Western Christmas Holiday

This year Dave and I spent Western Christmas (Dec. 25) in England, with a friend and her family. We arrived in Birmingham, spent a day an a half there, then went to London for two days, and finally traveled to Chichester, a small town on the south coast of England, for the Christmas holiday. We had a great time shopping, hanging out, watching English TV, being tourists, eating English Christmas goodies (many of which were new to us) and in general just absorbing the Christmas holiday spirit. Other highlights included Christmas Eve Midnight Mass in Chichester’s 11^th century cathedral, playing with the Peters’ two dogs (Dave’s highlight), and speaking English in public.

We were pleasantly surprised at the mild weather and greenness of the landscape, as well as the history and beauty we saw everywhere we went. Especially around Chichester, every other house seems to be built of stone several hundred years ago, and every other street is cobbled, narrow and winds through beautiful green fields and ivy-laden landscapes.

Laura

Valentina Chernova

Last week I went to visit Valentina Chernova at her home. She was doing much better than she was the last time I had seen her (in the hospital) and I was very thankful for that. Just over half of her 14-day chemotherapy treatment was complete. She was taking six pills a day during that time and should have finished treatment on Saturday. Honestly, she seemed much stronger than most of the people I have met who were in the middle of chemo (admittedly, this number isn’t very large).

As if the cancer and treatment weren’t a solemn enough topic, she pulled out the pictures she had of “her Sasha” at his funeral. He passed away this past May after a long battle with asthma and other health complications. It has been a tough year for Valentina.

We talked about the future. She was very interested to hear Laura and my plans for the next stage in our lives. She was also rather adamant about her own future plans. She wants to return to working at Good Shepherd Center, but not as the director. She wants to help in “any way she can.” She wants to help the kids with homework and just have time to talk to the kids. She wants to be the night watchperson (which seems to be about the last job anyone would aspire to). I could tell that she just wants to serve again, like she has been doing for so long. Most of us who know her have difficulty seeing her any other way.

Dave

Mikhail Ivanovich Vodalazhsky

The book in the picture is part of an amazing story. It is the sort of story that I have only read about and this was the first time in my life where I was able to hear it first hand. I will not do the story, or the storyteller, Mikhail Ivanovich Vodolazhsky, justice. But talking with him has been one of the highlights of my time here. I apologize about the quality of the photo, the book is amazingly small and my hands aren’t so steady when holding a camera.

Mikhail Ivanovich is either 92 or 93 years old. He was born before the Bolshevik Revolution on a farm in the Kharkov region of Ukraine. Around his eighth birthday his father’s farm and work were taken over by the government and became a part of a collective farm. Times were tough. Mikhail Ivanovich dropped out of school and moved, along with his two older brothers, to the city in search of work.

In his late teens he did his time of service with the Soviet army. His commanding officer fell out of favor with those above him and an order came down from above, requiring 100 men from his unit be sent to the “Gulag” labor camps. The officials searched through the soldiers’ personal belongings and found 200 “enemies of the people.” He had a journal in which he had written some of his favorite Bible verses and Sunday School songs so he was included in this number. He was sentenced to eight years at a Gulag 100 kilometers north of Magadan, in the northeastern part of Siberia.

Mikhail Ivanovich had not yet married his fiancé, and she told him she would wait for him “even if it took 10 years.” He was sent to a camp where he and many others prospected for gold while serving their sentences. Each was required to dig a hole, 1m x 1m x 1m every day, rain or shine, in the frosty soil and send it off to be panned. Fortunately, Mikhail Ivanovich was skilled at repairing the felt boots worn in the winter months and was therefore moved indoors during the coldest, hardest months. Many of the people in his Gulag died; almost all lost one or more extremities to frostbite.

He was released after eight years, but was forced to remain in the region for a period of exile. His fiancé learned of his release and exile and somehow, miraculously, traveled across the 13 time zones to meet and marry Mikhail Ivanovich at the train station, almost exactly 10 years after their last meeting.

They lived there for several years, and their three children were born there. At one point in time, they were told they could return home. They gave away or sold the majority of their possessions and packed the rest for the long journey “home.” Unfortunately, on the day they were to leave they were told they could not go. They went back to those who had their possessions and collected their things. Fortunately there were no problems with this because, according to Mikhail Ivanovich, after living through the hardships together the people there had become “closer than family.”

It became known that Mikhail Ivanovich was leading small church services in his home. He was immediately sentenced to another 10 years in the “camps.” This is where the Bible pictured above comes in to the story. During his first sentence he and 20 other inmates shared a contraband Bible which belonged to one of his fellow inmates. During his time of exile, his wife had given him his own Bible, which he in turn shared with around 10 others. He talks about how he was “overjoyed” to have the opportunity to have the Bible on Sundays, his day off. He would go off to some isolated place and read “under a blanket” as they often say here when referring to clandestine behavior.

Midway through this term, “Comrade Stalin” died and Mikhail Ivanovich and others were exonerated by Khrushchchev. The family left Magadan for the 9-day boat ride to Vladivostok, on the far east coast of Russia, then a 17-day train ride back to Kharkov in Ukraine. They have lived there until now. Now Mikhail Ivanovich (front left in picture) and his brother, Pyotr Ivanovich (front right), live in a small room built on to the house where his son Yura (back) lives with his family. The “grandpas” spend most of their time talking and studying their Bibles, now above the blankets.

Dave

November Economic Conference

November 17-18 we had an economic conference for all the MCC partners that I work with. The fact that I am posting a blog about it over a month later is either a testimony to how busy I have been or how lazy I am. I thought that some of you would be interested to see the “brothers” that I am referring to when I talk about “partners.” Representatives from 12 of the 15 loan funds and credit unions from different regions in Ukraine were in attendance, and presentations covered a variety of topics.

