As summer comes to a close, we have been reflecting back on our time in Ukraine and our first summer in the village. This was a big change for all of us. Some days it was really rough… Feeling dirty with no sink, shower, washing machine, or clean anything sometimes left us asking ourselves why we chose to pick up and move to Ivanivka. But then God would do something to gently remind us that this is exactly where he wanted us and knew we were home.
Now that we’re home for a bit with consistent internet, we’re going to continue with Tuesday Tales highlighting moments from our summer in Ivanivka.
When you live in an almost 100 year old house that no one lived in for the past 2 years, all your electrical –
wires, outlets, fixtures, meters – are a little out of date. Since we know some moms will be reading this, we won’t tell you that for a while we had 2 live wires plugged straight into a surge protector that then brought electricity to our whole house. 🙂 Thanks to Dusya who always knows what to do in the village, we were able to hire her uncle Petya to redo all the electrical wiring in our house. This was awesome because not only is he a retired electrician who needed the work, but it was also someone we could trust. He was at our house multiple times over the course of a month or so, and Uncle Petya quickly became a family favorite every time he was there. Some days Sasha would drive with him to the closest city to buy supplies, some days he’d be standing on a stool working on the wires, but he was alway happy and worked hard on his task for the day. One day when he and Sasha made the drive to Okhtyrka for more supplies, Melissa had specifically been praying for Sasha to have an opportunity to share with him about God. She hadn’t even said anything to Sasha about it. When they got back that day, Sasha told her how on their drive they were able to talk about God. It was an awesome answer to prayer and encouragement to us that even just in fixing up things in the house, God was working.