Craft It Forward

A while ago, a friend of mine from Legacy posted a blog called Craft It Forward. If you've ever heard of saying "pay it forward," the idea is based off of that. Anyway, she offered to make something for the first three commenters on her blog post, but those commenters had to agree to "craft it forward."

Well, I signed up for the challenge, and received my gift about a month ago: this really lovely necklace! Thank you so much, Deanna! Needless to say, it has become one of my favorites and I wear it all the time. :)

In fulfilling my part of the deal, I'm posting the same thing here and hoping for three people to comment and accept the challenge. Since most of our readers are supporters, friends, and partners in our work here in Ukraine, the crafts I make will be something related to Ukraine. (A fun challenge for me and hopefully something different for you!)

The first three commenters to this post will receive something from me, and yes, I'll mail it all the way from Ukraine to you. All you have to do is agree to craft it forward to three other people. And, yes, if you don't feel particularly "crafty," then you can bake something or adapt it to what suites your gifts/talents!

Thanks again, Deanna, for the challenge!

More About Ukraine

It's been awhile since I've done a "cultural" post, so I thought I would post a few things today for those of you interested in a little bit of our lives here in Ukraine. Hope you enjoy the randomness!

Superstitions/Traditions
We live in a place that thrives on traditions and in their opinion, everyone should think and act according to those traditions. Some are what we would deem superstitions, but from what I can tell, for the most part they accept it all as a part of their culture and the traditional way of doing things here.
Whistling - Today David got in trouble for whistling in our apartment. Our language teacher went on to explain that if you whistle in your apartment, it means your money will go out (meaning we'll go broke) just like the sound goes out of your mouth. This makes me laugh because I remember my Poppop saying, "A whistling girl and a crowing hen always come to no good end."
Breaking dishes - it's apparently good luck when you do this here! (I think it's just when you do it accidentally, but I'm not completely positive about that.)
Buying Flowers - You have to buy an odd number of flowers to give as gifts or for yourself. Even numbers of flowers are only bought for funerals. They will not let you buy an even amount unless you assure them it's for a funeral.
Sitting - We girls continually get in trouble for sitting on the wrong places. So far we know the floor, cold places, concrete, etc. are the wrong places to sit. If you sit in these places, you will apparently lose your fertility.
Shoes - David got smacked in the ballet the other night for having his foot up resting on his knee. It's considered very rude to have the bottom of your shoe facing someone.

Daylight in Kharkov
We enjoy the longer days in the summer, and grieve over the shorter days in the winter. But in Kharkov there's a pretty big difference between the two, much more than we were used to in Texas. In Kharkov, we have daylight from around 4:30am to 8:30pm in the summer, but only from about 6:30am to 4:00pm in the winter.

Washing
When we went back to the states a month ago, I was once again shocked at the size of the washers in the US. I knew they were bigger, but I had forgotten how much bigger they are! Our washers over here (for the most part, you can buy them a little bigger) fit about 1/4-1/3 of the load we would put in our washer in the states. That's a big difference! That means my flannel sheets get washed separately and if I have two pair of jeans in the load, only a couple t-shirts and a few socks can go in with it. We also don't have dryers (they are available, but hard to obtain and you have to get special ones since most apartments aren't hooked up for the ventilation). We have drying racks and it takes about a 1-2 days to dry the clothes (depending on the season). Thankfully, it's winter and the radiators are on, so our clothes are drying in just about a day now!

Market Changes
Grocery stores aren't our primary shopping place here, in a lot of things (but not all by any means), we go to the outdoor market. On my last trip to the market, I realized how much the market has changed since the beginning of the summer. We started off the summer with berries, lettuce, cabbage, many herbs, mushrooms, peaches, etc. As the summer progressed, we lost the berry selection and gained a huge variety of tomatoes, peaches, apricots, melons, potatoes, and onions. Now, tomatoes are getting more scarce (you can always tell when things are going out of season because the price is 2-3x's what it was in season), mushrooms and melons are about gone, surprisingly raspberries are back for a second round, apples and pears are everywhere, and pumpkins have finally arrived. We're very excited about the pumpkins because that means we can finally make pumpkin pies, chocolate chip pumpkin cupcakes, and pumpkin soup-- all in time for the holidays. Granted, the pumpkins will be going out of season by Thanksgiving, so we're cooking and freezing it now for holiday use. If you want to know more about how to cook a pumpkin or want the recipe for the chocolate chip pumpkin cupcakes, check out my sister's blog here. As our winter approaches, we will be depending more on the grocery stores to stock our vegetable and fruit drawers.

