Easter Cheer

Christ is risen!

Our Easter weekend was simultaneously busy and refreshing.

On Friday, our carpenter friend worked well into the evening assembling the classy storage locker. It looks better than I anticipated. Yay!


So much space! Plus the full-length mirrors make the apartment look bigger and brighter.

On Friday we also introduced Dietrich to his seventh food: millet. I’d read in all the allergy information that millet is a great first grain, similar to rice in that hardly anyone is allergic to it. I thought, “Yeah, that’s great, but I’ll never find millet here.” I looked up the word in Russian just in case – and last time I was at the market, I realized Ukraine is rife with millet. I had my choice of five brands. D’s taken to millet pretty well, so long as it’s mixed with his favorite: pears.

On Saturday I filled the classy storage locker with all the stuff that had been piling up in various corners of our house. The baby/guest room has much more space in which Dietrich can practice his crawling, and we now sleep in a clutter-free environment. Feeling “home” in Ukraine, I’m realizing, is a process. I thought I felt at home last week, last month and last year, but now that I actually have a place to put everything, I feel even more comfortable in our apartment.

Saturday night the youth came over, and we had a great time with them. The group has grown a bit; we used to expect about 10 people and on Saturday we had 15. They enjoyed the baby, and the baby seemed to enjoy them. Since it was a holiday weekend, we served lots and lots of food, including a tray of pretty cupcakes, decorated with candied flowers that I found at the market.



Tasty and pretty.


Eric plays a game with the youth. He had to hold something (in this case, a stuffed dinosaur) between two spoons and try to guess what it was.

Hmmm … now that I write about Saturday, it doesn’t seem so exciting. But it was a really nice day. Eric didn’t have to go into work! Also, there was a mommy moment for which I am very thankful: I was cleaning in our bedroom, standing right next to the bed, but not looking at it. Dietrich was on the bed. At one point, I turned around just in time to catch him as he started to dive toward the concrete floor. He’s getting mobile. It’s a little scary. Clearly, I need to ratchet up how carefully I watch him now, and I’m thankful that I didn’t have to learn that the hard way.

On Easter, I spent the morning frosting mini-cupcakes for everyone in the church and brewing enough Easter Cheer tea to serve 60 people. Then it was off to church, where Dietrich slept through about an hour of the service (thanks, D!), and then consented to be held by various pre-teenagers for the rest of the service (thanks, pre-teens!). We serve tea and cookies after church on communion Sundays and holidays. Bonnie Saucy and I used to do this together, but since Bonnie’s been gone, a bunch of the 10- to 13-year-old girls have started pitching in. They are wise enough to stay away from the steaming hot tea (we get a grown-up to pass those trays around), but they cheerfully decorate and carry trays of cookies, napkins and candy. I remember being that age and being so thrilled when someone at church let me participate in ministry of some sort; it’s a privilege to pass that along to these girls.



Letting mommy listen to the sermon.


The youth put on a play about the will during the service.


Family picture by Nikolai.

After church, it was off to Bob and Sherri Divozzo’s. They are teammates of ours who have a ministry teaching conflict-resolution seminars all around the country. Also, Sherri? A fine cook. We had a delicious meal (spaghetti, meatballs and salad), and then we sat and talked for hours while Dietrich slept. (Thanks, D!) He hardly ever sleeps that long during the day, and we paid for it at 2 a.m. when he was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but it was the longest conversation I’d had with other grown-ups since he was born, and I loved it. Totally refreshing.

We headed home around 7:30 and waited until 10:30 when we listened to an Angels’ game! High-speed internet makes so much possible. For the low, low price of $14.95, you can listen online to any major league game. You even hear all the commercials. This isn’t really a plus, but it does make for a very authentic broadcast. I love the Angels, but I’m probably never going to start buying food at AM/PM, no matter how clever their ads. It was just like listening to a game in the States; I did dishes, cooked dinner for the next couple of nights, worked on the computer — all while listening to the Angels, well, lose. Better luck next time, guys.


A little bleary-eyed, listening to the ballgame.

And that was it. Just a delightful weekend.

He is risen indeed!

Do you have Skype?

We do! So, feel free to call: eoandjo_kyiv.

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Off to a good start

"Guess what, Dietrich? The Angels won their first game of the season! How do you feel about that?"

One more reason not to go metric

One of my goals for this year: Lose the too-embarrassingly-large-to-share-with-the-public number of pounds that I put on while pregnant. In America. With all the good ice cream. And the gingerbread with-whip lattes. (A side note: Dietrich’s baby book has a blank in which the mom is supposed to write how many pounds she gained with baby. I plan to spill coffee on that page.)

I’ve not yet reached my pre-baby weight, but I’m getting there, and people are starting to notice, which is gratifying. It’s more gratifying when Americans notice, however, because then I can say, “Thanks, yeah, I’ve lost like 35 pounds.” With Ukrainians, on the other hand, I have to say, “Thanks, yeah, I’ve lost like 16 kilos.” And -- though I realize logically that it represents the exact same amount of weight loss -- that’s not nearly as nice a number.

Living out daddy's dream

Our landlady continues to stall on covering our balconies. During the winter, this was a temperature issue. The weather’s warmed up, but Eric moved all our bookcases to his new office at the seminary, so now it’s a storage issue. To solve this problem, we’re having a very large (10 foot long, 2 feet deep, 7 feet high) piece of furniture built to accommodate the stroller, the extra chairs, the down-filled comforters, etc. My dad called it a storage locker, but it’s going to be the first thing you see when you walk into our home, so I prefer to think of it in classier terms.

