A Long Weekend
Americans think they luck out when a holiday falls on Friday or is artificially transferred to Monday. Ukrainians know what a real "long weekend" is. This past week it basically began Wednesday afternoon when many businesses closed early to celebrate Women's Day. Thursday was a day off, the official holiday, and for many Friday was a day off since some had to work last Saturday to enable the long weekend. Of course, a lot of that "working on Saturday to create a long weekend" isn't much work. So we had a LONG weekend this week in Ukraine. You can almost feel it in the air that people aren't doing much. Many left Kyiv as it was noticeable in the metro and on the streets.
I had English outreach on Friday and worked the UEC desk Friday night. Saturday Lena's relatives came so we were entertaining them. I decided to cook for them. That meant about 8 hours in the kitchen on Saturday, plus shopping time. I made an American apple pie (from scratch--frozen crusts have yet to make it to Ukraine) and an Australian-style shearer's pot. Sort of like shepherd's pie but much more complicated. Those shearers eat well. I had hoped to make the corn beef and cabbage but my first effort at corning beef resulted in simply stinking up the apartment and wasted a big piece of meat. I have done further research on corning but if anyone in blog land has any tips, I would appreciate them. I refuse to give up, though. The corning will begin sometime next week. In the midst of failed corning, I prepared my sermon. I had the topic for a while but needed to get a few thoughts down.
I preached on the relationship between Christians and culture. Sounds more boring than I hope it was. Christians have typically reacted in four ways to culture: retreat entirely from culture and create an independent society (monasticism, certain American sects), attempt to take over culture and create Christendom (Catholicism in the Middle Ages, Calvin in Geneva, Cromwell in England, the Christian Right in America :) ), create a bubble or ghetto and develop a "Christian" culture while remaining in but distant from the dominant culture (much of evangelicalism today but that's hopefully changing), or the transformation model Jesus and Paul seem to advocate which involves a basic affirmation of human culture, freedom to live to the glory of God within the dominant culture with certain, but very limited moral boundaries, and the dictum to transform that culture from all places of influence. What's interesting is that all these responses at one time or another have reinvigorated or even saved Christianity but the response to culture can never become static. It must follow a cycle to allow Christianity the space to breathe.
After church, we celebrated Anya Zubkova's birthday. And it was tonight back to Globus for the much-loved Italian gelato.
Natalya, who is receiving chemotherapy, got one not-so-good report but improved and is now with some relatives who live on the sea as she recovers from this round of treatment. The church today gave more than $500 for her treatment and some people in America have given enough for one whole treatment. So we are now building toward having enough funds for the fourth treatment. Eight to ten treatments will possibly be needed. It's also rumored that the government may provide one of the treatments for free. They do provide some medical care for free but the expensive chemotherapy is not. Hopefully, if the government will provide one treatment, she will be able to get all the treatments if they help. In a couple of weeks she will be tested again to determine if they are working. It's still too early to tell. Her faith, though, remains undaunted.
Our friend Oleg is going to Sweden on a business trip so we are leading the small group this week. We also have a lot of work to do at the UEC since Vitaly was out sick most all of last week. Besides ordering new couches, we are beginning the first stages of some remodeling to the UEC library thanks to a generous anonymous donation we received last year.
It seems spring has arrived. Most all the snow has melted. Little ice remains. Temps are above freezing everyday. Lena starts her accounting class this week.
We ask you to pray for our immigration documents. Since we had to file the documents in the US (we had hoped to do it at the embassy where the process goes much faster but the law changed 10 days before we went to file our papers), the backlog there has grown and now wait time is more than six months for processing just one document. That was discouraging to learn, and we are re-thinking our transition plan. Well, at least we are developing Plan B.
I had English outreach on Friday and worked the UEC desk Friday night. Saturday Lena's relatives came so we were entertaining them. I decided to cook for them. That meant about 8 hours in the kitchen on Saturday, plus shopping time. I made an American apple pie (from scratch--frozen crusts have yet to make it to Ukraine) and an Australian-style shearer's pot. Sort of like shepherd's pie but much more complicated. Those shearers eat well. I had hoped to make the corn beef and cabbage but my first effort at corning beef resulted in simply stinking up the apartment and wasted a big piece of meat. I have done further research on corning but if anyone in blog land has any tips, I would appreciate them. I refuse to give up, though. The corning will begin sometime next week. In the midst of failed corning, I prepared my sermon. I had the topic for a while but needed to get a few thoughts down.
I preached on the relationship between Christians and culture. Sounds more boring than I hope it was. Christians have typically reacted in four ways to culture: retreat entirely from culture and create an independent society (monasticism, certain American sects), attempt to take over culture and create Christendom (Catholicism in the Middle Ages, Calvin in Geneva, Cromwell in England, the Christian Right in America :) ), create a bubble or ghetto and develop a "Christian" culture while remaining in but distant from the dominant culture (much of evangelicalism today but that's hopefully changing), or the transformation model Jesus and Paul seem to advocate which involves a basic affirmation of human culture, freedom to live to the glory of God within the dominant culture with certain, but very limited moral boundaries, and the dictum to transform that culture from all places of influence. What's interesting is that all these responses at one time or another have reinvigorated or even saved Christianity but the response to culture can never become static. It must follow a cycle to allow Christianity the space to breathe.
After church, we celebrated Anya Zubkova's birthday. And it was tonight back to Globus for the much-loved Italian gelato.
Natalya, who is receiving chemotherapy, got one not-so-good report but improved and is now with some relatives who live on the sea as she recovers from this round of treatment. The church today gave more than $500 for her treatment and some people in America have given enough for one whole treatment. So we are now building toward having enough funds for the fourth treatment. Eight to ten treatments will possibly be needed. It's also rumored that the government may provide one of the treatments for free. They do provide some medical care for free but the expensive chemotherapy is not. Hopefully, if the government will provide one treatment, she will be able to get all the treatments if they help. In a couple of weeks she will be tested again to determine if they are working. It's still too early to tell. Her faith, though, remains undaunted.
Our friend Oleg is going to Sweden on a business trip so we are leading the small group this week. We also have a lot of work to do at the UEC since Vitaly was out sick most all of last week. Besides ordering new couches, we are beginning the first stages of some remodeling to the UEC library thanks to a generous anonymous donation we received last year.
It seems spring has arrived. Most all the snow has melted. Little ice remains. Temps are above freezing everyday. Lena starts her accounting class this week.
We ask you to pray for our immigration documents. Since we had to file the documents in the US (we had hoped to do it at the embassy where the process goes much faster but the law changed 10 days before we went to file our papers), the backlog there has grown and now wait time is more than six months for processing just one document. That was discouraging to learn, and we are re-thinking our transition plan. Well, at least we are developing Plan B.
posted by Kyivmission at 10:24 PM
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