From Flip-flops to Heels

I arrived in Kremenchuk a week ago today from Kiev, and it’s not been an overwhelming week, but it has been full. This photo is the view from the apartment where I am staying with Jayne, my host and mentor for the summer. If you look just beyond the line of trees, you can see the Dnieper River.

Last Thursday and Friday I had the opportunity to spend some time with Jayne and her Christian Education class at Kremenchuk Regional Bible College. On Thursday, they did a craft day in their class, to try to give the students some simple ways to incorporate crafts into their lessons. We made sand art, except we used salt. One of the photos is of me participating in the craft time.

The other photos are from the picnic we took with the students on Friday evening. We went to the Dnieper River and cooked dinner over the fire and just talked with each other a lot (well, I listened a lot). We did foil dinners, shish-ka-bobbed meat, and s’mores. The students had not had s’mores before, so it was fun to introduce them and watch them have fun roasting the marshmallows. The photo is of one of the most exciting moments of the picnic, when the cruise ship that goes up the Dnieper came past our picnic spot. Everyone was so excited, so they had me take a group photo. It was kinda funny to see the huge cruise ship in the same river with tiny fishing and motor boats.

On Sunday, I had the opportunity to visit all three services that meet in the same church building. The morning service is the mother church that has been focused on church planting to meet the needs of their community. The two other services of the day are actually daughter churches that are meeting in the same building for the time being. One afternoon congregation is reaching out to the younger generation with a more contemporary service. The second one is a congregation made up mostly of recent converts, many of whom are from drug and alcohol backgrounds. It was a long day but it was a blessing.

Other than that, my other big activity of the week has been guliating (goo-lee-ot-ing), which is a wonderful Russian word which means to meander, to take your time walking around, it’s kinda a Russian thing. It means that I’ve been walking around the city, just to see what’s there, and to watch people. I’ve seen some interesting places in the downtown area and I’ve enjoyed walking along the “Riverwalk” of the Dnieper (it’s a little different from the San Antonio version). During my guliating excursions, I’ve tried to blend in a little more with the other people on the street, so I’ve begun wearing my sandals with a heel on them instead of my flip-flops. I still end up looking like a Westerner, but hopefully a little more Ukrainian.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to. I’ll add more photos later.

Privyet Kremenchuk

Well, I made it to Kremenchuk without any issues on Wednesday of this week. It was a four and a half hour train ride and though I'm sure there were interesting things to see on the way down, my seat did not allow me a view of...well...anything! So I read and people watched--they also had movies going the whole time we were traveling, but they didn't seem that interesting, so I didn't watch them. I arrived a little before 9:00 and was super tired (it's amazing how exhausted you get sitting and doing nothing).

Today I had both a tour of the Bible college and the city of Kremenchuk. It is much smaller here than in Kiev, about 25,000 people live here. However, from what I saw today, I think that I will enjoy being here. I am staying with the woman who will be mentoring me for my internship requirements and I will probably be with her for about two weeks while I acclimate to living here. After that, I'll probably be living somewhere else for the last 6 weeks or so. This city still has their hot water shut off, so we are hoping that it is turned back on again really soon. Doing dishes and taking showers is a little interesting without hot, running water.

I'm posting a few photos, but these are still all from Kiev. I'll have some from Kremenchuk soon.

Adventuring in Kiev!

Well, I’ve been in Kiev, Ukraine for over a week now, and I am enjoying myself immensely! This is a city that is full of history and excitement, and I’ve had the opportunity to see a lot of it this first week. These first two weeks were dedicated to my adjusting to the language and culture (and time zone, apparently) and to give me an idea of what the ministry looks like if Kiev.


I’ve had the privilege of taking multiple trips downtown Kiev to see the important sights to the history of this city and these people. I have seen many monuments and statues honoring the people who built and defended the Ukrainian people. Some of the most amazing sights have been the churches of this city—they are remarkable. The religious structures, such as St. Michael’s Monastery, St. Andrew’s Church, and the Lavra, have been some of my favorite stops.

However, I’ve also enjoyed seeing some of the buildings of the arts, such as the National Philharmonic and the Opera House; we’ve also visited some important squares, such as the Contract Square and Independence Square; and other points of Ukrainian culture, such as the main street, Khreschatyk, the Presidential Palace, the Dnieper River and Lobanovsky Dynamo Stadium (futbol). Below, I’ve posted a few pictures of the places I’ve visited this last week.

Other than learning about the history of this culture, I have been concentrating on trying to learn more of the Russian language. I studied the language in college, but it is very different to use the language outside of the classroom. I have been blessed with a wonderful Russian teacher who spent four days in classes with me this week, and will conclude my lessons next week, right before I travel down to Kremenchuk.

So far, my trip has been a huge encouragement and a wonderful learning experience. I trust that in the weeks to come, I will learn even more about the culture and the language as I have more opportunities to work with the wonderful Ukrainian people. I can’t wait to see all the new and exciting places at my next location and I’m equally anticipating my time in the English camps. But, more on that later…

Hi from Ukraine!

I made it! I arrived in Kiev, Ukraine (the capital) on Thursday morning after a very uneventful trip and so far, I am loving Ukraine. It is a beautiful, very green country. As we flew across Europe from the north on our way in, there were some beautiful views of the countryside with lots of green. However, once we got over Ukraine, the shade of green deepened dramatically and it looked more lush and fresh.

