Ministry Update: The Weekend

The weekends tends to be a busy time for ministry. Friday night I worked at the UEC and we began work on moving shelving units and preparing the space for the new shelving that is to be installed on Monday. This enlargement of shelf space is being funded by a generous anonymous UEC donor. Why is it important? Because we had basically run out of shelf space. And shelf space is important because without it, the collection can't grow. And since it's going to be quite a few years before Ukraine switches to all digital reading, this library will serve people for many years, so I believe it to be an important part of our ministry. Several volunteers came Friday night and in a couple of hours everything was about done. Thanks to Vitaly for working on this and for Oleg as he put his rock climbing skills to work, climbing on shelving units to disconnect them. More work is to be done on Monday.

Saturday we were invited to the Zhyvovy home. It's one of the only families that came to Christ through Nivki church ministry. They are a genuinely impressive group. It was an enjoyable but difficult time since they are beginning to feel our impending departure. They live on the other side of the river so the trip there and back took a while. We ended the day at the UEC with Oleg and Oksana. Vitaly and Lera were there with little Gleb, Natasha, and Roma. Roma was helping re-connect old UEC shelving units since we weren't capable of managing that on our own. Thanks to Vitaly for arranging that.

Sunday Misha Zhyvov preached a good sermon. It's a blessing to me to see how his abilities and knowledge have grown. Finally, the heat wave ended today and it's quite cool, actually. It was not so hot in the church building. Natalya was at the assembly and she was in a very good mood. We were just pooped by the end of the long service and going out to eat. We then went to the grocery store, an almost daily occurrence.

Tonight I started cleaning out our shelves of medicines. If you know us, you know we have quite a collection. Throwing out expired stuff. Wondering what some things are. Trying to decide if we should take this to America or not, and if we will have enough room to do so. It's an odd feeling. I found some pills from when I had mono many, many many moons ago. The fahrenheit thermometer I brought to Kyiv a long time ago because I couldn't fine one in Kyiv and didn't know how to relate fahrenheit to celsius. You don't want to have to think too hard when you have a a fever.