I ate the whole thing!!!!

Thank Him for His Grace!! Praise the Lord for all he has given me. I have a great salvation, family, church, friends, house, health, schooling, clothes, animals, stuff, food, oppurtunities, past, country, on and on. God has been so good to every person in the world, but espically to me. There are no words to express what he has done. The human mind will explode if it thinks about it for to long.

My family and I were in Romania for the day and had a great time fellowshiping with the four other missionary families that were gathered together. Praise the Lord that we were able to get together with these families that are doing a great work through God's power here. Got to go.

Next:

OK, we had a good sleep and then woke up at six to a nice blanket of snow!! Yeah, it was not much but it was enough to make the tent fly sag, real bad!! Had a breakfast of champions, hot dogs and oatmeal, and packed up our stuff. After driving out the tot road to the "highway" we found that during the night or early morning the road had been blocked off by the large wooden gate being pulled across the road and locked with a padlock!! OK, now what?? Well, what else, break down the gate!!! Yes, we pried the large log apart, slid it out of the chain and lock, drove the car through, and "put it back in place." [More or less] Problem solved. We drove to the turn to go down the mountain road and got to another locked gate. We went inside the hut next to the gate and were told that no one was allowed to go in during the winter. Well, we told them of all the experience that we have had climbimg wise and they finally let us go, after we paid them 25 grivnas. Problem solved. Driving up the road the snow started to get really deep and the scenery very pretty. Then we came to a big tree down across the road, we would have to park and start hiking from here. Well, we started to back up and the car just lifted up and slid into the ditch because the snow was so deep that it kept Dad from being able to stear the van. OK, make a plan, "Get out of the ditch." Simple right?? One hour later we were partly out of the ditch and here comes a forester's truck. "Hey, can you all help us??" "Oh sure, we are going to get a chainsaw and then we will pull you out." Yeah right!!! They came back all right and cut up the tree, but then they just drove away. Manners are not to big in this part of the world. Well after another hour of work we had gotten several of the boulders and all of the snow out from under the van. [Remember that all of this in in thirty degree weather.] Well, here comes a large SUV and it is a Lexus!!! "Can you pull us out??" "Sure" Praise the Lord!!! Well these people were rich, which is probably the reason why they were allowed to come in the road, because no one was supposed to remember?? We got out after a while and were shhouting glory. Problem solved.

Now, it is 11:15 and we are wet and tired but unstuck and Praising God. No climbing today, especially as it is snowing really hard. The other option, drive back to the "highway" and do some easy hiking. We did it and had a great time crossing rivers, eating, and looking at the mountain that we did not get to conquer, YET, just wait. A lot of other things happened on this trip but I don't have time to tell all.

Conglomeration

Praise God for His Grace!!! Good Sunday, about 25 out to morning service. The afternoon was good with about 15 teens in attendance, and yes my team won 4 out of 7 games of volleyball!! Of course!! LOL School at the beggining of the week. Thursday Dad and I spent the morning helping to pour a foundation for a widowed lady whose house was destroyed in the flood, then we hightailed it to the house and grabbed our camping gear. We started out on the drive but after about 1.5 hours the road got really bad [if that is possible!!] because it had all been washed out by the flood. It was gravel and dirt with huge potholes where we could go only about 40 K's an hour!! Nice huh?? We got to the mountain [ the highest in Ukraine] at about 5:30 and then back tracked down the "highway" for about 5 K's and went down a logging road to find a nice clearing for a campsight. After finding a place for our tent [a nice mossy spot with pines for protection] we got a fire going; set up our tent; and had a nice dinner of Ramen, carrots, hot dogs, and hot chocolate. We got to sleep at 8:40 as there was nothing else to do, and had a nice time of getting our sleeping bags warm as it was in the low twenties. And, I will continue this post later!! Ha ha

Kiddies Need the Lord

Good Saturday. Praise the Lord for all seven kids that came out today!!!!! Only one of them is saved, but they all heard the Gospel. The games all went well [of course they did,I lead them!!]. Only joking!!! Team "Leaves" beat team "Grass" out of all the game scores combined. We had a lesson about the first part of Noah's life. Afterwards Dad, "D", and I went to "Hoboville", the county seat, and had a good time running errands. It is really called Novoselitsa, but in Russian it is spelled "Hoboce^liu,a" so we call it Hoboville. Later in the day Dad and J.J. caleaned the church yard while Mom and I cleaned out a backroom in the church to use as a Sunday school room. Mom decorated the room after we was cleaned it out and it looks GREAT!!!!! Pray that many children will come to know Jesus in this room.

Across the Border

We all went to Romania for the day, we had to leave the country anyway for the van [it has to leave the country every two months because it is registered in Germany]. Praise the Lord we had easy border crossings both ways. We got to do some shopping in Romania too because we can get some things in Romania that we can not get in the UA. Thank the Lord for good family time and safety on the roads, especially since the fog was as thick as mud.

This photo is not from yesterday but, it is a good representation of our awesome Ukranian roads!!!

Back to Normal

Wow, I am finaly blogging agian. Sorry to everybody for not writing in so long. Since I got back to Ukraine I have not been able to blog since the dial up is to slow to blog, but we just got "DSL" more-or-less. It is not really fast, but it is fast enough. Lets see, what have I been doing, school, school, school, OK, got in some nice running, I fixed my bike, got the "throwup" bug, got a cold, harvested appricots, helped my parents and brother pick our grapes and make over forty liters of juice out of them, helped out with the little kids at church every week, made a giant jack-o-lantern out of our 104 pound pumpkin, and a lot of other stuff. I am just going to put a lot of pictures of various things on the page. Signing off.