Puppet Show Extravaganza

This coming Saturday our church is finally going to do the Christmas Puppet Show Extravaganza that we have been planning since. . . August of last year.

We had a slight hiccup in our timing as the Samaritan's Purse Christmas presents didn't arrive until last week forcing a postponement of the event. Better late than never is what most people say, but I'm not too sure how that relates to Christmas events. We'll see.

Saturday morning will be the first show for around 75 kids from poorer households in Kagarlyk and Rzhyshchiv as well as orphanages in the area. Sunday afternoon we'll have the second show for about 75 more kids from Kagarlyk and some of the surrounding villages. We got less than half of the presents we asked for, so we are only doing two shows instead of the 4 or 5 we planned before.

I'm in charge of the soundtrack for the puppet show and I'll be playing guitar for some fun children's songs. Liese is helping out baking cakes for dessert for the kids. Should be a busy weekend.

Here are some pictures I took last night during "dress rehearsal", I'll try to put up more picts on Sunday or Monday.

Evening for Senior Citizens

Wednesday night was our church's monthly evening for senior citizens. We had a good turnout with a few new people. Liese helped in the kitchen making a Ukrainian potato and meat dish and one of the ladies in our church made 16 plates of shuba (if you have never had shuba then I won't even try to describe it because it would be a blog post in and of itself – but I wills say that it is the bright purple stuff on the plates in the pictures below).


Last time we asked people to bring pictures of their childhood to share with eveyone. We scanned the pictures people brought and projected them on the wall for everyone to see. Photos are a big part of Ukrainian culture, everyone loves to show and look at pictures.

Sleep is important

Liese and I were listening to a message that D.A. Carson gave at Mars Hill church during "A Day With Dr. Don"(you can find it at theresurgence.com). About halfway through the message Carson said something that will stick with me forever:

"Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is get a good night's sleep".

Boundless on Subversive Virginity

I've been reading articles on Boundless.org lately. I'm continually impressed by not only the insight into the data but the rigor of the writing.

Check out this article by Sarah E. Hinlicky.

Snow makes everything more cheery

February in the Foote family is considered the most depressing of all months. There is something innately dreary about the month and that is why the shorten it to 28 days most years.

This week it seemed like February would continue its tradition of dreariness as the wind picked up, the temperature dropped below freezing, and everything was grey and frozen. See picture below, taken day before yesterday.


Then, yesterday it snowed 10 inches. Just when you think February can't get any worse it goes and does something like this - and totally redeems itself.
No more dreary gray, no more trash everywhere, just white clean snow. And it looks like it is going to keep snowing.

Nothing stops the mail

The postal system actually does work in Ukraine, despite what some skeptics say. For example, about a week ago we got this in the mail:

It was a piece of mail we sent out quite some time ago and got returned due to the person we sent it to having moved (I censored their name for security reasons, even though they don't live there anymore, which is why it was returned). While I was trying to remember when we sent it Liese looked at the postmark. Here is a blown up picture of the postmark:

That is the 6th of November, 2006! This was sent, made its way out of Ukraine, through the US postal system, back into Ukraine, and finally 2.2 years later made its way back to the return address. I was impressed. Not as impressed as by the fact that Yuri Gagarin made it back safe, but still impressed. It gave me hope that a package from Liese's sister (sent a 1.2 years ago) might still get here.

Tech Support in Ukraine

I know what most of you are thinking after reading that title: here comes another comparison of "the west" to "how things work in Ukraine." Sorry to disappoint you. And don't worry that is my last use of short phrases in quotes.

A couple days ago I was reading the Avila's blog about annoying automated phone services at utility companies. I wondered if there were anything like that in Ukraine as I usually have to go to the utility company and fill out paper work. That's about as far as my thoughts went until a couple hours later our internet went dead. No big deal, it usually comes back on in a few hours. Usually.

That evening with it still off I called a friend who, because he has a friend at the phone company, might know what I should do. This friend said to call the 800 number (yeah, Ukraine has toll free numbers that start with 800...who knew?) for the telephone company's tech support.

I'd never called tech support before. That was always the last resort and I usually found someone else to do it if it really needed to be done. But I thought I'd give it a shot as I wanted to have internet access.

