Ready to come home

 That's a quote, ready to come home, although Garry doesn't get on the train until Saturday. He feels like everything is running so smoothly, he doesn't have much to do! It great to know that our staff has things well in hand, both farm and student wise.

He's also a bit tired of being cold, it's colder than normal for December in Ukraine right now, and right now they are in the middle of a power outage that's supposed to be about 16 hours. He called me from Oleg's home (8 pm his time, noon for us) because the generator was running there, so he could use Wi-Fi. Both houses have gas heat, but the pump to move the hot water around the radiators doesn't work without electricity. They will probably use the generator at our house in the morning, because the power is expected to be off until noon tomorrow, so that house can warm up. After last week when they had uninterrupted power for a few days, it has been off more often and often for longer periods of time. 

Yesterday evening they were cooking dinner in anticipation of a planned power outage around four o'clock and it went off in the middle of cooking potatoes, boiling water for macaroni and the biscuits had just gone in the oven. The power was back on around nine pm, however, they ate two jars of my homemade pickles when they got hungry while they were waiting for it to come on! The biscuits were a little hard. He made more brown sugar biscuits for breakfast this morning when the power was back on, and they came out better!

When Garry told me the story this morning, I asked why he didn't go cook in the summer kitchen. He had forgotten that there is a gas stove there. That's how he cooked dinner today. He was telling me he was cleaning the cupboards to store all the humanitarian aid food the girls are getting, even canned turkey from Mennonite Central Committee in yesterday's bags. 

This week has been pretty quiet, although there was an explosion about eleven o'clock last night. Garry slept right through it, but they think it was anti-missile fire taking out a Russian missile headed to one of the cities. Garry bred a cow in a village, one not that close to Nikolaipolia. Somehow, they had heard he was back, he's going back on Thursday to breed a couple more of their cows. 

Garry is not spending much money, because he had an adventure last weekend. He took the train to Kyiv to visit a former student Karina (in spite of my objections, because he had promised to visit). Unfortunately, there was a power blip as he tried to use a bank machine at the train station and it didn't return his bank card, so he only had the cash in his wallet. He took a taxi and visited Karina. Karina has really turned her life around in the last couple years, away from alcohol and being a "bad girl" to clean and sober and now married with a baby boy. She lives in a village near Kyiv (apparently the Russians were quite close early in the war before the baby was born) with her husband and mother-in-law.

So the taxi driver waited and drove him back to the train station, he had a ticket already for the evening train. He actually got a haircut in the underground by the train station and hung out at KFC until his train time. So it's good that life is cheap in the village (a bottle of coke is still 25 grivna) because he still has half his cash left. Unfortunately, now he can't buy the stroller for the new baby. He does have some Canadian cash for the trip home on Monday.

They are getting the heifer sheds cleaned out- the new loader just fits, I'm told. They combined some more corn today and hope to get the dripline up and the field plowed now. However, there is snow in the forecast, so we'll see how that goes. 

Here's Garry with the mother and kids from the refugee family living in the old boys' house with Vova and his mother. They are heating with wood there. They had six kids when they came from Russian occupied territory and had a new baby this summer. They attend the church in the village. Garry went there twice, this last Sunday he visited Morningstar Church in Dnepro, although many were away for the installation of the new pastor in Kivoy Rog, where Daryl and Adam are, he was able to talk to Misha and a few other people we know. 

Garry says he is wearing a lot of clothes and putting all the blankets on the bed, to stay warm. He says the girls don't seem to be as cold as him, but are wearing lots of layers, and the two Yulias are running out to give the chickens water as soon as the power comes on.