Sunday

Sunday we went to church in the village and discovered it was the Sunday when the other church visits. They are a small home church, the Pentecostal pastor comes from Zaporosia with a white van full of people. Three of their guys gave sermons,  with Nelly translating for us, although we understood more than usual because they spoke in Russian.  Normally Pastor Ivan does the first sermon in Ukrainian and then they are invited to share. We had lots of songs from the songbook.

We were very sad to hear that Pastor Ivan is in the hospital,  the main pastor said he had spoken with his wife and he was preaching to people in his hospital room.  He was in church the previous week, and seemed normal. 
After the service Garry talked with Olga Rubel, who was there (she was John Wien's translator ) and she had also spoken with Pastor Ivan's wife and he is suffering with heart failure.  He is such a kind caring man, that you have to like him, even though he does only use Ukrainian since the war started. Which of course we only know a few words of!

On the way out of church Garry played a quick game of team foosball with the girls from our house who were at church.

As we were walking home after church, it was a little chilly since the wind was in our faces. We walked past Yana's house and met her new baby goat. Apparently the village vet goes to a goat farm where they only keep the girls so she got him for free and he'll be shaslik someday.

After lunch with the girls we were trying to decide whether to stay home (Sunday afternoon there is youth group meeting that gives us the house to ourselves for a couple hours) or go to Zaporosia. 

Garry had discovered that the basketball team had a home game and we haven't been to one in several years (maybe four or five?). Anyway we went, found the new venue, which is very nice, bought the best tickets available,  which were center court, a couple rows up.

 It was a good game Zaporosia ended up winning.  There were several American players, and the cheerleaders even had a smoke machine, which was also used for the Zap player introductions. 

The game started at two o'clock so we were home around 4:30, and had plenty of time to make and eat the tacos I'd planned for our afternoon off before the girls came home after six PM. We still had some corn tortillas in freezer I'd brought back from New Jersey in October.  The tacos were really spicy and tasted so good. I have to really cut back on the heat when cooking for the girls, they don't like a lot of q(any?) hot peppers. 

Married students Kolya and Oksana dropped in for a few minutes around 6:30 so I was able to give them the newborn size baby booties and hat I crocheted for them. She was very pleased with them. I think five months are going to fly by for them. They were telling Garry they were buying a used crib with a mattress and a stroller.  They are careful with their money, the best of all the students I think.