The Voices of Ukrainians

We arrived home today around 8:00 p.m. and immediatly started cooking rice to make chicken fried rice for dinner. At 8:30 our hostess and her two daughters arrived just as I was giving our meal that "final stir." The older daughter Christina burst into the kitchen and said "we're making you pizza because its maybe your last day here!" I eyed Daniel, he eyed me, and then we said "okay" together, thinking "are they crazy?" At that point we didn't really have a choice, though, it would have been super rude to refuse! It's a different way of thinking here. In America, we generally wouldn't start making pizza dough at 8:30, and I think we would give our guests at least a day's notice ("hey, we would like to make you dinner tomorrow night; we'll eat at around 7!"). But here apparently its okay to spring pizza on Americans an hour before their bed time, even though they already have dinner made! When we signed up for th...

One little jar of peanut butter is $15 here! I think I found a way to become a millionaire (which is what I've always wanted); introducing Janna's peanut butter wagon! Come get your creamy peanut butter, crunchy peanut butter, or honey roasted peanut butter! Only $5 a jar!

   I (Daniel) was sick in bed yesterday with a 24-hour flu.  A few of the Stoddards had gotten it and now it was my turn.  That evening, Tatiana, our hostess, came home and checked up on me.  I'm pretty sure that after the kidney stone and now a stomach virus, her motherly instincts kicked in and she decided that it was time to straighten this foolish American out.     Armed with the Russian/English dictionary she told me I needed to go on a diet.  Lots of tea, rice, Kasha (I'm not sure what that is yet, but it looks gross and smells like dirt), and absolutely, under no circumstances am I to drink any more cold milk.  "Ochen Ploha"(Very Bad), she said, referring to the milk, as she held her fingers up in a cross to ward off the evils of such a dangerous drink.  "You must drink your milk warm, and you will feel much better."     Janna and I looked at each other and tried not to laugh, which was a major chal...

So here's the scoop: we bought visas in the states but right before we left,  Ukraine decided to change all its visa laws and policies, and there's a lot of uncertainty about what to do. It's complicated living in Ukraine because nobody ever knows what's going on. With the visas, for example, the Ukrainian government is saying one thing, the US embassy sent out an email saying something different,  Manna's Ukrainian lawyer said something else, and the head of the school Suzie works at went to a meeting and they said something that condradicted everything already said. So what do we do? We can't register our visas, and so we will most likely have get new visas the next time we leave the country. After hearing this news, our team decided to dig a tunnel to Poland to get these new visas (there's plenty of good shovels at Smile House)! Please pray that everything works out and that God's hand will be in this!

Here's some info about our team here in Ukraine and how they tie into the Smile House. For those of you who don't know, the Smile House is a future transition home for orphans graduating the state-run orphan system. It has three floors plus a full size basement. In other words, its massive! Yay Smile House! This building started as a dental clinic (hence the name), but for certain reasons that ministry could not continue as planned and Manna Worldwide came into possession of the building in 2009. The 3rd floor has two apartments: one large apartment for the Stoddard's, as Doug is the overseer of the project, and one small studio for orphans in the last transition into independent living. We are planning to live there temporarily while we finish the rest of the building.  This is our team! The back row is the Stoddard Family. Doug (remember the unicycler of Ukraine? That's him!) is our director. His wife, Suzie, is a 2nd grade teacher at Kyiv Christian Acadamy (KCA),...

A Daniel story We opened a bank account in TX the week before coming to Ukraine and Mom and Dad had to mail us our debit and credit cards.   It’s a long story, but suffice it to say our temporary bank cards expired on the 7 th a week and a half before this incident, meaning that we easily had enough money to cover us until the cards arrived by mail … assuming nothing drastic happened.    Then something drastic happened.   It was Tuesday the 18 th and I was sitting in class when my midsection started to hurt.    At first this wasn’t terribly alarming.   After all, we are in a new country, and our digestive systems have been taking a little while to adjust.   But after a visit to the restroom the pain increased … a lot.   There was a sharp shooting pain in my back and it felt like something inside of me really wanted to be out, and fast.    I sat there thinking, “I’m 99% sure that I’m not pregnant … 98.”   It hurt to sit, it hu...