May 15, 2012

• My Struggle… My Worship…

  We have had another wonderful week in Kiev, Ukraine. The week was filled with learning experiences, fun, and challenges.

  Let me begin with a learning experience at the grocery store. As many of you know, Jenni is a wonderful cook. But, cooking here is different than cooking in Houston, Texas. We actually can find most everything we are used to eating. The challenge is “finding” it.

  We have been on the search for regular sausage, like what you would find on pizza. At a store this past week, we thought we had found it. It looked LIKE sausage. It was packaged LIKE sausage. It even said sausage (in Russian). We thought we were good to go. BUT, then we read more of the small print. Under the Russian word for sausage, the package said “для собак” which means “for dogs”.

  ALWAYS read the small print!!!

  We love our time with our language instructor, Olga. She is a wonderful lady and a very good teacher. It is very challenging to us and we are exhausted after our two hour private lessons. Every other week, we are taking one of our study times with Olga and going on a city excursion with her. This past week we visited the botanical gardens.

  While visiting the gardens and the beautiful plants there, we were on the top of a hill near a fence overlooking the city of Kiev. There was a gate in the fence and a woman from the other side of the fence beckoned us to come through the gate and visit the monastery on the other side. With Olga’s there with us, we were glad to follow. We visited a place called Архангедо Михаиловский Зверинецкий Монастырь в Киеве or “Archangel Michael Zverynets Monastery of Kiev”. It was a beautiful 11^th century monastery.

  We discovered that there were catacombs within the hill near the monastery and we were given a guided tour through the catacombs! It was one of the most excited experiences of my life. There were monks who lived in the catacombs for 30 years without ever coming out to the light of day. There was a very small sanctuary in the catacombs and many places were the bones of the monks were placed and still visible. Later we found that the monastery only does tours for orthodox pilgrims. We were blessed to have seen it.

  This past week, Jenni and I had our first date night in Kiev. There is a very nice young woman at Poznyaki church named Natasha that came to our apartment to watch Bekah and Sarah while Jenni and I had our first time alone together in Kiev. What a blessing to us! We asked Natasha to only speak Russian to the girls. Bekah asked us, “How can I ask her for water if we only speak Russian?” LOL… It all worked great. Bekah got her water, and Sarah said her first Russian words that night!

  Jenni and I walked through Babi Yar Park. We had planned to stop and sit on a park bench to just talk. As we walked through the beginning of the park, the benches were full of people. We kept walking and soon were on some interior paths within this very large park. We ended up walking for a little over two hours! We ended up collapsing at an Italian restaurant for dinner. It was a great “exercise date” and one we won’t forget.

  One of the hardest things for us to adjust to here is the time of worship through music in the churches. Don’t get me wrong, the music is beautiful at the churches we are attending and the people sing with passion. The problem for us is that we can’t sing the words. They are “foreign” to us. We can read the Russian letters now and try to sing along, but we don’t even know what we are saying. So it has been hard to “feel” the sense of worship if that makes sense. Some of the tunes are familiar, and are songs we sing in the States, so one option is
  to ignore the Russian language during this time and sing in English. But that doesn’t feel right to me either.

  On Sunday, as we were singing I sensed God speaking to me. I realized that while I don’t understand the words I was singing yet, God understands my garbled Russian. In fact, my struggle is a part of my worship of Him! Wow, how freeing to me. As I struggle to sing, God is glorified and honored! Praise Him! Until I understand the language better, I will struggle with joy in my heart to praise Him.

  This week there is a group in Kiev from Northwest Nazarene University. They are helping Poznyaki Community Church plant with a community outreach. Each evening this week from 5-9 PM, we are playing with the kids of the neighborhood and those at a nearby school to build relationships with more families near the church. Last night (our first night) there were probably 50 kids who came to the school grounds to see what was going on. We are hoping and praying for more children each night. I am specifically praying that at least one family would come to faith Jesus and begin attending this church through this outreach.

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