Ukraine- Day 1

Another crazy busy week in London in which I moved into a house, and tried to prepare All Souls church for Easter weekend and the 6 Easter services it holds plus on Thursday holding a Memorial Service right after our normal lunch time service and before the first Easter service in the evening! So I got home at midnight Thursday after a very late dinner at Nandos and Friday morning I was off to Luton Airport to get on Wizz Air. London has 4 major airports surrounding it and for some reason only Heathrow and Gatwick have decent train links. Luton and Stanstead luck out. Wizz air however soon wizzed me off on a 3 hour flight to Kiev where I touched down at 6pm local time. They parked the plane in the middle of the tarmac and brought buses to it to get us to the terminal. However we were short a bus so had to wait behind the plane! 2 of the idiots waiting with us lit up cigarettes—all while standing a few yards from a Airbus A320 which was being refuelled!! (They were soon told to put them out tho!) Customs was quick and easy and I was through to meet Jon and Rufus (my sister and her hubby). They had my brother Jonos van which is a bit of a machine! They took me into Kiev across the huge river Dnipr where we met Jono for dinner. At one point traffic got busy so other cars were driving up onto the footpath on both sides of the road and using them as extra lanes to try and jump the queue! People just park their cars anywhere and no one seems to care about road rules too much. Apparently many people buy their drivers licence without ever having driven before!! After dinner we walked up the main street and then went back to Rufus and Jons very nice spacious apartment. (after Jono broke the van key off in the gas tank cap and we had to get a taxi home!)

Saturday morning we packed up and loaded the van as we were going to end the day in Rzhyshchiv where Jono lives. We drove back into the city centre and got some great views of the city and river from the tin woman statue. Looked through the war museum and then a monastery and church with much gold everywhere. Could see how religious the culture is but so far from understanding God and Jesus. After lunch we wandered through a street market seeing all sorts of art and crafts and a lot of football shirts etc for sale! Then we drove south, I fell asleep in the van and an hour later we stopped at a town where a youth event was on. Interesting to hear songs that I knew sung in a language I couldn’t understand! We ate here and then drove the last 20 mins to Jonos town. Rufus and Jon also have a house here where they come to in the weekends and on holidays. There house is very nice as they have completely renovated it from scratch. Jonos is like a kiwi bach and so I feel like I’m on a holiday and I try to think that I’m actually down the Marlborough Sounds (my fav Easter vacation spot!) but tomorrow when I wake up I’ll see that I’m not!