Rapid changes

Well it's just after midnight in Ukraine, and I am awake (I have been asleep earlier tonight) and here I am on the Mennonite couch next to Box the cat typing into Garry's computer (my tablet has arrived at my father's house in NJ- yea!)

I have been a little under the weather today. I can't decide if it's just jet lag with the sore throat I had a week ago before flying home, or maybe the virus. Feeling pretty good right now, so probably jet lag. I did drive to the city this morning, however to pick up more paint for the girls painting fences. They have repainted ours and have been painting next door at the Crawfords.

I also stocked up on cleaning supplies as we are out of almost everything. However, the pump wasn't working, so I had no water to use them with when I got home. At the time, I was still somewhat hopeful that the building team from BC  would be arriving on Wednesday as scheduled.

Garry was busy with Max and most of the students building more walls. It looks like it will be cold and rainy by the middle of next week, so he was thinking that they could have the roof on before the team arrived. As you can see the house will be set at the back of the lot. You can see it looking through the Crawford's back yard in the upper photo. Notice how green their backyard is? Spring is coming fast here. They planted that beautiful grass last year.













Thursday they got the longer front and back walls up.

Friday it was looking more like a house by one thirty!

At eleven am I brought snack.

So now for the bad news, all about COVID 19, of course. Wednesday afternoon Ukraine closed all schools for three weeks, starting Thursday, throwing a big monkey wrench into our plans to do a VBS in the school. We were scrambling over changing those plans as we went to bed,  then when we got up Thursday morning, we found out about the American border closure to Europeans. How would this affect the team, flying through Montreal and Vienna? Would Canada follow suit? Would they be able to return home if they came? We were remembering the teams that could not fly ten years ago with the ash cloud from the volcano. That's how we met Jack and some of the guys on the BC team actually, they were in Ukraine and couldn't leave while our Steinbach team had to postpone their trip here.

Marcie and Doug cancelled their flights yesterday, so we had to cancel their part of our planned vacation with them to the Red Sea for the first week of April today. They had a lot of crafts packed for the VBS and were really sad to cancel, but Doug's mom is sick, so they couldn't stay here indefinitely, if things fell apart. Jack was still leaning toward coming, in spite of the idea that currently they would have a two week self quarantine after returning to Canada, but late today we found out as of Sunday, all foreigners cannot cross into Ukraine for the next two weeks. I think they lost 200 dollars each on the cancelled flights from BC.

So Garry plans to put the roof on the house on Monday, and we'll see what his building team of students can do. We will really miss Jack's useful suggestions for building,  Jeremy doing the electric and Matthew finishing the drywall perfectly. We may be able to video chat some of that advice, I guess.