Sunday July 10th

We got up today and went to church. Both of us have been waking up at 4am in the morning since we got here. Yesterday I managed to stay up the whole day without falling asleep for very long but Jaynie had no such luck and took a long nap. As a result I had my first full night of sleep last night while Jaynie was up again at 4am. Thankfully she let me sleep.

We went to the central Odessa branch. Our driver is off today so we had to take a taxi their and back but our translator went with us (that was really nice of her). She went shopping while we went to church. We are home now and Jaynie is resting due to some stomach distress.

We met 2 sister missionaries sister Hales from Toole and sister Peterson from I can’t remember where. We also met two brother missionaries and an elderly (sort of ) couple from Preston Idaho. One of the younger brother missionaries was from Saint George and I’m not sure where the other one is from.

The taxi ride to and from the church was interesting as all taxi rides here are. Some drivers are worse than others though. The one taking us to the church wasn’t too bad but the one who took us back actually sped up when he saw a group of pedestrians crossing the street directly in front of us. Peds do not have the right of way here unless it’s a really good looking girl in a skimpy outfit (of which there are plenty around).

While at church we sang our English version of the hymns they were singing in Russian. They sang hymns I knew the words to but when I hear words you’re not expecting it confuses me so it’s a good thing we brought along a hymn book in English. After church we came home. I think our translator was wondering why we didn’t want to eat lunch there at the center of Odessa and why we didn’t want to do anything else that day. I don’t think the translation goes through very well when you are trying to explain religious beliefs about keeping the Sabbath day holy by refraining from buying things or working on it.

Yesterday we went to the store again and got some much needed laundry detergent. We each only brought about 4 changes of clothes to keep our packing light. Almost everything that the stores (food stores) is very cheap. We bought a lot of food and other supplies for 65 rph that’s about 13 US dollars. The restaurants prices here can very a lot. We eat at one restaurant that only cost us 6 US dollars total for 2-3 people. Another one was more like $20 and you can find some that are more expensive than any we have in our home town.

We should meet Vika tomorrow and take her out for the day. We will probably have her with us during the day until the adoption process is finished. We have had it easy so far. It has been weird not having children to take care of for the last few days but that will all change tomorrow.

We are staying in an apartment complex looks like the project housing you see in New York. Our translator says it’s a good area but it really doesn’t look like it. The out side of the apartment complex is dirty and not kept up very well. But the inside of the apartment is nice although the beds are as hard as a rock. We have running hot water all of the time is a luxury here in Odessa as hot water is generally turned off at night. The people we are renting from are kind of funny. They have two bedrooms but they locked one and won’t let us use it. As a result our translator is sleeping on the coach/pull out bed in the kitchen. The first night we were here we our translator had to call and ask our landlords for knives since they hadn’t left any. The husband asked why we needed knives since we had already eaten lunch and dinner…?? I don’t know what he thought we were going to do for the next two weeks… eat out I guess. We can’t afford to eat out all of the time so he came over and unlocked the bedroom they won’t let us use and came out with some knives. Who know what else they’ve stashed in that bedroom but this apartment was stripped bare before we came. It’s kind of funny since we are worried about being robbed and they seem to be just as worried about the same thing. Although why anyone would want to rob them of their knives I don’t know.

We will post more tomorrow once we have met Vika and spent the day with her.

Kyle