While I feel that my Russian continues to get better all the time, I am still not quite to the place where I can lead discussions well. I’m sure I said some stupid stuff when trying to explain some things but I did my best and already was acquainted with most of the people there. Fortunately, as the picture shows, Ionka Hristozova (our country director) also attended all of the sessions and led the discussion in what I thought was the most important session which dealt with planning and reporting. This encompasses the majority of my responsibilities and I was glad that she explained why we are doing it and what we are looking for.

The conference required a lot of planning and turned out well. It seemed that those who participated thought it was interesting and beneficial.

Dave

Partners visit

Last week Dave and I returned from a whirlwind “partners visit.” Now is the time when the loan funds MCC works with (run by Ukrainian Baptists throughout Ukraine) are writing year-end reports and plans for next year. The planning process has changed recently, so Dave has been visiting most everyone to help out. I had a one-week break from classes, so I went along for the first time. On this trip we took the train to Cherkassy (central Ukraine), then south to Odessa, took a bus west to the village of Kilia on the Romanian border, then the train back to Odessa, up to Kiev and home to Donetsk.

The biggest impression the trip had on me was the contrast of life in the village to life in the city. Back home, in the part of the Midwest where I’m from, the standard of living in the “country” is no different from that of the city. That is not the case in Ukraine, and I often forget that. Running water is not a standard in the village, it’s a luxury. Hot water comes from the top of the stove after you’ve heated it in a pan. Houses are heated with coal or wood-burning fireplaces that double as ovens and sometimes as beds. (The traditional “Russian Stove” is a huge affair with a large flat space on top to sleep on). The toilet is usually, as they say in Russian, “in the street” (an outhouse). Potatoes, noodles or kasha (porridge made from grains or oatmeal) are standard fare – fruit is a luxury for special occasions.

People were very hospitable and I especially enjoyed meeting the people Dave has gotten to know since beginning this job last year, and putting faces with the names he’s talked about. The photo is a gathering of babushkas in a village north of Kiev. Notice everyone is wearing their coats, boots and headscarves. Although we sat around the stove (the small door in the wall to the left), it wasn’t warm enough in that house not to stay fully dressed.

Laura

Hospital Visit

Valentina Vasilovna Chernova is the director of the Good Shepherd Children’s Center, and one of the people responsible for the formation of the Good Shepherd organization. A while back she was diagnosed with cancer of the liver and thyroid with inconclusive test results as to whether it was malignant or not. A few weeks ago she went to a hospital in Zaporozhye, which is supposedly one of the best cancer treatment facilities in Eastern Ukraine. She had surgery two weeks ago today, and then began the recovery process.

The day after the basketball tournament I traveled to Zaporozhye for the annual MCC Economic Development conference. I brought pictures from the tournament as well as notes from almost all the kids and workers at the Good Shepherd center. I was excited to see her, but a bit nervous as to what I would see. The whole situation—no one really knowing whether the cancer was malignant or not or what the prognosis is and therefore assuming the worst—made me rather uncomfortable. It had all seemed very reminiscent of Solzhenitsyn’s The Cancer Ward and I feared that the hospital conditions would also seem eerily familiar.

We went to visit her on Thursday night in her room, which she shared with five other women, all of which I assumed had some form of cancer. They all appeared to be at different stages in the process. Some were rather cheerful and optimistic while others were quite grave. All were willing to participate in Valentina’s conversations with her visitors.

Being the selfish person that I am, I began to feel sorry for myself during this, the most difficult 30 minutes of my time in Ukraine up till now. While Wednesday had been a good day for her—with her being able to get up and walk to the washroom and clean up—Thursday had been difficult—she lacked the strength to get up and her fever had returned. It was really hard to see her like that, the optimistic woman who I constantly hear in my mind, reminding me: “Of course there are many difficulties in dealing with the kids, but we will not get discouraged.” Here she was saying: “I know everything is going to turn out well,” but her eyes and voice were lacking that reassuring quality that they always seemed to have.

Yesterday I was told that Valentina will be coming back to Makeevka on Friday, and I was so excited. Maybe her stay in “the cancer ward” will not be as indefinite as my reading of Solzhenitsyn had led me to believe. I know that I am excited to see her outside the confines of such a depressing place.

P.S. Sorry to those of you who haven’t read Solzhenitsyn. To find out what hospitals are like in this part of the world, read The Cancer Ward.

Dave

Basketball Tournament

Last week the kids from Good Shepherd participated in the annual basketball tournament. All the orphanages from Makeevka had been invited and eight teams (four girls, four boys) showed up. A family from St. Louis had come earlier this year and paid for the replacement of windows as well as some remodeling in the gymnasium. The administration was so proud that they recommended that the basketball tournament be held there. Seventy-two children participated.

It is not the type of coaching that I was used to in North America, with many of the kids not knowing where to stand during a free throw or even how/where to play defense, but Good Shepherd represented well. Each game consisted of two, 10-minute halves (running clock), making the games go rather quickly. It was exciting. The boys advanced to the championship with a 32-2 win over the team that ended up taking third place. Then the girls came back from a 10-4 second half deficit to win the championship 18-14 (in a five-minute overtime period). The boys also played well in the championship, but could not get their shots to fall. They ended up in second place.

It was exciting to see how much better both teams played when compared to how they played last year. It was also interesting to compare the behavior of the Good Shepherd kids to that of the kids from the government-run orphanages. Such comparisons always make me realize how great of thing is being done by the people at Good Shepherd.

Dave