before. What an uplifting (and slightly exhausting day- I had woke up at 3:30 again- my body is resisting the change from Ukrainian time!)

So it was three o'clock before we were back at home- we had left in Noah's car around 7 am! It is the family joke that the only car we now own is the LADA in Ukraine, so we are the ones borrowing cars from our children. Someone hit a deer with our Madza Protege last year, so it was written off by the insurance last winter, and has not been replaced.