Cumin guy

Day 7 – Sunday, September 16^th – I can hardly believe that we have been in the Ukraine one whole week. It has gone rather quickly. As most days, today has also been good. We made our 8^th and 9^th visits to the baby home today. One thing that was crazy today was as we were walking home from our morning visit with Veeka, there were mass amounts of people walking in the opposite direction as us. The more and more we thought about it, we decided on the fact that it was Sunday and they were headed to church. Maybe?? (It was the only thing logical.) The people were mostly women and children, dressed very nicely. All of them were in dresses/skirts. We don’t really know where they were going, but it definitely was interesting.

This morning’s visit with Veeka was good. She just loves Papa so much. She wants to play with him, hold his hand, sit on his lap, kiss him, etc. It is really quite cute. Men are so rare in a baby home setting, that it is so interesting to watch how all of the children react to Monty or other men. I am very thankful she wants to be with him. We have heard of stories where they want absolutely nothing with men because they are afraid. I am so glad that is not the case! Our afternoon visit consisted of Veeka discovering Papa’s prickly face. She couldn’t really figure it out much at all. We remember the same thing happening with Caleb. It is so sad to think that most of these little people have never had much interaction with men. She would rub her hand on his face and then would look at her finger like she was expecting something to be on it. She also talked a bunch! Veeka had not talked much at all until this afternoon. We were all so excited to hear her voice. We don’t know what she was saying, but we know it was something.

Today while we worked on school work, we decided that Sundays are also traditional for weddings…”Vodka, Wildcats, Vodka…”

We have yet to find out about many Christians here. We hope to find out from EEM if they know of a church or Christians here, but we really haven’t had the time to email them. So, for church, we had our own and Caleb did everything. According to him, he was “Foree.” He first started our service by telling us that he was the preacher, bible hour teacher, bible class teacher, and “cumin” (communion) guy. He used my bible, which is a daily bible and only puts the date up at the top of the page, and told us to turn to certain pages. He did his lesson first and it had 10 points: 1. Obey parents – 2. Don’t kick parents (but kicking a football is ok) – 3. Don’t talk back to parents – 4. Don’t cross the street – 5. Don’t pinch or hit – 6. No breaking your glasses – 7. Don’t hunt by yourself; you need to tell a parent or grandparent – 8. Don’t poke anyone in the eye with a pencil – the other two, we couldn’t remember (we obviously didn’t make good notes). It was absolutely hilarious listening to him talk about what we should and shouldn’t do. If we had any comments, we “had to raise our hand.” He then led us in singing. We sang Blue Skies and Rainbows. The first part we all sang together, then he said “now only boys” and they sang for a while, and then he said “now everybody!” We all laughed and laughed. We all three stopped singing because we were laughing so hard. He was so cute at church. After the singing we had a lesson in how not to break your parent’s house down and then we had communion. It was probably one of the better church services I have been to in a while. (No offense to those who might have participated in a service that I have attended any time in the recent past.)

Here is a picture of Caleb preaching.