My beautiful sister

I have no words myself, so I will pass on what my father posted:

Leetra Joy Robertson - Obituary

Leetra Robertson, age 36, passed from this life on January 17, 2019. Born in Winter Park on June 25, 1982, she was a lifelong Florida resident who also traveled widely. Graduating with high honors from Seminole Community College with an AS in Multimedia Technology in 2007, Leetra changed her focus to become a licensed massage therapist in 2015.

Vibrant and artistic, she impressed those around her with her noteworthy intelligence, excellent communication skills and outstanding compassion. While she enjoyed her work as a therapist, her greatest delight was her daughters. With a love of beauty that enabled many forms of imaginative expression, Leetra took joy in building happy memories for her two girls.

Leetra is survived by her maternal grandmother, Carol Burton; her parents Phil and Kathy Robertson; her daughters, Isla Palmateer and Aliana Palmateer, her sister Phyllis Hunsucker (Will), her nieces and nephews, Jaan, Raia, Asya and Bogdan Hunsucker, and the father of her children, Scott Palmateer.

Family and friends are invited to attend a memorial service at Circle Community Church on February 2, 2019 at 11 am. The church is located at 2200 Pembrook Drive, Orlando 32810. Lunch will be served following the service.

Since Leetra was passionate about both the importance of clean water and the sanctity of life, in lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to World Vision’s Clean Water Fund or Choices Women’s Clinic, 1851 West Colonial Drive, Orlando 32804.

I'll be in Florida for a few days, to attend the service and be with my relatives and friends. Please pray for all of us during this very sad time.

Asya at the theatre

This was January 6. They had a wonderful time!

(All these photos are from our friends.)

Random bits

The church Christmas play and different holidays deserve their own separate posts. Other than those events, what should I write about now?


Asya got to go to "the real theatre" with her friend during the holiday break. Photos from that coming soon.... 

Our dear friends from Canada moved away. We're grieving that, and nothing replaces them.

Our last time all together before they left

They left us their very sweet little rabbit, and we're enjoying her so much. We have tons of photos of her already; here are just a few.

We started back to school at home and at art school. Music school starts again tomorrow (although both girls had extra music practices and such during their break).

Jaan went on a long trip by himself. This is the first time we've just sent him off like this: 18 hours on a train! He's spent a few days in Kharkov with the ministry he went to summer camp with, and he'll be home from that tomorrow. Pray for his long trip back.

Merry Christmas again

If you look up pictures of Christmas Eve in Ukraine, you'll probably see lots of tables covered with food: twelve different dishes special for Christmas and the usual Ukrainian volume of food. Our Hunsucker-Ukrainian-American table made me laugh last night. Sunday night tradition in our family is popcorn for dinner, and to that we added kutia, plus the cookies we were making for neighbours were out. It was quite a strange, international mix.

Today we've cooked and baked a lot. We're having a nice dinner soon, and then we've already heard that some neighbours are waiting for us to come carolling....

He ran out into the snow, then wrapped himself in our tablecloth.

Merry Christmas from us!

З Різдвом Христовим!

Christmas Eve

Today was the big church children's Christmas program. So many children came! Jaan and Raia helped, while Asya and Bogdan participated. I was one of the photographers, so I took hundreds of photos; here are just four of them, one with each of our children in it. We all had a great time.

Music update

Raia got a second prize from the contest in Nikolaev that her video went to! They sent us this picture:

Jaan says that since she just sent a video to the contest and didn't go herself, she probably only gets a photo of her prize. I think they'll pass it on to us soon, though.

Raia has been too sick to go to music school or anything so far this week. She went to a wonderful youth conference over the weekend, came home without a voice at all, and then got this cold. Today she was supposed to go with the Agape photo project again, but she had to stay home from that, too. She really enjoyed helping with that at a different orphanage last week. Pray for her to get well soon.

Music news

I wrote about the school contest that Asya won a first prize in. The week after that she entered a bigger city-wide contest. She was nervous, and didn't do so well, but it was a good experience. Her American friend won, and her friend from church got third place, so she was very happy anyway.

Then Raia entered a contest by video. If you want to watch that, I uploaded it here. I don't know when we'll hear any results from that. And on Friday she won a school contest. Her teacher posted these pretty photos from that:

There was also this concert that she was in.

Saturday Asya performed with the winds orchestra for the first time. I took her and friend early, so I got to watch them rehearse and then stay for the concert to see them perform. It was great! I posted all four songs they played on Facebook.

And did I ever post this photo?

Jaan is a great teacher for Bogdan. He's very patient. However, he doesn't mind using a brotherly karate chop to keep his little pupil sitting up straight. Somehow the photo just looks like he's gently pushing on Bogdan's back, but it's really more active that that. Both boys are working on learning Christmas music now.

