Monday (The routine)


What can I say: pray, prepare, pray, practice, pray, preach, pray.

This is probably a good point to tell you more about my hosts in Dubno. I am staying with the pastor of the Dubno church, Gennady, and his wife Looda. They have two grown children who have left home and I think they are enjoying having a son and daughter to take care of again. They are taking excellent care of both Natasha and I and we are very blessed. Gennady worked for many years in business as a manager in a large corporation before he was called to the ministry. He has been a pastor for five years but has only been at Dubno for one month! Looda worked for over 20 years at a hotel and she is an excellent cook! They are both extremely dedicated people and the Lord is working through them.

I’ve also been learning more about Natasha. She was born in Russia although she has Asian heritage and knows English, Ukranian, Russian, and an Arabic dialect that I will not even try to name. She works part-time cleaning homes in Kiev and is also going to university part-time working on philology (the study of languages, English, and Ukranian literature). Before becoming an Adventist and meeting her husband, Vladimir, she lived in Russia where she had completed a five-year degree in chemical engineering and worked at a large oil-processing facility. She and her husband have been married for six years and do not have any children, yet. In her youth she lived close to the Chechnya border and her town was once raided by terrorists who took over the local hospital and shot up the center of town with automatic weapons. Within a short time tanks and soldiers rolled in and the sky was dark with Russian aircraft responding to the attack and they could not leave their homes for three days.