Did You Receive Our October Newsletter?
Even though no two days are exactly alike, we thought our friends and family might like to hear about what our "typical" week in Ukraine looks like right now. Many of the weekly activities will remain the same now that we are living in the city center, but we'll be doing some new things in the city day-to-day in place of working on projects at the Bethel House in the coming months.
For ease of reading, we've broken this into two posts. The first post covers the first part of the week and the projects we've helped with at Bethel House. The second post will cover the latter part of the week, and a little bit about some of the things we've done with our spare time in the past month.
Also... It's hard to know what things will change now that we live in the city, so this is a description of a typical week in the past 1 1/2 months.
Sunday
On Sundays, we are greeted by one of the most joyful ladies that we have ever met. Nellya, a 70-something old lady in the church, never lets our language barrier get in the way of showing us her love for us. She throws her arms around us and says "I love you too!" as soon as she sees us. Hopefully we can get a quick video of her sometime, because it's difficult to understand her exuberance without seeing it.
Monday
In our post about Domazhyr, we mentioned the village is about 20 minutes from Lviv, but this is just to the edge of town. When running errands or going to church, with traffic, trips into Lviv typically take 30-45 minutes one way. Due to the current economic situation in Ukraine, many banks have placed strict limits on how much money can be withdrawn in a single day - particularly in foreign currencies. Because of this, the Blessings have to make several bank runs each week to withdraw money for church operations, Bethel House materials and construction, car maintenance, and basic needs. Thus, work days are sometimes broken up by any errands that need to be run.
Tuesday
Many of these children are true orphans, but many are not. In Ukraine, parents can take their children to an orphanage if they are unable to care for them. In some cases, they forfeit parental rights, but in some cases they maintain their rights as parents. It seems like the latter scenario can create some confusion and hardship for the children, as they often have a parent that comes and visits, but then leaves again; in this case, the children are not legally eligible for adoption, so unless something changes, they are basically guaranteed to remain in the system until they are about 16 and are released to live on their own. These children are so sweet and fun to be around. Several are a bit ornery, and we strive to balance some firmness with a lot love, knowing that when we visit is one of the few times they receive individualized affection and attention.
After the orphanage, we work for a few hours at the Bethel House, accomplishing whatever needs to be done that day.