It's not wrong, it's just different

First you see something that is very very foreign to you and you don't understand it. Then you see more and more and more of that. Then your head starts to pound. Your heart starts to flutter like a cornered animal. Suffocation starts to set in. It gets to the point where your head starts to feel like it will explode. You start to contemplate all the ways you can escape the foreignness around you. Desperation takes over. And then you realize what's happening. Culture shock. To the extreme.

IT'S NOT WRONG, IT'S JUST DIFFERENT!!!!

That's my mantra. I learned it on DTS when I first experienced it rooming with people of other cultures. And I've repeated it many many times since then. These past few days have been full of repeating that phrase. Of course, that doesn't refer to some of the harmful things in place here - the way some orphanages are run, certain laws and mindsets that are harmful. But it does refer to some ways of doing things that are so foreign to me. Just because it's not the way we do it in America doesn't make it wrong. Wow, is that hard to get through my head. But I'm learning slowly. Maybe by the time I'm old and gray and have been a missionary for 50 years, I'll understand - It's not wrong, it's just different.

Dead people in the doorway

Yes, dead people in the doorway. We have some strange experiences here in Kiev, but the strangest happened the other day. It's been major subzero temperatures here in Ukraine these days (more about that later), so one morning, when Torben and I needed some bread, we went back and forth about who would go down to the store to get some. He lost, so he was off to Forshet. About 15 minutes later, he returned with a very strange look on his face. Here's the story.

He had gone down the elevator and out the door of our apartment building and there, lying about 5 feet from the doorway, was a coffin with a dead old lady in it! People were standing around the coffin holding pictures of her. We don't know how she died, but we heard from Viktor, one of the Ukrainians here, that she must have lived in our building and died the night before. I guess they do the whole coffin in the doorway thing as part of the Russian Orthodox tradition. So now, every time I go out of the doorway, I'm afraid of seeing dead people.

Now, speaking of the cold, you know it's cold when...

1) You step out of the door and your everything in your nose freezes
2) Your fingers and toes are numb with cold while you're sitting under a blanket in your apartment
3) The gas in the base van freezes
4) Everything in your fridge is frozen solid
5) There's a thick layer of ice on the windows of the buses
6) In a city of 3 million people, space heaters are completely sold out

With temperatures around (including windchill) - 21 Fahrenheit (around -28 Celsius), Kiev has been COOOOOOLD!!! Something like 27 people have died from the cold in Ukraine alone. Russia has numbers up in the 70s. Insanely cold. And not a space heater in sight. But finally, yesterday, Laura, one of the ladies here on the base, loaned us an extra space heater they had. So, we're fine here. Thankfully, it's going to get warmer here in the next week or so. Up to 20 F.

One last thing I want to tell you about, on a more serious note. I went to an orphan hospital last Friday with one of the ministries here. It was a truly heartbreaking experience. It's these babies who just lie in their cribs all day. Two of them had Down's Syndrome, so it's very doubtful someone will adopt them. The others mostly just had bad colds. But there was a lifelessness to their eyes, something I've seen before in the abandoned babies my parents fostered for a while. No one has ever loved them. They don't focus on your face when you hold them. And they cry and cry when you put them down. As I was holding them, I thought of the Bible reading we did in the 3 month Bible school I went to in Malaysia (SBSCC) and how many times God told his people to take care of widows and orphans. These sick little babies (and the millions around the world like them) were who he was talking about. It broke my heart to see them and to know that most of them will not ever be adopted. In Ukraine, a parent can abandon their baby, but still have rights to them, so the child cannot be adopted out. So, there are millions of babies without a hope of having a loving family. They have a very hard life ahead of them. It's so very very sad. I know that going there once a week and holding them for two hours isn't doing much, but if somehow they get the sense that someone cares, that Jesus loves them, it's something.

So, there's my life this past week in a nutshell for you. More adventures to come!

More adventures of daily life

SNOW!!

We're covered in snow here in Kiev. Lots and lots of it. They're not too big on plows here, so the roads are a mess. But it's okay. The world is white and that's always a good time.

CHEESE REBEL!!

For those of you who may not know, Torben is an anti-cheese fanatic, extremely orthodox. I have cooperated with this by not eating too much cheese during our time together, but I finally came to the end of my endurance. I missed cheese. So, one time as I wandered the aisles of Forshet, the grocery store in our building, I spotted a package of lovely cheese and promptly bought it. I was encountered with much persecution from my husband when I got back upstairs. Whines like "I thought you loved me" and "How can you do this to me" filled our little apartment, but after much struggle, I won! The cheese is hidden in a tupperware box in our fridge and I eat it on the sly, but I have my cheese!! Yummy!!

ENGLISH CLASS

And now, to the slightly more serious stuff. We joined a team that runs an English club in a local school yesterday. It was truly a great time. The teenagers (grades 10 and 11) know a lot of English, so it was discussion and correcting grammar and playing games. We played several of the games I learned in Danish classes that are good for practicing the language. It was truly a great time. But what I'm most excited about is that Amy (one of the other leaders, from Oregon) and I are going to start meeting with the girls at other times just to hang out and do girly things together. That way, we can actually make friends with them. We can possibly do different studies on being a woman and finding your identity and all of that. One reason I'm really looking forward to doing those studies is because of something I read the other day. There was a brochure for the family ministries that YWAM Kiev runs on a table here and Torben and I flipped through it to see what the ministry was all about. This brochure said some horrifying statistics about abortion in Ukraine. Abortion is the main form of birth control and on average, a woman has 8-12 abortions in her lifetime! 8 to 12 abortions, ON AVERAGE! All of those babies. A few Ukrainians were standing nearby and they confirmed what the brochure was saying, even mentioning a few friends and family members they knew had had abortions. So, if Amy and I can get to know these few girls from the English club and even just talk about love, relationships, sex, etc. in a godly way, it would be well worth it.
I'll wrap up for now. Today's Torben's birthday (!!!!) and we're planning on going out to celebrate at (where else) McDonalds! And then, we'll head into the city. See ya!