Advent of the Lion and the Lamb

Our main Advent book this year is one that I happened to see mentioned online and was able to check out from our digital library: Advent in Narnia. I preread it, because I wanted to make sure it wouldn't take the wonder out of Narnia. (I read a popular book about Narnia early this year, and I thought it was awful to over-analize like that.) This one is full of wonder, though. Of course, we have to reread The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to go with it. My all-time favourite read aloud experience was when I happened to be reading it to our children for the first time at Easter, so that the Narnian Easter corresponded with our Easter. I'm loving it just as much for Advent and Christmas. From the introduction: "My purpose in writing this book is not to help you know Narnia better but to know God better.... I hope that by spending a little time in Narnia this Advent, you will get to know Aslan--and Jesus Christ--better, and to prepare for Jesus' birth at Christmas all the more richly for it."

Then, in the mornings with our school readings, we're also listening to an audiobook of an obscure book (or at least I had never heard of it) just called Advent, or The Good Shepherd by Gunnar Gunnarsson. We're listening and reading in Russian now, but I preread in English.

~~~

Funny Advent conversations already overheard (and translated):

A child looking at the December calendar page: "Look! It has the new Christmas!" meaning December 25 (which is new as an official holiday in Ukraine, but still...).

About a song that we know in both Ukrainian and Russian: "What language are we singing in?!" "Surzhyk!"

Odessa, day 3

Again, this goes back to the end of October, even though we're almost at the end of November now.

Our third day in Odessa was for visiting an art museum there. We don't have many photos, because we couldn't take our camera into the museum. We walked there, and then went through the museum. Downstairs it's classic art, mostly Ukrainian. The kids' art teacher told us about some of the artists. Overall everything was very dark. The pictures were beautiful, but they seemed old and maybe dirty, and just dark. Then, upstairs was an exhibit of art that had been repressed. The colours were wildly bright (and the lighting was better), but I didn't see the same beauty as in the older works.

Raia in the museum

Downstairs: Beekeeper

Upstairs: Communism triumphs over religion

Afterwards we just walked back to the hostel, got our luggage, went to the bus station and had a late lunch near there. Then we headed home. The trip back seemed endless, but we finally got home.

And that ends our amazing Odessa trip!

So thankful... and so overwhelmed

Thanksgiving week was really wonderful and really a lot to keep up with. After being sick for so long, I have been starting to get back on my feet. On Thursday the family currently adopting from Tsyurupinsk arrived to pick up their sons. We had them and their nurse practitioner over for dinner. I did a halfway Thanksgiving meal for them: turkey breast and pumpkin pie.

Then Friday, in addition to our usual orphanage visit, Jaan and I got to be there for some of the process of getting their boys out of the orphanage. They spent that night in a hotel in Kherson, and their little guy had a really rough first night and day out of the orphanage. We tried to help some, and Jaan rode his bike to get medicine for them and deliver it, but they had a really hard time of it. Please continue to pray for them. They're in Kyiv now, hoping to fly home soon.

Saturday was the wonderful expat Thanksgiving that has become such a wonderful part of our family traditions. We didn't take any photos at all, but Jennifer did, and she posted a few.

Then there's a new guy in Kherson, here to learn Russian, and Will's been helping him get set up. Our landladies are trying to sell our house. Both girls have had music contests to prepare for and do. Current events are overwhelming... but let's focus on the thankful part. I am so thankful that two more orphans have families, that we have such wonderful friends here, and that we can live this life.

Happy Thanksgiving! Even if it's a little late, we're still thankful.


And just one more photo of the two boys with their PARENTS:

Both boys have waited 16 years for this.

(Photos are not ours, but they're used with permission.)

Odessa, day 2

On our second day in Odessa we went to the "Museum of Interesting Science." It was insanely crowded, probably because of the fall holidays from school, but definitely fun and interesting. First we had a tour, where a guide explained many of the exhibits to us, then free time for the kids to explore everything themselves, then a science show just for our little group. I think this museum was the highlight of the trip for all the kids. For me--since I am the science teacher for half the kids in the group --it was wonderful see the connections they were making; they got really excited about seeing concepts in action that they had read about before.

We ate a late lunch at the museum restaurant and then walked back toward the center for a session of drawing the train station.

After that it was dark and cold, but the kids really enjoyed their long-awaited tram ride back to the hostels. I was feeling pretty awful by then, so I went to bed at our hostel, but Will accompanied the group back to theirs and watched the kids while their teacher shopped for dinner supplies. Then he brought me more Chinese food.