By the way, there are two correct spellings of Kiev: this one is the English equivalent of the Russian spelling/pronunciation; and Kyiv is the way we translated the spelling from the Ukrainian usage. Those natives and missionaries with a stronger background in either one language or the other will tend to use one spelling over the other, and I’ve had people from both sides corresponding with me, so you’ve probably seen me use both. I’m working to find the most common one and stick with it, but many times I use the other spelling without realizing it.

I’ve had a few experiences in the city so far. The day I flew in, I experienced a Ukrainian chain grocery store with the missionaries who collected me from the airport; it was very interesting. They had many things that looked familiar, including U.S. brands and products; but other things were very unfamiliar. We picked up some things for our lunch then rode the bus back to the apartment where I am staying. Later that day, the missionary with whom I am staying took me to the little market across the street from the apartment. We found some things that looked good for dinner and then headed back to have a relaxing evening.

The next day (Friday…I’m a little confused on days still) I managed to find my way to the Kiev Theological Seminary where my host works as one of the teachers. I had a tour of the building, a brief history lesson, was allowed to sit in on a class, and enjoyed lunch in their cafeteria.

My biggest challenge has been sleeping at the right time. I’m either sleeping when I need to stay awake, or I wake up at 2:30 in the morning and can’t convince my body that more slumber is necessary. This is not usually a problem for me, so either it’s this specific time difference, or my body is just really out of sync for another reason (age? Yuck!) Anyway, this is going to have to stop really soon, since everyone knows how much I love being up before the sun…yeah.

We have some plans for the weekend before I begin language school at the beginning of next week. As I’ve been reviewing, I am lamenting not having more consistent usage of the language over the last year and I am now defaulting to Spanish and not Russian words. Let’s see what happens when I reply to my Russian professor next week with “No es claro…repite por favor”.

And so the adventure continues…

Where’s Emily Now?

(This post was intended for Sunday, May 31, but something happened, so here it is, late but here.)

The answer to that question is quite complex…and very exciting, if I do say so myself.

Maybe I should start with where Emily has been recently…

The first full week of May, I finished up my second semester at Moody Bible Institute. It was an intense ending to an already very full semester, so as much as I loved my classes, I was glad for the academic part to be on break. I still had one more week on campus before I left Chicago for the summer; this week was full of cramming in all the activities we’d been too busy to do during the semester, some tearful goodbyes and of course—work. Oh, and the one thing I forgot to mention because it didn’t get done until the very end of the week was packing! Who wants to participate in depressing packing when there is so much fun to be had? So most of my packing was saved until the end of the week, and how wonderful to have that pressure on me when unbenouncedto me, I was getting a lovely case of the flu.

My last night in my apartment (and the official packing hurricane day), one of my good friends from Indiana braved the disaster area and stayed the night with me. It was really fun to see her, but she had no idea that she had signed up to stay in the jungle for the night. It took very creative choreography to move anywhere in the apartment that day, but she was such a good sport. Though she had graduated in December, she got to walk the next day…congrats, sweet friend!

After my moving escapade, I went to my parents’ home in Northern Indiana to enjoy a little TLC as I was mothered and nursed back to a state of semi-health. Once I began to feel myself again, I headed down to San Antonio to see some very special people. My grandparents still live there, and my grandmother was retiring from her job, so I was invited to come down for the festivities. I went a little early so that I could see some of my wonderful friends that had been such a wonderful part of my life for the five years I had there before coming to Moody. I had not seen them since last August, so my dilemma was so many people and so few hours!

I tried to connect with people at both of my former workplaces and had the opportunity to see some of my friends from church on Sunday. I also was blessed to have a friend from out of town come down to see San Antonio and Texas for the first time. We taught together last summer in China and it was fun to play tourist and see all the exciting places in Downtown SA. We also made it to my favorite restaurant twice for my favorite tortillas and queso…ah, life was good. My grandmother’s party went very well with more exciting reunions and lots of memories to recall, along with amazing food. A large portion of my mom’s side of the family was there for the party, and it was wonderful to spend some time with them. The trip was really too short, but we had other plans that needed attention back in Indiana.

The day after the party, my parents and I (along with an uncle and aunt) took the ungodly 5:30am flight out of San Antonio to get back up to Indiana. The next three days were a whirlwind of planning and preparing things for my brother’s graduation ceremony on Friday and his open house on Saturday. A change of plans caused us to move the time of the party from Saturday afternoon to evening, and God worked in amazing ways to get all that taken care of. We had a wonderful turnout and my very social graduate brother seemed very pleased (so did the graduate parents, which is equally important).

My job was to get the photos of Caleb’s life ready for everyone to see, which was no easy task. The child went through a phase in life (long phase) when he was stop what he was doing and say, “Mom, I’m being cute, take me picture!” And how can you resist that, since usually what he was doing was pretty darn cute? Not only that, but he has played baseball, soccer and basketball since he was very little, so he has so many sports pictures, it’s not even funny. So we sorted through hundreds of photos to find the most memorable and adorable Leb Moments to share with the masses. We ended up doing a photo album with all of his sports pictures in it, and then a display board with all the other photos, with family, friends, and random pictures of Caleb’s craziness. It was a blast.

So finally, after all that has been done (and I’m exhausted) it’s not time to pack and finish preparations for my trip to Ukraine—we are at T-3 days! I’m very not ready, but finally I can focus on being excited! I need to see a few more people before I leave, and I’ll need to do some serious rechecking to make sure that I’m not forgetting anything. It’s very strange for me not to be 90% packed a week before I leave for a trip…yes, I’ve been told that I’m unusual before. But that’s on the task list for now.

So, where is Emily? Currently, in Northern Indiana…but not for long…