Viktor, the carpenter building the classy storage locker, came over last week to get measurements. He took one look at our baby, who was outfitted as shown below, and said, “That’s what Russian circus wrestlers used to wear.” I, of course, never meant to dress my baby like a circus performer of any sort. But I’m sure Dietrich’s dad, who once wanted to be a wrestler in the circus known as the WWF, was secretly pleased.

And it’s off!

Monday marked the first day of the Talbot extension program at Kiev Theological Seminary. It was a very busy – and very good – day.

For the kick-off, we invited all the students and their wives to come stay at the seminary. While the students went to orientation and their first class, we put on a mini-conference for the wives. Several dignitaries from Talbot West (i.e. the main campus) were in town, including Karen Dirks, the wife of Talbot Dean Dennis Dirks. Karen has been involved in ministry to seminary student wives for 25 years. I learned a lot from watching and listening as she spoke to the women.

The day was more challenging than we expected when we started planning six weeks ago. Bonnie Saucy — wife Mark Saucy, the director of the extension program — had a vision and a passion for this event. She did loads of work planning it and making sure that it would equip the women as they minister with their husbands. But just a little more than a week ago, she had to return to the States for medical reasons. We tried our best to pass along her vision, her passion, her spirit, but we felt inadequate.

There’s a Russian phrase that I think captures how Bonnie’s absence was felt. When we returned in November from our time in the States, I asked the youth at our church how things were going. They told me, “Without you, badly.” I knew that the group was doing just fine, so I didn’t understand the nuances of that phrase until Monday. I think we can all confidently say that the conference went really well. But, without Bonnie, those of us who worked with her know that something major was missing — so, in that respect, it went badly.

One other challenge: Dietrich won’t take a bottle, so we can’t leave him with a babysitter yet. Eric took him for most of the afternoon, but I had him with me in the morning. This was very difficult. My attention was divided; my brain did not have the capacity to handle all the logistics of the day, plus the baby, plus speaking Russian. I will never again sign on for something of this scale unless I know someone else can watch after our little guy for the day.

Thankfully, there were also joys.

First, we’ve heard that the wives loved the day, and felt special and pampered. That was our hope, so it’s encouraging hear happy feedback. Our next step: To figure out a good way to continue to minister to the wives, who live all over Ukraine.


We wanted to pamper the ladies, so two of our teammates who used to work as beauticians in the States came and taught them how to do a manicure.

Second, one of my responsibilities was to introduce a method of reading/meditating on the Scriptures called Lectio Divina. Bonnie had prepared most of the lesson; I just added a few thoughts. Her husband was our main speaker for the day. I was impressed by the way Mark and Bonnie had worked together to pass on a unified message. One thrust of Mark’s talk: Theology is not just for pastors or church leaders or men — it’s the responsibility and joy of all believers to grow in their knowledge of God, and to be changed. Bonnie’s lesson on Lectio Divino gave the women a practical way to, through the Scriptures, grow in their knowledge of God and to be changed. It was a joy to see husband and wife minister together in such a unified way.


Mark Saucy teaching the wives of the Talbot students.

Third, I tend to be a “do-it-yourselfer.” I don’t like to ask for help, especially when I know everyone’s really busy. And, in this case, I was so overwhelmed that I sometimes didn’t even know what to ask for. But several of the ladies from our team here — ladies who hadn’t been part of planning of this event — at the last minute stepped in and handled many logistics: Driving all the supplies to the seminary, making food for the tea we served, stocking the apartment the Talbot team was staying in with food, lining up someone to clean that apartment, helping us pack up after the conference, and so on. I’m thankful we don’t serve alone.

The wives are back home, but the students will be in town for two weeks. This week, they are getting a crash-course in Biblical languages.

When I welcomed the women on Monday morning, I said, “This has been a long process, but we've seen how God has worked, how He's created this program, how He's gathered the students and the teachers. Probably, we all could give a testimony about how God has already blessed us through this program. We praise Him!” After seeing how God worked on Monday, we praise Him all the more.


Frequent readers of this blog know that I was in charge of decorations. Here’s an overview of the room.


And here’s a closeup. We also had candles placed on the tables, and we lit them while the ladies read and meditated on Ephesians. The flowers are balanced on the oranges. I’m glad I didn’t stick the flowers directly into the fruit as I’d planned, because at the end of the day the ladies took flowers, and this would have been a sticky endeavor if they’d sat in orange juice all day.

Plug in

The Talbot extension program starts next week, and a team from Talbot West just arrived to tie up loose ends in time for Monday’s kick-off. Yesterday, I was at the seminary with the team and with Dietrich, and I spent some time chatting with Oksana, one of the KTS translators. She’s hoping to be pregnant herself soon, so she’s pretty into babies. She went on and on about how cute D is, how he looks like his dad, and how she particularly loves his nose. I said, “It’s interesting that he doesn’t have my nose (pointy) or his dad’s nose (generously proportioned).” She said (and this sounds better in Russian), “Yes, we have a name for Dietrich’s nose – we call it an ‘outlet nose.’” For sake of comparison:

Dietrich’s nose


A Ukrainian outlet


A lot of times, I think speaking Russian is just hard work. But then I have a conversation like that one, and I realize that it’s quite a privilege — and often an entertaining privilege — to learn how another culture expresses itself.