Borsch heaven!

We got to the internet cafe after a nice morning of church and lunch with some people we met there. And I finally got to have borsch again. What is that, you may ask? I'm glad you did. It's a delicious, DELICIOUS beet soup, a specialty of Ukraine. It looked a bit iffy to me the first time I saw it, but it's so so so so so good. I've missed it in my year away from Ukraine. Having it again was a great experience.

Torben and I rented an apartment here in Kiev! It was the third apartment we looked at on our first day here. While we were looking at it the first time, Torben decided to open a little door that leads out to a very old balcony type of thing that I'm not sure I trust. When he went to close the door again, he wasn't quite sure it was completely shut, so he leaned against it a bit to make sure. A very loud CRASH was heard and we all turned to see that, lo and behold, the window on the door had shattered completely! What an impression to make on our future landlord!!

But, we got the apartment anyways (the window's fixed now) and have spent the last three days doing some heavy duty cleaning. Torben spent two days scrubbing the toilet area. It's starting to look really really good, though. It's getting cozy for us and it's amazing to have a place of our very own. We've gone from my parents' house to Torben's parents' house to our friends' basement, so it's our first place! So exciting!!

Random story - The other day, we came to the Venetsia, the houseboat where the main base is located, and we met this missionary from Atlanta, GA named Jeff. He works with another organization. We started talking to him and soon discovered that he has 10 children! 10!! Two sets of twins under the age of 3! He has been a pretty successful businessman in Atlanta, then God called them to Ukraine, so they sold everything and here they are! Craziness! But cool.

On that note, I will close up this with a shoutout to my new friend, Inge. She's the only other Dane we have met in YWAM and she's been here in Kiev for 3 years. So Torben has someone to speak Danish with. Tonight, she bought pizza and invited Torben and I over to eat with her. A bunch of others joined us and it was a very hyggelig (cozy) time :) Yay, Inge!

The loooooooong journey

In Ukraine at last! After quite an eventful few days, we arrived in Kiev. Let's start at the beginning. We got up, loaded up the car, and were on the road by 7:30am on Saturday. Now, bear in mind that we have all of our luggage for a year or two's stay in Kiev plus Inger, Gunnar, Merete, Torben and I. Talk about squishy. When we got to the bus station an hour away, we couldn't find the bus stop. Finally, the Eurolines bus pulled in, we wished the family goodbye, and we were off. We travelled south and the more people that got on the bus, the more I noticed the subtle shift from hearing Danish all around me to hearing German. After 7 hours or so, we arrived in Berlin, Germany. COLD is the main adjective of our stay in Berlin. It was colder there than it has been in Kiev so far. COLD!!! But very interesting. We found our train station, put our baggage in storage, and went to explore the city. Cool thing - I had no idea Torben could speak so much German. He always says he only knows a bit, but there he was, carrying on conversations with people! Of course, I was completely lost, but I'm used to that feeling by now.
My one goal during the time in Berlin was to see where the Wall used to be. We went to Brandenburger Tor, this monument right next to the Parliament, where all of the celebration happened when the Wall fell, so we knew we were close. After asking four or five people, we found some bricks in the road that ran the whole length of where the Wall seperating East and West Germany had been. Such an amazing thing for a history fan like me to see.
And now, the fun stuff. The train. We boarded the train at 9:45 pm on Saturday and were immediately pushed into Eastern Europe, back to the place where NOBODY speaks a word of English, but they are very content to keep speaking Russian to you, even when they know you can't understand. At least the word for passport is the same in English and Russian. And at least they couldn't question us when we came to the Ukrainian border 20 hours later. Yes, I said 20. A total of 25 hours in the very Soviet Union style train, bringing the grand total of travel time to 40 hours Herning to Kiev. Craziness. I'm still tired.
A few random stories - my mother called about 15 hours into the journey to tell us that my sister Dana had her baby. Olly Michael is my newest little nephew. I've heard he's very cute and very tiny. I can't wait to see pictures. Another story - it turned out that the restaurant in the train was closed, so we lived on chips and candy for 25 hours...believe me, we were HUNGRY by the time we got here.
So that was our insanely long journey. I have more stories to tell - bearded Russian ladies and Torben breaking windows - but those will have to wait for another time. Vi ses!!

My first words in cyberspace

I've finally joined the world of blogs! Yes, maybe a long time after everyone else, but still...I'll start out with some randomness from today. This was the last day that the Christmas tree was up in the Riis Jensen household, where Torben and I are staying for just one more day before leaving for Ukraine. On the Christmas tree, they have real candles lit, giving the room a nice glow when it's dark out. When they lit the candles the first time around Christmas Eve, I was sure the tree would catch fire, but it didn't. Tonight's bit of randomness is that we gave the candles one last lighting as we ate cake for Torben's pre-birthday party. As they burned down, we each picked a candle that we bet would be the last to burn out. The evening wore on, and soon we were all gathered around the tree, anxiously staring at our candles, hoping that our choice had been correct. Gunnar's candle was the first to die, followed shortly by Inger's. Then, my hope bit the dust as my little candle died. It was down to Merete and Torben. The air was tense as we studied the two remaining candles. Who would survive? Who would be the reigning candle champion? It looked for a moment like Torben's was about to disappear, then it made a powerful comeback, not to be outdone by the little sister's candle. Sure enough, Merete was defeated and my husband was dubbed the champion of candle picking. I believe that story was worthy of my first blog ever :)