Cars and Contrasts

Car shopping. Guys usually love it and ladies sometimes do. Over here, it's a bit different. One used car lot appeared in Kyiv in the last year and a half. The three most common means of hunting a used car are: 1) Buy the magazine (catalog-size, now) where there are thousands of ads for used vehicles. Everything from a Zaporozhitz for a few hundred dollars to a McClaren for half a million, and from a small sports car to amphibious army vehicle is listed. 2) Go to the auto bazaar open on Saturday and Sunday. People bring their used cars to sell to a large parking lot. Buyers look them over and listen to them run. The deal is normally finalized in another place. 3) Have a knowledgeable mechanic find a vehicle in another country and import it.

No, we don't need a car. But Katrina is going to need one. She has to know how much money she needs to buy a car. So Saturday we went to the auto bazaar. The closest one of any size is in Odessa.

We got on the road early so that the slow farm and factory trucks wouldn't hold us below the speed limit on the narrow highway to Odessa. The day was gloomy with 80 % chance of rain. The chilly, windy rain began falling as we got near to the auto bazaar.

Sign showing the entrance to the auto bazaar

Because Dave had noticed a good-sized crack in one of our tires, we stopped to get tires outside of the bazaar. (We had no spare.) The salesmen walked around with umbrellas.

Katrina looked at cars, chose a type that she would like to get, God providing. She was wet and cold. Seth and Dave were wet and cold. We skipped looking at the souvenirs and headed in the direction of a store.

While we were driving to the store, we noticed this limousine.



We live in a town of 14,000. Probably less than 1/2 of the population have inside toilets that are used regularly. But just a few hours away people drive around in limousines. Limousines go through our town on rare occasions, but not this big.

We left Odessa to visit friends who live on the border of Ukraine and Moldava. They were waiting for us at the gate. They had grilled shishkabobs, mashed potatoes, fresh tomatoes, two kinds of fish and crayfish almost ready for us in spite of the drippy weather. (See Katrina's site for a picture of the crawdad.)They shared their photos and took time out to visit in spite of . . . a married daughter who dropped in for a few minutes with the grandchildren, a hired hand who stopped by and was fed, a sister and a brother-in-law who got stuck in the newly-dug gas trenches and dental appointments. We sang "Amazing Grace" for them. They sang one about a mother admonishing her son to pray every day for us, their jaws still numb with local anesthetic. With warm good-byes they made sure that we didn't get stuck in the gas trench and we headed home.

When we got home, we saw that we had had visitors. Here are our gates. We didn't know what the word meant. We looked in the dictionary and made a guess. But at 10 pm, it was too late to call anyone. We tried to clean it off with a kerosene-type liquid, it wouldn't budge. The rain was heavy enough we couldn't use the few cans of white spray paint we had. It had to stay for Sunday.

Sunday the weather was worse. Snow was mixed with the rain. We called and found out the word meant "push-over."

It could have been a lot worse.

We had Sunday morning service. Our church people gasped when they saw the gates. One or two mentioned that the word was a curse word. The weather caused the electricity to be off and on.

Every other week people stay for lunch. We served rice pilaf, green onion salad and apple pie to sixteen people. Dima couldn't get another bite down and left his dessert on his plate!



Because of the icy weather, the afternoon and evening services were cancelled. We began to alternate short prayer meetings with family activities to fill the rest of the day.

Monday morning, we bought some acetone that took the grafitti off our gate.

So you see the contrasts that hit us on every side, the rich, the poor, our friends, people who are angry at us, people who come and people who stay away. Yet in all these things, we are more than conquerors, not because of who we are or what we do but simply because God is on our side. We're counting on Him.