Day 3—May 15—Sunday: Church and surprises - Again!

Morning:
Brovari is the name of the small town about 45 min. east of Kyiv where we went in the morning. Feodor, who was part of the group at the airport and later at the house, drove us out there. I said 45 minutes---as Feodor flies. We were accompanying the choir and they love to sing. "When we all get to heaven" wasn't one of those songs, but the way our brother drove, we weren't too sure he wasn't going to make those words come true and drive us right up to the front entrance of the pearly gates. Red lights, one-way streets, speed limits and no-passing zones were mere features of the landscape that had nothing to do with his getting us from one place to another.

Curiously, that evening I got in on a story told by the pastor of the Central Baptist Church in Kyiv. He was talking to the leader of an American team of two doctors and some nurses who were on a two-week mission trip. I don’t know what occasioned the telling of the joke, but basically it was about a woman driving a car with all sorts of Bible verses and evangelical stickers on it. She was holding up traffic, venting her displeasure at the way another driver had cut in front of her, and she was making quite a scene when a policeman appeared. He asked to see her documents and told her she would have to come to the station with him, where she had to wait for an hour. Finally, the police officer returned and apologized for keeping her so long. "It took us a while to check the records. I thought you had stolen the car," he explained.

At Brovari we met a missionary from SEND. Small world.... Abbie’s brother-in-law, Carlton, has a cousin who is affiliated with that mission and who goes to Ukraine on short-term missions. This missionary knows Carlton’s cousin, of course.

Because I was in Ukraine two years ago, I knew more or less what to expect. The order of service is always the same: services begin at 10:00 and last until 12:00---singing, prayers, and sermons in 3 rounds. The main pastor takes the pulpit at 11:30, and until then the time is filled with songs by the choir or special numbers and congregational songs, with a couple of messages in between. This morning, however, there was no congregational singing; maybe that's because the choir from the Central Church was there for the special Easter service, and the program was different.

"Program" is the key word here. All the parts are timed to the minute. A surprise speaker (as I was) can really put a kink in the scheme of things. The need for a translator makes it even more complicated, since it takes over twice as long to get any thought communicated. In the pre-service meeting with the pastor and deacon, the pastor reminded me that "time is money" (his exact words in Russian) and my subsequent promise to speak only 5 minutes was music to his ears. As it turned out I was 10 minutes or so in the pulpit, but there was an interpreter after all, so I kept my word. I only spoke 5 minutes.

Michael, the missionary with SEND, was there with a seminary student, who gave the first message. Michael had the second message, and then he interpreted for me. (He's of Russian lineage and was raised in a Russian-Ukrainian church in Pennsylvania.) He confided to me that it was difficult for him to sit through this traditional type of service. This time he didn’t have to sit quite as much: the pastor had him take the final preaching slot normally reserved for the pastor, or the head pastor in churches with more than one. He preached twice and interpreted another message in the same service.

Following the service an older man came up to Michael and spoke with him for 10 minutes, or so. It turned out that the older man took exception to the fact that the missionary used notes to preach from (wasn’t allowing the Holy Spirit to speak through him, I suppose). I think he let the missionary know that it would be better if he didn't come back to that church. "First time that's ever happened," Michael said. We agreed that anyone in the ministry had to learn to deal with a lot of strange situations.

We ate at the church with the church choir. Ladies from the host church prepared borshch and a pasta dish, and for dessert, cake and ice cream.

In the afternoon we went shopping along Andreyevsky St. in Kyiv, climbing the long hill where all the tourist items and art works are sold. We bought a couple of sets of matrioshka dolls for Ana, one of the ladies in my consular office, and some of the cedar coasters that are so typical.

As you can see from this picture, the options are not limited to the traditional mother figure. Political figures (Gorbachev, Bush, Reagan) and even American football players are found along with cats and religious motifs.(Here is a link to some examples of higher priced dolls.)


Natasha, Petro and Lidiya’s daughter, was with us and we found a nice restaurant to have a cappuccino. Da Vinci Fish Club is definitely as nice as any restaurant we’ve eaten in. They offered us a discount card, which we decided to accept...don't know that we'll get a chance to go back there, though. The problem is that we're always being escorted, and we're not free to choose our pace or itinerary. We would be interested in staying in town for lunch, grabbing a bite of this or that when we begin to feel faint, but our hosts cannot conceive of eating in a restaurant. They would prefer to spend 45 min. on the bus each way and go home for an hour to have lunch. Habits born out of necessity when you only make $250 a month like Dima, Natasha’s husband, who works as a salesman at a clothing store in a new mall.

We think they are also concerned that we might get lost if we go out alone, and we find it difficult to get out and explore on our own.

Evening. Kyiv Central Baptist Church
Again I was permitted to speak, and one of the associate pastors (son of the head pastor) interpreted for me. Following the service I spoke with the main pastor, who was surprised that I knew any Ukrainian. He said that knowing Ukrainian meant that I would always have a place to sleep and would never go hungry in Kyiv. Well, we haven’t gone hungry, yet, and we’ve always had a place to sleep.


Small world again. We met an American missionary at the church who, when he found out we work in Portugal, said he knew a Ukrainian who went to Portugal (over 60,000 are thought to have emigrated to Portugal). It didn’t take us long to realize he was talking about Nikolay, the son of Abbie’s harp teacher. Nikolay came to our church a few times right after he arrived in Madeira.

We talked with Andriy by telephone and found out that his wife, Larisa, would be attending a medical conference in Kyiv the last half of the week, so we decided to reverse the order of our visits. We will go to L’viv first and spend the weekend there, then go to Netyshin the following week.