Memorial Day!

It’s not Memerial Day here in Khelm, but I did my best to enjoy the holiday from miles away!

Quick post tonight since it’s 12:30am and I need to get some sleep. Please continue to pray for Gods’ will to be done with reagrds to the passports. I spoke to Koysta late tonight and it appears that the passports won’t arrive before noon. We will call again tomorrow shortly after noon and check on the status.

The kids slept until around 7:30 which was nice. I wasn’t sure what to expect. At around 8:00 I asked if they were hungry and wanted to eat something. Now yesterday (actually, Sunday since it’s Tuesday) we did pretty ggod about getting groceries excpet I forgot about breakfast. The choices most suitable for breakfast that I had was oatmeal and fruit. I asked if they like oatmeal and everyone said yes. The only one to eat it was me! Jenny, don’t stock up on oatmeal.

After breakfast, we watched some TV and called Julia (a young lady who helps teach some of the children at the orphange English) to see if she wanted to meet us at the park and have lunch with us. As it turned out, it was her day off (she is an English teacher at the local university) and she would love to join us. So we met here at around 11:00, played at the park and had lunch at a really nice café. It was nice going somewhere different and having someone translate the menu.

After lunch, Julia suggested that we might go to a very large park just a few bus stops away. “A bus ride” I thought. Well how bad could it be, I’m with a local person who does this all the time – right? Actually it was fine, thanks to Julia knowing which of the 100 buses that stop to drop off and pick up passengers every minute to get on and where to get off.

The park was very large and lots to offer. There were lots of different playgounds and paved walking paths. There was even an area where they had lots of swans and in a in a big round cage like at a zoo were two bears. There was even area ike Coney Island in Cincinnati with carnival rides. The kids got to choose one thing they wanted to do and Natasha choose the swings and Maks and Alona choose to jump on a big inflatable.

At around 4:30pm, we headed back to the apartment and watched some TV and had a snack. At around 6pm, I fixed some dinner for them with Maks help cleaning the fish. They had fish, cucumbers, bread, cheese, canadian bacon (something like it) apples, and chips. I had a piece of bread, and a few slices of apple. (A little later I had a Slim Fast bar.)

After dinner the kids got baths and I painted the girls fingernails and watch TV. At arounf 9:45pm, we sang songs and I prayed, then said good-night.

It was a long but fun day. The kids are doing really well. I’m enjoying being with them.

Blessings <><,

David