This has
been a varied week at the Mennonite Centre and I would like to touch on a
number of situations that we encountered.
It is also a wrap up for our trip as we leave for home this coming
Friday.
Last Tuesday
we were invited to the home of Anatoli and Raisa for afternoon tea. They are an elderly couple that have warmly
welcomed all North American directors to Molochansk. Anatoli
and Raisa are an interesting anomaly.
They know all the programs we have at the Mennonite Centre (free doctors’
visits, eye glasses, seniors’ lunches and individual assistance) but have never
come over to use any of them. When we
pass their house on the way to the Mennonite Centre, Anatoli would often
present Mary with flowers from his garden and then kiss her hand. He is a charmer and knows it.
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| Mary and Anatoli back in Spring of 2014 |
Anatoli was
born in Molochansk in December 1927. My
mother was still living there when he was born and I feel like we are almost
related. I love asking him questions
about history. He is very hard of
hearing and one is never sure what question he is answering. The good part is that every time I ask the
same question, he goes off on a different tangent and so I can glean some new
information. I know that his grandfather
was a coachman for a wealthy Mennonite family (Franz and Schroeder) in
Halbstadt before the revolution. Anatoli
is very proud of this fact. He was too
young to be involved in active combat during the war but remembers the terrible
destruction experienced by Halbstadt in 1943 as the German army was being
pushed west. He also remembers the famine
that swept the area in 1947 as a result of the disruption caused by the war. As a young teenager he remembers running
through the tunnel connecting the Mennonite Credit Union to the Boys’ School
(Central Schule). He described the
tunnel as being 4-5 feet wide with brick walls and an arched brick ceiling.
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| Alvin, Anatoli, Raisa, and Mary |
We had been
invited for tea, but Raisa had made a batch of cottage cheese varenecki. She insisted that we eat all of them before
we were allowed to leave. They were
delicious.
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| Oksana and Mary with Dish of Varenecki |
This week we
also visited the home of Victor Goncharov in Tokak. He came to us several weeks ago because he
needed assistance paying for hip surgery.
When I first saw him, I judged him to be several years older than I
imagine I look. In fact he is 10 years
younger. Life has been hard. He used to have his own taxi service but can
no longer work because of the pain in his hip.
The doctors have told him that the locally made artificial hips will not
fit him and he needs an expensive American made hip. The total cost of the hip and the surgery is
$5000 Cdn ($4000 US). Victor has had a life-long passion for raising fancy
pigeons. At one time he could have sold
some of the pigeons and raised the money, but the market in Ukraine has
collapsed and he does not have the connections or ability to sell into foreign
markets. His last question for me was,
“Is there hope of getting some help from the Mennonite Centre?” We cannot provide all of the help for his
surgery, but if you wish to assist Victor, please go to: http://www.mennonitecentre.ca/Fundraising.html
and make a donation.
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| Victor at the Mennonite Centre |
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| Victor's Prized Pigeons |
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| Victor and his Trophies for Pigeons |
We have all
heard the expression, when in Rome do as the Romans do. Last Sunday Mary and I decided to apply this
locally and said, “When in Ukraine let’s go worship in a Ukrainian Greek
Catholic Church”. We did not warn them
we were coming and hoped that we would not make some inappropriate mistake that
would disrupt their worship service. We
had met their priest, Father Taras, at our event at the Mennonite Centre on
October 12. He had previously given us a
tour of their new church the congregation had built in Tokmak and where the
Mennonite Centre had provided some assistance in paying for the doors. Father Taras was delighted to see us and gave
a public welcome to the people in the congregation from Canada. It is interesting to judge a worship service
when you cannot understand a single word being said. There are many ways of judging a
service. One way is to judge it by looking
at how engaged the worshippers are in the actual service. I thought they were all engaged. There was not a single person looking down at
the cell phone to check on messages. We see
this frequently in the local Mennonite church where young people spend a lot of
time on their phones as the minister goes on with his hour long sermon.
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| Father Taras in Front of Door for Confessional |
The service
in the Greek Orthodox Church lasted for 90 minutes. We had to stand most of the time. This is definitely not something that we are
used to. At the end we were presented
with the gift of a small doll made by local children. These are traditionally presented to soldiers
being called up to serve or for visiting dignitaries. We were given a very warm invitation to come
back again.
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| Special Gift |
The
Mennonite Centre provides free lunches to the seniors in our town 3 times a
week. This meal is prepared by our staff
under the directions of Ira, our cook.
We don’t usually have a program or speaker for the group, so last Friday
we were surprised to hear Ira reading something to the assembled seniors. Oksana, our manager, explained to us that Ira
sometimes does this to mark someone’s birthday or some other special
event. She was reading a poem to the
assembled. After she finished reading,
she looked at one lady and asked her to prepare a poem to be read at the next
gathering. This lady was surprised by
the request and asked why she had to do this.
Ira told her that it would be a good lesson as she could then experience
the frustration of reading to the assembled while someone in the group was
talking and not paying attention. Thus
endeth another blunt lesson in Ukraine.
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| Ira and Staff Preparing Seniors Lunch |
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| Mary Serving Seniors Lunch |
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