The week has
gone by very quickly. A typical day has
been to arrive at the office at 9:00 AM.
We spend an hour with Oksana, our manager, planning the activities for
the upcoming visit with the Ambassador on October 12. We decide on a list of everything that needs
to be accomplished that day. Then Mary
and I have to sit back and watch Oksana become the proverbial one-armed paper
hangar as she works on our to-do list.
She makes and receives endless phone calls, emails, and personal
visits. We hear her speaking in
Russian. Sometimes she will end a phone
call, smile and tell us in English “Okay that has been arranged”. We have no idea what has just been arranged
but are glad that progress is being made. Part of our stress comes from the fact that we
cannot get a direct sense of what is happening as all communication around us
is happening in Russian. We do know that
Oksana is making progress on many fronts.
This week we got the design of a banner inviting the town of Molochansk
to come celebrate our 15th anniversary.
Last Sunday
afternoon, Mary and I took a drive south about 30 km to a place where there are
some natural springs bubbling up from the hillside. We find this is a place we can go to relax. We take along some chairs from our apartment
and like to sit there and read and watch the locals as they come through the
area. The local people probably come to
look at 2 strange foreigners, sitting on out of the place chairs, reading their
books.
Soon after
we arrived, a group of 30 children came through, each carrying containers for
water. They had come to fill their
bottles with fresh water from the springs.
One of the adults supervising them guessed that we were from the
“Mennonitesky Centrum”. We understood from
her that they had come all the way from Tokmak - a good 50 km drive.
Couples
frequently come to this location to take their wedding pictures. A wedding party arrived soon after we
did. The groom and his best man wandered
off to drink a beer and have a smoke. The
bride stood in front of the main pool and spent her time talking on her cell
phone while her maid of honour glared at me as I tried to sneak a picture. Not sure why they came as no photographer ever
showed up for them.
As you can
see in the picture with the children filling water containers, there are a
number of religious icons on the grounds.
Some people come to meditate and it is a special place for them. We observed one young lady spending time in
front of each icon. She then came to the
pool you can see in the picture with the bride.
She entered the pool in street clothes, and commenced to fully immerse
herself in the water. Each time she came
to the surface she would cross herself with the Orthodox cross – that is top to
bottom and right to left. It was a
special moment for her and it would have been totally inappropriate for me to intrude
by taking a picture.
We operate weekly
medical clinics in the Mennonite Centre.
Doctors come once a week to
provide specialist services that are not readily available in our town. People make appointments with our
receptionist for these visits. The
Mennonite Centre pays the cost of this service and anybody is welcome to use
them. The other day an elderly lady came
to make an appointment. Her husband had
brought her on a rather special type of vehicle. I followed her out when she left and got
permission to take a picture. It truly
was a “5 star” mode of transportation.
It was a scooter converted into a pickup truck. I would love to borrow it next time I take
Mary out for dinner.
One morning
we had a school class come to the Mennonite Centre. They have been working on a special project
of mailing ‘Doves of Peace” to children around the world. The Mennonite Centre paid for the postage and
as a thank you, the whole class came to get their picture taken in front of our
building. The children are holding the
doves with messages of peace as well as the addressed envelopes in which they
will be mailed.
Friday we
drove to Zaporozhye to pick up Ben (our FOMCU board chair) and Lil Stobbe who
have come to participate in our October 12 meeting with the Ambassador. We also heard a concert from the Men’s Faith
and Life choir, on tour from Manitoba, as they performed at a music school in Zaporozhye. There was a good size audience for the
afternoon performance. The audience
really liked the songs that had a strong harmony and showed it by their loud
applause. People in the audience started
to smile when the choir sang a song in Russian.
Occasionally the smiles grew a bit stronger and people would look questioningly
at their neighbours. I assume this
occurred when they heard the pronunciation of a Russian word that was a bit
foreign to them. It was a great concert
and the audience gave them an enthusiastic standing ovation.
Next week we
have the “big” event at the Mennonite Centre with the visit from Roman Waschuk,
the Ambassador of Canada to Ukraine, and Senators’ Peter Harder and Don
Plett. Will keep you posted.
If you wish
to know more about the work of the Mennonite Centre, you can check out our web
site at: http://www.mennonitecentre.ca/
or follow our daily activities on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/Mennonite-Centre-Ukraine-735361069838076/
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