Yesterday was such a great day! A little stress, a little food, a lot of fun.

We started out the day bright and early with breakfast at our little Bed and Breakfast. I can’t say enough about the place we stayed. It was just perfect! Clean, fresh, bright, super friendly owner, a five minute walk from the train station, walking distance to the embassy, and about half the price of a hotel in Bern. The owner graciously let us keep our bags there all day till we left on the train in the afternoon, so that was great!

We knew the embassy was only open from 9-12 on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so we were determined to be first in line since we only allowed ourselves 2 embassy days in country.

With google map picture in hand we headed on our way!

We took a little funicular down the hill from Parliament.

Along the way…

Purty, isn’t it?

Wow! It’s so busy! Good thing we got up at the crack of dawn! 😉

All our paperwork was in order and the visa applications and loads of documents were handed over. We then had to walk to a bank over by Parliament to pay for the visas and return to the embassy with our receipt. We didn’t realize we had to pay for the visas with cash and just BARELY scraped up enough cash to pay. That was a nail-biter, folks! Apparently, the people we heard of who had their visas done in just 2 hours either got really lucky, or they paid to expedite them and we just didn’t know that part. In order to have our visas done in time for our return flight to Ukraine on Tuesday we had to pay double and expedite them. Ouch! But, when you figure in how expensive it is just to eat and sleep here, it’s actually less expensive to pay the expedited fee. So, we chose the lesser of two evils and our visas should be ready for pickup on Monday at 11:30! Pray that is the case! Thanks.

After the visa stuff was done for the day we had about 3 hours to kill before we would leave on the train to head to a town about 40 minutes away to stay with my friend Sandra and her fam. So, we explored Bern and it was fabulous.

We had to hit up Starbucks for the wifi to update our parents on visa stuff. See this whole, huge, spacious room?

…this is the spot Jed where Jed chose to sit. HA!

Swiss photo bomb

We just walked around the corner and bumped in to this church. WOW!

It was open so we took a peek inside.

In search of lunch…

We settled on this deliciousness. So goooooood.

Soon it was time to head to meet our friends. 🙂

The countryside on the way from Bern to their town looked just like the landscape on HWY 99 from Salem to Corvallis. Really! It was the most familiar thing I’ve seen since leaving the US. It even seemed more familiar than Starbucks! (hehehe) There was a lot of green farmland and lots of pine trees. Hallelujah for pine trees! I miss them very much. It was beautiful. 🙂 I tried to take a picture but it didn’t really turn out.

We arrived at the train station where Sandra would meet us and found her easily. YAY! It’s always fun to meet people in person that you’ve communicated with for a couple of years. It was also so surreal. What are we doing here? Ha! This is hilarious that it actually worked out!

We took the bus to Sandra’s village and then walked to their apartment. It’s cozy and welcoming and we are having a great time here. Walter and Sandra are originally from Singapore, but Walter’s job brought them to Switzerland 11 years ago. Sandra cooked us delicious Chinese food that made us very happy. You can’t really get any type of Asian cuisine in Ukraine, so it was a major treat. SO GOOD! Then we talked, played Wii Fit (Which, by the way, gave Jed a Wii Fit age of 30 and me a Wii Fit age of 36. I hate the Wii.) It was a great time to get to know each other better.

Sandra was talking some about Singapore and I admitted that I really know nothing about Singapore or the culture there. I remarked to them that we only really know one person who ever had a tie with Singapore. Some of my parents’ best friends are named Joe and Janet. Joe’s sister Eileen was a missionary in Singapore for many years before we met her. I was mentioning to Jed that I think Eileen is the only person we know who has spent any time in Singapore. Walter and Sandra perked right up. Come to find out they knew Eileen! They were friends with her and worked in ministry with her in Singapore before they were even married! SHUT UP. You have got to be kidding me! At first, we thought they were joking. I mean, out of all the millions of people in Singapore, the one person we know who lived there was their friend. What a crazy small world we live in, I tell ya. We were laughing our heads off about it. God is just too funny.

Now we’re getting ready to head out to explore the little Swiss town we’re in. It’s Jed’s birthday today so we’ll need to make sure we find lots of treats.- I’m just looking out for Jed, mind you. This has nothing to do with my personal need for treats. 😉

Thanks for your prayers for our visas! Keep ’em coming! I’ll let you know as soon as we have them in our hot little hands.