Vanilla Update
If you read my post about making my own vanilla (here), I thought I would let you know that my first batch is done and turned out great! I highly recommend making your own, even if you can buy it in the store. It's simple to make, better tasting, and I'm pretty sure it's much cheaper than buying it in the store.

Well, there's a few of the things I had on my mind tonight. By the way... it's snowing outside my window just now. I'm hoping to wake up to a white view tomorrow?! Who knows.

Visit from NZ and New Beginnings!

Our Visit with David's Mom
We were very blessed to have Mary, David's Mom, visit us from New Zealand these last two weeks! We had a wonderful time with her while she was here, catching up and being able to personally show her a little bit of our lives here in Ukraine. While she was here, we were able to worship with her, introduce her to some of our friends, take her to our market, our grocery store, some of our favorite restaurants, etc.

We also did two new things with her: we went to our first Russian Ballet, Swan Lake, and she and David visited the memorial for the Kharkovians who lost their lives in WW2. For Ukrainians, it's normal to grow up going to ballets and operas. Our language teacher was very surprised to know that we hadn't been to an opera and this was Mary and David's first ballet. So this was a great cultural experience for us all, not to mention great entertainment!! The picture to the right is at the ballet and the one below is one David took at the memorial.

Mary also took time to do a mini-workshop on children's Bible class teaching for us ladies while she was here. She and another lady, Melinda Miller, worked hard for years to arrange a great children's curriculum in NZ. Their curriculum goes through all the major stories in the Bible, and is filled with teacher information, activity ideas, and many other resources for each story. They've taken it and helped train teachers all over the South Pacific and she was kind enough to bring us a part of the goods! Baggage restrictions made it impossible for her to bring it all with her, but she brought enough resources to last us quite a while! Thank you, Mary, for all your help!

New Beginnings
This last Sunday, our team had our very first all Russian service together. All the men on the team took turns leading the service and did a great job! We all have so much to learn, especially in our Christian vocabulary. We've all been reading the Bible more in Russian, struggling with the difficult words, but learning a great deal as well. A couple of us on the team have also started reading the Bible with friends here in the city. It has been a great encouragement to all of us! Keep us in your prayers as especially David and I struggle with the language barrier. We are thankful for how much we've learned this last year, but it will continue to be a slow progress for some time yet. Pray we don't get discouraged, but continue to trust that God's greatness is coming through, especially in our weakness.

One Year in Ukraine

Wow, time does fly, doesn't it? As I write this, it's hard to put my mind around the fact that we've really been here for a year today. The biggest reminder to me is the fact that we are seeing the same scenes (for the first time) in Kharkov... the beautiful colors of autumn. Up until this point, we experienced everything for the first time, with open eyes eager to know more of what our new home was like. Now, we have a year's worth (still not a lot!) of experience to go on and, in a way, that makes us feel a little more settled here.

As exciting as it is just recognizing the anniversary of the day we came to Kharkov, it's even more exciting for us to think of what is ahead. As many of you know, when we came here we came with the commitment to spend our first year in language learning and cultural adjustment. The hardest part of this commitment was the fact that we were going to try to not engage in any outreach or studies, knowing that if we did that, we would be tempted to get interpreters right away and possibly become bogged down with ministry rather than being able to learn the language. That decision was based on the advice from several missionaries who had come to this part of the world, most of them not making that choice and regretting it later. We also knew, after talking to many Russians and Ukrainians, that not learning the language would hinder our work and their acceptance of us greatly.

So for this last year, we've been doing exactly what we committed to: learning the language and doing our best to adjust to the Ukrainian culture. Language has been a struggle for sure, but we are so thankful we were able to give so much of our time this year to our learning. After a year, we are still just at the beginning and have so much more to learn! Many of you may remember that we had been told that Russian was the language of heaven... because it takes an eternity to learn. In many ways, we see truths to that! :) Still, we are excited about our progress so far and we can get around so much better than we could a year ago.

This next year will be different. Our team has been dreaming since we first formed as a team, but even more as we've been here this last year, of what we might do to reach the lost in our city. We have plans and ideas and we're excited about them. We just ask that you will be in prayer for us as we begin to really reach out and share more of God's love with those around us. We know we are imperfect people, but we know we serve a perfect God and we pray that He is able to work through us, in us, and maybe sometimes in spite of us to reach people here. We know we'll make many mistakes, but we also know that He will grow us and transform us through each and every one.

Continue to keep us in your prayers as we're here. When we came, our dream was to be disciples, make disciples, and send disciples. We pray that God is able to accomplish all of those things and more so that His Name is glorified and praised here in Kharkov, Ukraine.