Randomness

Our visa invitations were ready in record time! It took less than a week for the church to write up a request and the religion and culture people to approve it. However, when Will went on Thursday to pick up the letters, there were some really big mistakes: they had us listed as living in a completely different city. He spent the day resubmitting in order to get those fixed. They probably thought that he was crazy to bother with corrections, but we really want to get everything right, as much as possible. Please keep praying for our visas, and for everyone else who is caught up in this now, too. It's much more complicated in some other regions of Ukraine, and March seems to be the month when everyone is renewing.

Bogdan has two new teeth! If these come all the way through, before he gets any more, he's going to look pretty funny. Several of our children have gotten first middle bottom teeth, then outer top teeth. (I just checked; it was Raia and Asya. Maybe Jaan got his in a more normal order?) Bogdan has his own funny order, though. He has the two middle teeth on the bottom, and now he has... how I do explain this? If you imagine the top, center teeth as 1-2-3-4, then he has 1 and 2, but no sign of 3 and 4 yet.

A group of homeless dogs tried to attack Jaan on his way home from music school a few days ago. They didn't hurt him much, but he was very shaken up, and he's very fearful now. He doesn't want to walk back and forth by himself anymore, "At least while the dogs are especially hungry," and I don't blame him.

We had our 11th anniversary! Apparently it's becoming a tradition to work on visas for our anniversary.

Pretty!

Our hot water heater had pretty much stopped working. When the plumber came to look at it, he cleaned this kind of stuff out of it:

Yuck!

That's after just a few months. The city water comes up out of the iron mine. Every time they turn it off, it comes back on dark reddish-brown. Apparently, we need some kind of filter.

One evening recently Jaan was looking through an advertisement from Metro, the big store that has everything, and he said, "Mama, I know what you need! One of these exercise machines! ...or one of these boxes of chocolate."

Do all four-year-olds wander around singing about embassies? (Asya does.)

I recorded part of a reading lesson, with Raia and Bogdan.

The temps here went up a little, then dropped off again. I'm happy. We've been spending time at the sledding hill almost every day, with a few longer walks thrown in. I got some pretty pictures on one of those walks. If you haven't seen them yet, here they are: one, two, three, and four.

Sharing snacks

Bogdan is very generous

Visa update

Once again, I'm writing for Ukraine-dwellers, not the adoring grandparents. (Although, I know that they're praying!)

Last time I said that we were waiting to find out what the changes in the visa laws mean for us. Will went today to find out, and it looks like they really don't change anything significantly. The wording in our invitation letters might be a little different. As usual, we'll have to leave the country and renew, when those are ready; a slight difference is that we'll come back with 45-day visas, instead of year-long. They'll register us for a year, though, just like before. And we'll even be able to extend that registration for another year, like we've been doing.

Of course, that's probably only how the law is being interpreted right here in this one region. Please keep praying for people who are in different areas, where it isn't so easy. And keep praying for us; documents are never simple.

Here's something else: in Russia there's a great email list for anyone ministering there. As far as I know, there's nothing like it here. If I were to start one, would you join and participate? We could talk about visas there, among other things.... (If you don't want to answer in the comments, please write: xansaker@gmail.com.)

Visa news?

(Sorry, Mom. This post isn't for you. )

For other Ukraine families who might be interested: this isn't exactly news, but it is straight from the (Zaporozhya) horse's mouth. Even though our registration doesn't run out until March, Will went to our nice, helpful, professional, regional OVIR to ask about the new law that went into effect on September 10. (If you don't think all those words should be used in one sentence, come to Zaporozhya! I am not being sarcastic.) We thought they had probably had enough time to figure it out by now. And... they said the new law is being amended on December 25. So, come back at the end of January to see how it has worked out. Maybe that's not exactly news, but I hadn't heard about any amendments before that.

So, everyone can be praying that the amendments will be good, but we still don't know anything.

At least, that's how it is in Zaporozhya oblast.