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Here we are!

We are here!

After a full day of travel we arrived in Bern, Switzerland and we are as happy as can be.

Little bus from our house to city square.

Big bus from Zhitomir to Kiev.

Metro to big train station.

Bus from train station to airport.

Direct flight from Kiev to Zurich. Woohoo!

Train from Zurich to Bern.

Walk from train station to lodging. YAY!

I’m sleepy and tomorrow is a big day, so I’ll just share some pics and call it good. Mmmk?

At the metro in Kiev, feelin’ fresh.

METROOOOOO!

On the bus to the airport.

Santa at the airport! I tell ya, Christmas is still going in Ukraine. You can hear Christmas music in all the stores STILL! I was made for Ukraine.

We arrived in Bern! Jed loves this chair. He hasn’t even let me sit in it yet.

We walked around in the rain tonight and it was beautiful.

I’m a sucker for twinkle lights. We had dinner down this street at a restaurant that serves traditional Swiss food. Yes please!

The prettiest bottle of water I ever sipped.

This was AMAZING. It was leeks, cream, sausage, and potatoes. Shut the front door.

That’s a big ol’ bowl of fondue!

Fondue. Again, shut the front door.

Dippage for the fondue.

 

This makes me laugh. I was positively giddy about my coffee! HA!

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This weekend is a weekend for adventure!  Jed and I are going to Switzerland!

I know, I know, the things we suffer as missionaries.  It’s okay, really, It’ll be rough, but we’ll make it.  😉

Really though, Switzerland??  I never thought I’d get to go there!  This is such a fun, unexpected blessing!

Quick recap:

1.  We have to leave Ukraine and go to one of their consulates in another country to get our visas to live in Ukraine.

2.  There is a Ukrainian consulate in Bern, Switzerland.

3.  There is a church near Bern that wants to support Wide Awake and they have asked us to share about Wide Awake at their service on Sunday.

4.  A passionate orphan advocate and encourager of Wide Awake attends the church and invited us to stay with her family and get some good face to face time.

5.  Sharing Wide Awake + Getting visas + Meeting a big time encourager IN PERSON = Killing three birds with one stone and a whole lotta fun.

Jed’s parents have been here visiting from their home in Kosova where they have lived as missionaries for the past 14 years.  We have had the best visit!  It’s been so fun to show them our new home and see Ukraine through their eyes.  They offered to stay here in Ukraine with the kids while Jed and I make the trip to Switzerland.  For one thing, the kids don’t need visas, so they don’t have to come to the consulate.  For another, taking all four kids around a country we don’t know at all, standing in line at the consulate and figuring out public transport sounds less than super fun.  Annnnd for another, two plane tickets is aheckofalot cheaper than six.  BAM. Decision made.  The kids get Grammy and Papa time and Jed and I get a little Swiss Adventure.  Everybody wins!  We’ve got to be killing at least ten birds with that one stone.

Here’s how the weekend will look (if all goes as we hope it should):

Thursday: Fly away to Zurich, find train and take train to Bern.  Explore, change money, drink coffee.

Friday: Hit the Ukrainian Consulate bright and early with documents in hand.  HOPEFULLY we’ll get our visas by the end of that working day…pray pray pray!!!  That afternoon we’ll take the train to another town to meet our friend and gracious host, Sandra, who will take us to her house.

Saturday:  Jed’s Birthday!!!  Hopefully we can explore our hearts out this day.  We’ll do birthday dinner with Sandra and her fam. 🙂

Sunday:  We share Wide Awake at Sandra’s church in Lucerne.  It’s an international church that sounds pretty stinkin’ cool.  We are excited to meet the people.  Please pray for hearts and eyes to be wide open to what the Father wants to do that day.

Monday:  Head back to the Ukrainian Consulate if things didn’t get wrapped up on Friday.  The Consulate is only open for visas Monday, Wednesday,and Friday, so we wanted to make sure we gave ourselves two working days- just in case.  If we have our visas we’ll just explore some more!

Tuesday: Home again, home again, jiggety jig.

