Happy Thanksgiving!

Having spent Thanksgiving in a foreign country I have been given some insights on our holidays. The first and most obvious insight is that holidays are purely cultural, and once removed from that native culture, the holiday is lost. Thanksgiving was difficult for me this year simply because the world around me was not celebrating. That is not to say that we did not have a Thanksgiving Day feast, because we had a very large one. Second, I have realized that to me, it isn’t about the holiday. A holiday is just a date that our government, or a group of people have decided to celebrate something. What makes a holiday for me is the time spent with family. So according to this any day may be a holiday, as long as there is a large gathering of family and of course a lot of food.

Prayer Requests & Praises

• It is a praise that the humanitarian aid container arrived here after many days of negotiation and paperwork, and has been successfully unloaded. It now just awaits a customs inspection.
• Continue to pray for our conversation class, as we are building relationships with people, that we might be able to show them Christ through those relationships.
• Pray for the church here in Berdyansk, as they are having struggles with interpersonal politics. Pray that differences would be able to be resolved, that reconciliation would be an ongoing practice and that Christ would be glorified through it all.
• Pray that God would go before us and that He would make a path for further ministry opportunities here.
• For me, I would just ask that you would continue to pray against the distractions of homesickness. That my mind would just be here in Ukraine, and not back home. Also, that I would be able to find my niche here, and that I would be able to make deep and lasting friendships with the people around me.

Observations on Ukrainian Culture

Now for what you all have been waiting for....(drum roll please)

Here in Ukraine, men always greet one another with a shake of the hand, even if you are mildly acquainted with the person. This leads me to believe that if you were acquainted with many people in a small town, you would have to allow extra time to travel to wherever it was that you are going.

Women should not whistle, as it is a sign of a loose woman, or worse-prostitution. This I did not know until whistling in public and getting strange looks from people. I can only imagine what they were thinking… “With those comfortable fitting jeans and those two sweaters on, she doesn’t look like a prostitute, but then again she is whistling.” They must have had trouble wrapping their brains around it!

I read that chewing gum is considered crass behavior. Apparently this news hasn’t come to the people of Ukraine, because you can purchase numerous varieties of it at every store imaginable. The chewing gum market is most definitely not suffering here.

The most interesting cultural differences are the smallest ones, the things that you would never think of. For instance, one would not usually ask “How does one peel a banana here?” or “With what utensil do you eat your cake?” These aren’t things that you think of asking. We have discovered here that Ukrainians peel a banana from the ‘bottom’ up, towards the stem, so as to use the stem as a handle for eating the banana. Ukrainians also eat cake with a spoon, to them it is the strangest thing that we eat our cake using a fork!

NEVER wish someone “Happy Birthday!” until the day of their birthday, or after the fact. Doing so will cause the person whose birthday it is to have an early death. So if you really wish someone to die, wish them a happy birthday when their birthday isn’t for another two months!

God the Father and the Ukrainian Perspective

Fathers often aren’t present in families, if they are present, they do not play an active role. Care of children is left up to the mother and to her mother. Reading one young boy’s information on a questionnaire, he listed his family as his mother, grandmother and sister, the father was nonexistent. This causes me to wonder about how Ukrainians accept the concept of God the Father, when with “father” they equate drunkenness, abandonment, adultery, etc. Most women in the church have spouses that are not Christian, and that sometimes may be alcoholic and abusive. Their faith constantly amazes me. Domestic life in Ukraine causes me to realize what a jewel it is when there is an intact family, when all members of the family are present at church, when the children have both parents actively participating in their upbringing. I pray that in time, this would become the social norm, that the society would be restored from its broken state.

Sloppy Joes, Apple Pie, Tom Hanks & Meg Ryan

While Ernie & Anna, the missionaries that we are living with, were away on vacation, Shushan and I were basking in all of our new found freedom! On Friday October 27th, Shushan and I were able to have our first American movie night with our conversation group. Boy was it entertaining! It began at six o’clock with a traditional American dinner of sloppy joe’s, jo-jo’s (AKA “Potato Wedges” if you are from Indiana), salad, and apple pie for dessert. After dinner we watched the classic Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan flick, Sleepless in Seattle. I know what you are probably thinking… “Were there guys at this event?” To answer this question, yes there were. In our defense, we gave them a choice between Sleepless in Seattle and The Rookie, a baseball movie with Dennis Quaid. At the first mention that The Rookie was about baseball, even the men immediately chose Sleepless in Seattle. Sorry baseball fans, you probably will not find many peers here in Ukraine!