I dialed the number and as the automated voice on the other end started spitting out sentences in Ukrainian faster than I could keep up I thought maybe this was a mistake. Then, as I waited to see what would happen if I did nothing, another voice came on to say that if I wanted Russian language to press 2. I pressed it as fast as I could. Then the voice came back with a list of options that I wasn't sure about. So I waited and the voice repeated them, which was very polite of it. I chose what I thought was the option I needed and was told there were no free operators but I could wait. I chose to wait only to be told 3 seconds later that the line for operators was more than 15 minutes long and they abruptly hung up. I laughed. And tried back in 15 minutes. Same routine.

15 minutes later...same. 15 minutes later I thought I'd spice things up and press 1 for Ukrainian language instead of Russian and see what happened. Turns out I understood the Ukrainian just as well as the Russian and this time the wait for operators was only 30 seconds – at least that is what the recording said, I didn't time it because some guy picked up and tried to help me. He was nice and told me to reset my modem (why didn't I think of that, oh wait I did) which I did and then he said to wait and it would all be find. Click. I guess that was that.

Nope. Still no internet. So I called back. But this time I was wise to their game and pressed 1 for Ukrainian language while feeling sorry for all those Russian speakers on hold. A nice operator answered (in Russian) and helped me for an hour to figure out why my modem wasn't showing up on their grid. Yes, an hour. He was the nicest tech support guy I've ever talked to. Right before we got everything working our conversation got cut off so I didn't get to thank him for being patient (he'd never helped someone with Mac OS) and helpful.

After reflecting on the experience I wondered if I was right and the Russian speakers just get put on hold while the Ukrainian speakers get to talk to operators, or if the operators were really not busy. Then I wondered if that ever happens in America if someone opts for Spanish when they call tech support, or their bank, or something. Has anyone every opted for Spanish when calling a service center of any sort? I'd be interested to know.

In Lumine's newest book

Last fall In Lumine published John Piper's book Future Grace in the Russian language. Over the last year I've been working with Jake Knotts, who started In Lumine, with the goal of building In Lumine into a further reaching Christian resource distribution ministry and publishing house. We want Christian, God-centered, affordable print, audio, and video resources to be readily available in Ukraine, Russia, and other countries where Russian is spoken.

Most of my involvement so far has been doing graphic design and planning with Jake. I did the cover design for Future Grace and I thought it was a pretty good design but when we got it from the printer we found that the printer got the colors off (different boxes of books had different hues). There were other binding problems as well so the printer offered to re-print and re-bind all the covers.

We decided to re-design the cover while we were at it and so I came up with a new design. Last week when we were up in Chernigov the books were delivered and I think they turned out quite well.

Current projects in the works for In Lumine are publishing John Piper's Don't Waste Your Life and then Wayne Grudem's Christian Beliefs.

Other future projects include translating and overdubbing videos for online distribution, re-building In Lumine's website to better facilitate online resources, and hopefully making our own videos.

If anyone is interested in helping out in anyway with any of these projects or is interested in getting resources in the Russian language you can get in touch with us through the In Lumine website or through us.

Men's Bible Study

Sunday night we had the second in a series of men's bible studies on lessons from the life of king David. Wayne taught this one and he laid the foundation for biblical integrity which was fun because not only is there not a word for integrity in the Russian (or Ukrainian) language but even the thought behind the word is not really there. This week I brought my camera so here are a few pictures of the evening.

Here is Wayne pointing something out while Sasha gives me the look of death, Oles staring off into the distance and Yura waving.

Some of the youth group kids came which was great.

We broke up into groups to read over the story of how David spared Saul's life in the cave and then discuss some of aspects of what that decision meant. Wayne used that story as a springboard for talking about integrity.

This is Andre. He was in my group. He lives in the rehab center in Sloboda that I go to each week to lead a bible study.

Happy Groundhog day

Groundhog day is one of the least special holidays in America, unless you happen to live in Punxsutaweny PA. But it is still a holiday that is marked on most calendars and forgotten by most people.

I think the best thing about Groundhog day was that it inspired a movie staring Andie McDowell. Whatever happened to her anyway?

In the face of the day's insignificance I still wish you all a happy Groundhog day and hope that winter will be over soon because I think that Groundhog day, after all, is a day of hope. Audacious hope. Hope that flies in the face of science and facts and says if a small woodland creature sees his shadow that's enough for me.