So that’s the scoop!  We would love your prayers for a quick and easy time at the Consulate.  Also please pray for our kids and Grammy and Papa back home in Ukraine.  We’ve left our kids before when they were back in the US and we were visiting Ukraine, but this is the first time we’ve ever left them in Ukraine.  It feels very strange.  But, God has been so good to us, we know we have nothing to fear.  We just want their little hearts to be settled and peaceful.  Also for our time at the church on Sunday, pray that God would have His way and we would only speak His words.  Pray that people would be encouraged to say YES to God in their own lives- whatever that may look like.

Thanks friends!  Your prayers and encouragement are such a blessing to our family!  All of you saying yes and partnering with us is a huge part of what makes this journey so sweet.

One month ago from almost this exact moment we touched down in Ukraine. One month ago all 6 of us + 12 suitcases + 8 carry-ons + 1 guitar touched down in our new home. Has it only been one month??? It feels more like one year! Not in a bad way, but in a really strange way it feels like we’ve been here a whole heckofalot longer. I guess kids do that to you; they make you settle in real quick like. 🙂 Our new reality set in fairly fast and we’ve been on a ginormous learning curve ever since.

This is my take on the past month. Jed doesn’t do much blogging here (ahem…) so these are my thoughts. He’d give you a different perspective, and it would probably be more profound, but I’ll share mine just for the fun of it.

The Hard Things:

Language.

Duh. Yeah, at this exact moment Russian is my enemy, my worst nightmare, my insurmountable mountain. Russian is stinkin’ hard y’all.

But, we actually have picked up quite a bit, and when we remind ourselves we’ve only been here for one month we start to feel a little better about our progress.

Everything’s labeled…

Still, Russian hates me. Holy moly. My brain hurts just thinking about it.

Shopping.

Shopping is an interesting beast. The hard part isn’t finding delicious foods. Ukraine has loads of deliciousness available! The hard parts are prices (WAY TOO EXPENSIVE) and lack of car. These things aren’t impossible, just a little harder than in the US. I’m learning to cook like a Ukrainian in order to be able to afford groceries. Cooking like an American just doesn’t cut it here. The foods that would be frugal back in Oregon aren’t really frugal here, for the most part. Lucky for us we all love Ukrainian food! I just need to find out how to cook more of it so we can have a bit of variety in our lives.

The store we walk to most often

We use public transportation all the time since we don’t have a car. It’s pretty sweet that we live super close to a really busy bus stop. We can easily catch a bus whenever we want one. So, that’s no biggie, except when we want to do “big shopping”. “Big shopping” doesn’t mean Costco Big, it just means we need to buy for more than just today. Like last night for instance, we needed to buy diapers, pull-ups, and some stuff for the house, along with our normal purchases (cabbage, potatoes, beets, carrots, sour cream, milk, coffee, butter, and flour). That’s all fine and dandy…but how are we gonna get it all home??? Oh, that’s right…we’re gonna carry it! Ha! So, basically, we can only buy what we can carry, and when you factor in slippery sidewalks, kids bundled to the nines, dark at 4:30pm, a bus ride, and little hands that need to be held, you realize you really can’t buy all that much. Jed and I are shopping and debating what’s too heavy and what we can handle. “Sure, we can buy those mandarins, they aren’t too heavy. Oooooh no, we can’t get eggs…there’s no way we’re making it home with those babies still intact!”

On the bus with my sweetie after shopping last night

It’s an often hilarious, and an unexpectedly hard thing. Big time learning curve there. (And I didn’t even mention label-reading. Forget about it!)

Time Management.

Up to this point, we’ve pretty much been in survival mode. Not in a bad way, it’s just reality. Schedules and time management have been a work in progress.

Starting a non-profit from scratch is a lot like starting a new business. We have to account for expenditures, thank our givers, get the word out, stay accountable to our Board, and seek God for direction and vision, all while living in a world where every.single.thing is new.

It’s easy to get focused on just living every day and get backlogged on Wide Awake “stuff”. That’s been a hard one that we are far from mastering, but we’re plugging away at it. Again, let’s remind ourselves that we’ve only been here one month, mmmmk?? 🙂

The Awesome Things:

Walking.

I know, earlier I said not having a car is hard, but it’s really only hard when we go “Big Shopping”. Otherwise, I can honestly say that I enjoy walking everywhere. It’s so beautiful!!! We have to shop a bit almost every day (that’s the way it works here with a fam of 6), and I love our daily jaunts to the store.

