indecent [sun]exposure

We found out during our trip to the states that we are pretty severely vitamin D deficient.  But after seeing this info graph we realized that most of the Europe and Canada probably is too.

Check out the rest of the graph here it is pretty cool.

Our doctor prescribed us some high dosage vitamin D and we'll be taking supplements either for the rest of our lives or until we move somewhere south of 42°N.

Other health news is that Liese is now a vegan, at least for a few months.  She is going off of 10 foods that may be allergens to see if they affect her migraines at all and that means she is a vegan (sort of, she can still eat chicken) until she can introduce things like dairy back into her diet to see if they trigger headaches.

So I'm wondering if feeling better from getting our vitamin D levels back up will be offset by the fact that we don't get to eat food we like.   We'll see.

Back home

We made it back to Ukraine last Sunday evening and spent the week recovering from jet lag, Thanksgiving, and the flu.   Then it snowed.

I was happy to see our church again, we were gone for 10 Sundays and at each church we visited I would find myself missing Kaharlyk. 

[pictures of church this morning ]

Next week we get back into the swing of things as we begin to plan out the advent season,  plan for an outreach team from Arizona,  as well as all the other normal church activities like sermon preparation, home group, prayer meetings, rehab center bible studies, and band practice. 

Local Elections in Ukraine

The US Embassy in Ukraine wrote a statement about the recent local elections in Ukraine:

Preliminary reports from election monitors suggest that Ukraine’s October 31 local elections did not meet standards for openness and fairness set by the presidential elections earlier this year. Domestic and international election observation efforts, most notably those led by the widely-respected domestic, non-partisan monitor OPORA, reported numerous procedural violations on election day. While election observers recognized improvements in the accuracy of voters lists since the presidential contest, they also noted shortcomings, such as insufficient training for electoral commission members, which contributed to the procedural violations and to organizational problems.

Read the whole statement here on the Embassy
website.

[via heartofthematter]