March 1

Sunday morning came with a surprise peak at the sun and some worship of the Son.

Breakfast with Jim and Margaret was, well, entertaining. E.g. A mission team was arriving from the States, so Margaret talked to the kitchen staff about what would and would not make a good first impression on the jet-lagged visitors. (Pause while you stop eating and make sure you have a bucket nearby.)
...

Fish


(raw)


served with


fish entrails


on the side.


Yummy.


The mission group members pushed the food around on their plates, then someone heard about Jim's cooking. Eventually the whole group was at Jim's, and for two weeks they never set foot in the dining hall again.

The 12 full-time students at DCU and their families gathered in a classroom to sing familiar worship songs in Russian ("Shout to the Lord," "As the Deer," etc.), celebrate the Lord's supper together, and be exhorted from the word. Our translator for the service was Lawrence (Wright?), who's been serving here for 11 years and is originally from CO. It was fun to learn his daughter is a freshman at UNL in Lincoln this year! I offered to deliver something small they might like to send home with us. Their Christmas gifts sent Nov. 29 arrived mid-Feb.!

In the afternoon Nurlan again helped us as he called a taxi for us and made sure the driver knew where the school was we wanted to visit. The DCU property is right next to a horse stable and one of the homes of Renat Aktmetov, a billionaire Mafia leader whom we’ve read about in the Wall Street Journal. Several people here said he blew up a hotel with his brother in it. No one can prove it, of course. Our taxi driver said he was an engineer for a company that Aktmetov demanded and got. He was still cheerful and animated in our attempts to communicate. He called his daughter at least 3 times to ask for some English word he couldn't come up with. We liked him, so we asked him to help us shop. He didn't charge us for shopping time, only for distance traveled. 1.5 hours for $11. Go figure!

Spent time correcting. I'm offering my students extra credit for coming up with names for our new kids, if they cleverly weave them into their assignments. So far we've seen:

Emilie, Emily. Emiliee
Kathleen, Cathleen, Kathlene
Espen, Champ, Boss
Владилена, Спартак, Горазд, Ипполита


Did they get extra credit?

No.

Ukrainian rules.