On the way to the store

Usually, just Jed or I will head out in the afternoon with a kid or two and pick up the few things we need for that evening’s dinner and the next day’s breakfast. I love walking down the street in the fresh air, holding on to Addy’s hand just enjoying being with her. No radio blaring, no traffic to navigate, just me and my girl or sometimes my boy, walking down the street to our corner market. It’s precious. We’re learning labels together, learning what stores we like for what items, stretching our legs, breathing in fresh air, and feeling the sun (wishful thinking) on our faces. I like it a lot.

New Friends.

Duh. This one is HUGE. We have some wonderful friends here in Zhitomir. Thank you Jesus!!! Our friends Oleg and Tanya have been so good to us. They’ve ordered water for us for home delivery, helped me buy boots for my frozen Oregonian feet, taken us for coffee, celebrated a birthday and Thanksgiving with us, calmed my nerves when I heard unexpected fireworks and Jed was gone for the weekend (I was a wee bit nervous…), told us which brands of food are better, translated for us with our landlady, translated for us with our neighbors when we got the unfortunate “don’t flush the toilet paper” news hehe, helped us figure out our address, called taxis…and on and on and on. They’ve pretty much saved our bacon way too many times already. They probably feel like it’s been a heckofalot longer than one month too!! 😉

(Insert cute pic of friends…apparently we’re too busy drinking coffee and such for pics. Will remedy soon!!)

Mission to Ukraine friends have been AMAZING too. From the moment we walked in their doors on November 14th we’ve felt so incredibly welcome. They are excited to have us and we are so excited to have them!!! The MTU staff puts up with our blundering Russian with such grace. Bless their hearts!! They invite us to church, find lawyers to help us with our visas, feed our kids cake, hug us and kiss our cheeks, and on and on. One special family from MTU (mom and daughter both work there) has especially taken us under their wing. I feel like they are God’s special precious gift to us. Sigh, God is just too good. And that’s just the Zhitomir friends! Don’t even get me started on the treasures He’s given us in Kiev…

Romaniv.

Oh, my precious Romaniv! I was there again today and I am in love. Last week Jed and Nina, the AMAZING volunteer from Zhitomir that comes each week to the isolation room, discussed implementing more structure for the time we spend in the isolation room. Today Nina and I followed the plan the best we could and the boys responded immediately. Our time was so much more peaceful than the last time I was there! At one point we were feeding the boys bananas and Nina and I looked at each other in disbelief. It was SILENT in the room. The boys, for that moment, were content and quiet. It was such a moment of hope. God gave us all a bit of wisdom and then He blessed it. The boys responded fabulously and I can’t wait to see how they do after the structure is implemented week after week. Yay!!!!

On the road to Romaniv

Those boys have our hearts, big time.

Nina helping wash hands 🙂

Today I got to hold Andrei, one of the most active boys, on my lap for a bit. I figured out if I tied a long piece of cloth to a plastic slinky it would catch his attention and he would sit still for a moment. He let me hold him, rub his head, and hum into his ear for almost 10 minutes while he bounced the slinky up and down, up and down. Wow. That may not seem like much, but for a boy who never ever stops- always stimming, always shrieking, always running- this was big. For a moment he was at peace. For a moment his brain was developing a little further up the brainstem. For a moment prayers were whispered in his ear. Magical.

There’s so much more I could share. So many memories made, so many funny and embarrassing stories…it’s rather humiliating to live here, FYI. We make fools of ourselves all the time, everywhere. 🙂

Off to go make some embarrassing Russian blunders!

Just know that life is good, very good. It’s not all sunshine and roses and some days we struggle, but we have not one speck of doubt that we are exactly where God wants us to be. Things are quite crazy in Ukraine right now. We have no idea how it will all play out with the current government and the wishes of the people. Ukraine is at a very critical point in its history and we are here for such a time as this. It’s no surprise to God that we arrived right at the birth of a revolution. Who knows why…only God. But we do know that there is purpose in it and we don’t plan on missing out on that purpose.

Would you pray with us for Ukraine? This place and these people have grabbed our hearts. We’ve only made Ukraine our home for a short month, but we are all in. These are our people. Please pray that God has His way in Ukraine and that His Kingdom will come here and now. Pray that many, many hearts are turned toward Him during this unstable time.

Thank you, friends! Thank you for your love and encouragement this first month. It has been awesome to journey with you!

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