Snowed in
I have never in my life been snowed in, but when the temperatures reach –30 at night, it limits what you can do rather severely. I went down to the market Friday with a list from Pris to buy some fruit and veggies. One lady was selling fish. The other was selling carrots. (In retrospect, I should have bought the carrots. Surely that lady was desperate for money. Normally, there are hundreds of people there selling produce. I’ve never seen just two.) I wandered around before deciding that it was too cold to muck around standing in line outside a shop with the other poor husbands and headed home.
As I type, Pris is putting more wood on the fire. It has been an enormous asset in keeping the inside temperature bearable. In fact, today it seems hot because the temp warmed up to –10 outside.
Saturday, we went into Kiev for the monthly Bible school session. It was actually the coldest day of the year and we struggled to keep the windscreen clear of ice-buildup on the inside. The heaters don’t work properly, but we made it there and back with a couple of stops to heat the radiator up a bit. (The “water” heats up because there is no wind blowing at 80kmh through the radiator. The cardboard in front of the radiator makes a difference, but not enough to produce heat above 50 degrees C.) It was good to again be with the young people as they study hermeneutics.
Pris and the girls and I walked down to visit Igor during the last big snow. His heating had just gone off and it was a bit of an emergency which Tom eventually solved. Actually, Igor just came by on his way to a very special date. Tonight, he will be asking Nika to be his wife. He could think of little else than the evening ahead of him. :) It has been a real encouragement to see his determination to please the Lord, not just in this, but with his whole life. God has blessed him.
We just started a liver cleansing diet again. 10 days of ginger, garlic and apple juice drink – 500ml followed by a mint tea drink. Two days of headaches as the body protests and then 6 months of benefits before needing to repeat the process. I never thought I’d accept dieting. This one though, I actually want to do. And in conjunction, tomorrow, I go to visit a masseuse to try to fix my shoulder/upper arm problems that have bothered me since my last stroke. There’s a popular lie that goes like this: If you haven’t got your health, you haven’t got anything. Another about babies: The main thing is that it’s healthy. I usually react badly to those two lies. But I also recognize that the ability to operate on all 4 cylinders is usually a great blessing from God for which I am thankful.