We live in a beautiful spot
After a beautiful day on the river, we just walked in the door to be greeted by a cool home. Ahhh…
A family from another church in Rzhyshchiv had invited us to visit the island and “do shashlik” with them. We left at about 11:00 and it’s now 6:00, so I guess we were out there for a good 5 hours. I experienced moments of feeling like something was wrong. You know when someone at a funeral seems like they are enjoying life and laughing and joking with different people… it clashes with something. We passed a yacht with about 20 soldiers in camo lying or standing around on the deck. There is a lot of suffering from war in the east of the Ukraine – a lot of fear and trepidation. Will Putin attack on Sunday? Will the men with guns kill someone close to me? Will my home be safe? Should I flee, as nearly 40,000 have done already? In our society, there will always be people with fears, but during war, the number of people fearing increases exponentially. Is it “appropriate” for us to enjoy relaxing on the river while so many others are facing acute hardship? That was the strange feeling that came over me.
I was talking with Sveta, a shop assistant in one of the building supplies stores downtown just yesterday. She echoes the thoughts of millions of Ukrainians when she says, “How can these people do this to us? We are their brothers in blood!” The fighting in the east gives natural opportunities to talk about God with people. This week, I had four conversations with different people about God with all of them starting from the comments made about the war. We pray, “Open the eyes of the blind. May they seek You, Lord.”
Tomorrow, Angel is getting baptized along with four others from our church. It will be a wonderful celebration time at our local beach followed by what we call a “Happy Pot” lunch afterwards. I’m looking forward to the day. Oh! I have practiced my Ukrainian for the occasion and if God blesses, will be able to ask questions and then baptize these five people “V imya Otsa, Sina I Svyatovo Dukha”.
I went into the eye clinic with Pris this week. Looks like I’m going to have my childhood fear come about as the surgeons there stick some needles in my eye to do some sort of test on it. I have excellent eyesight, but my left eye has a pocket of liquid under… something. They will need to get that out so that the blurriness goes away. Is there a man on earth who likes getting a needle poked in his eye? I doubt it. Me… with me, it falls into the category of abominations! I have no idea how this is going to play out but hope I won’t embarrass myself! :)
I’ll post some pics tomorrow or Monday of the baptism and I’ll include the crazy picture I took of Kolya’s moped getting a good workout!
The three guys actually took off up the hill after letting the kids off. That poor bike struggled.