T.E.A.M. Ukraine is a ministry of the Evangelical Free Church of Canada Mission

Since our last post, we have been into the city of Dnipro often. On Saturday, December 22, there was an event at Nellie's church where they hosted a youth/young adult event that focused on how we live out our lives as Christians in the work place. The main speaker for the night talked about being who we say we are, whether or not the choices that go with that are easy to make or not, even if it costs us our job. Lots of good thoughts for all of us to think about. I was a little nervous about the ride home as it was raining, but it stayed above freezing thankfully.  Youth speaker On Sunday, we were back into Dnipro for church. After church, we went out to Puzata Hata for lunch where they serve some very good Ukrainian food. We all enjoyed our meal. When we got home, we walked out to the dairy barn to get some milk. Scott has never been a big milk drinker, unless it comes in the form of ice cream, and then his appetite for milk dramatically increases. Shannon was ra...

I mentioned in our last blog that we had purchased a car. We knew that living in rural Ukraine that this would need to happen. We are so thankful for Max Rudei, who has been working with Garry and Teresa since they arrived in Ukraine. Max has been trying to find us a good solid car and at a reasonable price. We ended up purchasing a 2015 Geely MK. It is a Chinese car that is fairly popular in Ukraine. They are a pretty plain car and that is okay with us. We had looked at other cars and they were older and more expensive. This one was about $2000 US less than older ones we had looked at. This one has just over 14,000 kms on it and looks to be in great shape. Thank you Max! We are waiting until we get some insurance on it before we take it on the road. We have attached some pictures.  2015 Geely MK Shannon continues to sew curtains for our home. The curtains in the bedroom are now done and we just need some screws to hold the rods in place. Shan...

  This past week we continued to do more work in the house and both closets are completed and in use! With our bedroom closet finished, we have now emptied all but one suitcase and the rest are under the bed. Yea! Now it looks like we are staying with the suitcases out of sight. From Saturday evening to later on Monday afternoon, our WiFi was down. I thought maybe my money had run out, so I went to the village store to put money on the account, but when I got home, we still didn't have any WiFi. Max stopped by shortly after to say that it was down throughout the village and now my account is good for 2-3 months. Nellie has been over a couple of times to help us with the Russian language. It is amazing how challenging it is. We came across a Russian speaker on the internet and he shares the alphabet very slowly and it helps to get the proper accent and sound of each letter. He says that Priority #1 is learning the alphabet as well as we know our own, so tha...

We have now been in Ukraine for three weeks and this past week has been busy doing a number of different things, some of them rather messy (for Scott). On Monday, Scott spent 2 1/2 hours in the attic putting spray foam insulation in the peak to keep out the snow. He got the sticky stuff all over his gloves, on his clothes and in his hair!! I was able to get some of it out using olive oil, but most of it I had to cut out.  The beginning of the spray foam job Now the snow will not get in, at least not here!        We drove out to the barn to pick up some wood to begin our closet projects. The boards were way to long to go in the van, so Scott had to use a hand saw and cut them down. It was almost dark, so it was interesting! Later in the week we went to Dnipro all by ourselves to do some shopping! Victor met us as Nova Lenia (a big hardware & houseware store) to help us get a discount card. We discovered that they ...

Today marks two weeks in Ukraine! Much has been happening, although it doesn't look like it sometimes. We continue the cleaning and setting up phase of settling into our new home. We can find most things fairly quickly, but there are still many items in suitcases, waiting for their storage spots to be constructed. We've been checking on shelving options in Dnepro and hope to make our purchases on Friday. The store we were in, Epi Center, makes Home Depot look small! We have been working on Russian language studies at home using Duolingo. Our daughter-in-law, Hannah, talked us through (on a WhatsApp video call) adding a Russian keyboard to our tablet and now we can type the answers to some questions in Russian (and get them right!). On Thursday Victor gave us a pint of cream (yummy!) and some cottage cheese, which Scott actually ate. More than once!! It's the dry curds, so he finds it more appetizing than the cottage cheese we get in Canada. We are discovering all sort...