March 28, 2009 Saturday

The last few days have been really hard. We miss all our children that are back in the States. It has been especially hard because we want to speak to each of them, but the telephone is so expensive. We are going to try Skype tomorrow. A friend that we met at church, whose name is Peter has offered to let us come to his house and Skype from there. Hopefully, it will work!

Honestly, Ukraine is only difficult for us only because we miss our family. If they were here, we would have more peace. However, I'm not so sure they would be, because of being used to having so much more in the way of things moving faster because of technology. We also miss having a good steak every now and then, or a burger. We could drive about 90 minutes and get a burger from McDonald's in Odesa, if it gets really bad!

But when I look out my window of the clinic at the roof tops of nearby homes and listen to the sounds in the distance of taxi's, buses and automobiles, my heart is heavy. There are so many people here who have no idea what a relationship with Jesus is about. If they even believe in God it is slim. We long for God to use us to reach out to them. We are unsure how to do this with the language barrier. We are hoping that God will give us the opportunity to return at some point in the future to Ukraine with others that want to preach the gospel here. If any of you are interested in getting a trip together for the summer of 2010, please let us know. There is plenty of clean-up, fix-up, medical needs and….well, you just name it and we will figure out how we can use your gifts to help others.

We only went to visit the kids this morning. We decided to paint the clinic fence in the afternoon, because the weather is warmer today. We were able to get two more fence panels done. We have 6 more to go just to finish one of the 4 sides surrounding the clinic.

I went to the church to practice with the organist at 6:00 pm. I am singing, His Eye is on the Sparrow at church tomorrow morning. Pray that the words will be an encouragement to the people attending.