Back to work

Adam took this photo, if you look closely, you'll see both of us playing

After our conference we spent Saturday hanging out in Budapest with Adam, fellow missionary, relaxing at one of the famous thermal baths in the morning (interestingly they had a wave pool there), eating street food, then finding the "Flipper museum" and playing pinball for a couple hours in the afternoon. We spent all day Sunday returning to the village, since the airline only flies there every other day, Garry was anxious to return and told me we should have gotten an early taxi and flew out Friday. We had an hour and a half morning flight to Kiev (7 adults and 2 kids from our group) and took the train back to Dnipro mid-afternoon, where Max picked us up from the train station at 8:30 pm in the Mercedes van. He had taken ours into Zap on Monday to get the AC fixed as requested, but it was still in the shop, seems like the parts weren't the right ones, they say it will be done today - Tuesday. We'll see.

It will be great to have the air conditioner fixed, it didn't work all last summer, and it is hot already. Monday the temperature in the shade was 39 C (102 F). We had not turned on the AC in the living room yet this year until we returned home Sunday night at 9:30. It was hot and the house was buzzing with what looked like at least a hundred flies. We think a door or one of the unscreened bedroom windows must have been left open for a while when we were gone. Maria was around for a few days we were gone, and everyone keeps leaving the doors open when they come to one to talk. The house was closed, locked, and hot when we arrived; so Garry got the "conditioner" (AC) working while I found the fly swatters. Afterwards we phoned home, because there was a birthday party going on for our granddaughter at our son's house. We tried skype but had a few technical difficulties- they couldn't hear us so we ended up with the phone and the pixelated video, but it was fun to share a bit of their day.

 Afterwards I phoned and talked to my father for a while, I hadn't talked to him since a few days after I flew back from visiting him, because he was in the hospital for ten days with pneumonia and I couldn't get my cell phone to dial out to the hospital number, even though I could call Manitoba, and by the time he got out we were gone the week he returned home.

Monday morning Garry was up early to check out how things looked outside, since it was dusk when we got home at 9:30 Sunday night. He picked a half bucket of our pod peas that I had found a hand full of last week before we left, so I was freezing peas before nine am. We will have at least four stir fry dinners next winter. Actually there will be more peas to pick later in the week. I saved some for lunch, too. While I was freezing peas, student Sasha came to the door with a half full pail of sour cherries. The rest of the morning I squirted cherry juice all over the table and my shirt as I pitted cherries, and made a cherry cobbler for dessert. The rest of the cherries went into the fridge to be turned into jam later, while I got lunch ready. It was coming along nicely when Victor knocked on the door.

 Victor brought out company, Ron and Eva Koleba. Ron was the speaker at our conference in Hungary. They were missionaries in Dnepropetrovsk 18 years ago, and they are quite amazed by how much the city has changed. They are from Winnipeg, and joined us for lunch and then Garry took them on a tour of fields and barns and group homes while Victor did some work on the bee hives, I joined them so I could get some new crop photos to show you.

The corn grew while we were gone

There are pretty weeds in Ukraine

The sunflowers are growing too. Some of the smaller ones seem to be still mildewy looking under the leaves from the fungus, but they were all sprayed with the fungicide.

We found a blooming wild sunflower on the edge of the wheat field, it's sitting in a jar on the kitchen table now.

Buds are coming, soon there will be sunflowers

The hay will be ready to cut again soon.

I did make a batch of cherry jam later in the evening. Garry was busy for most of the day, catching up on everything that happened while we were gone.

Check out the other blog for more on what's happening with the students.