Thoughts about citizenship (a very few)

 As promised, my letter to Kate Tsurkan:

*"A citizen is not one who has a passport, but one who is in Ukraine today."

Citizenship

People who pray for us or who have talked to me any time recently, know that I am working toward getting Ukrainian citizenship. I really appreciated today's "Explaining Ukraine with Kate Tsurkan" from Kyiv Independent. In fact, I answered her newsletter as soon as I finished reading it. I don't even know if she'll see my response, but I sent it. I invite you to go read what Kate Tsurkan wrote (and subscribe to free Kyiv Independent newsletters!), then come back tomorrow and read what I said in answer, which I will share here.

Sunday school Christmas

Next after Christmas at Capernaum, we had Christmas in our Sunday school. Unfortunately, most of the little ones weren't there, but the bigger kids had a great time. They made sure to decorate cookies for the younger kids to have later. We had a short devotional about the Christmas story, then decorated gingerbread men that I had baked, played games, had cake for Jesus' birthday, and gave out presents. It was a great time to be together and celebrate that Christ is born.

After that, our Christmas plans were pretty much done. Asya and my other Sunday school helper had prepared a song with the younger class to sing in the church service, but since most of the kids weren't there, they didn't get to do it (yet?).

Next we just had to pack for Krakow and get on the bus Christmas morning.

Capernaum Christmas

Now that Christmas is winding down,* I'm going back to celebrations in December. A few of these photos are mine, the rest are from the day's photographer. (I don't know how long she'll keep all the photos available there. Here are more on Instagram.) At our first Capernaum club in December we practiced for a Christmas program. That program was the second club meeting of the month. All the parents and other friends were invited, and we acted out the Christmas story. 

After the program a local business gave the kids Christmas presents, very generously buying up lists of their individual needs and wants. Then we all ate together. 

(*A big pet peeve of mine is when people try to end Christmas on December 26. No! We're still singing Christmas carols and greeting people with "Christ is born!" Christmas is a season, not just a day.)

Happy New Year!

We just got back from a whirlwind trip to Poland to meet up with Will's family. His parents and sisters and one sister's family came over, and we had a little reunion. If you follow Will or any of them on Facebook, you've probably seen photos and read about it all. I hardly took any pictures myself. It was amazing to see everyone and fun to be in Krakow. The photo below is a compilation of us in the same spot there in 2012, 2020, and on this trip: 

Now Raia is here with us until she heads to Lithuania. There's lots of sniffling and coughing going on from whatever everyone picked up while traveling, and we're pretty exhausted. But we're thankful and headed into the New Year now, glad to be together.

A wonderful New Year present was a phone call from Kherson first thing this morning, saying that Asya's residency card is ready. I thought maybe she dreamed it, because I can't believe that Migration is working today, but apparently it was real. So, now we have another trip to plan, to go get that picked up and register her.

More Thanksgivings

Here we are almost to Christmas, and I still haven't posted what I wrote about Thanksgiving. I was sick for a while and then just busy. Here is what I wrote a while ago:
After Asya and I got back from Kherson, I had a really busy week of working on my to do list--details for an upcoming Christmas trip to Poland, Sunday school planning, Capernaum club, and more. 

Then on Saturday (December 6) we were planning to have our family Thanksgiving a little late, after a winter Capernaum club meeting. I had prepared food most of the day before. Power outages reached the point of more off than on, which is my personal limit for when they start to seem hard, but I tried to work around them. We had a wonderful club, even without electricity. Towards the end I started to feel like I had a fever, though, so I hurried off as soon as I could and went to bed. The rest of our family pulled together all the food--what I had already made and their own additions, too--our guest came, and I joined everyone at the table. We had a very good meal, talked about what we are thankful for, and enjoyed being together in the candlelight. 

(Apparently this is a second Thanksgiving with especially heavy outages. Not to mention the Thanksgiving when we were evacuated from Kherson after several weeks without having electricity at all.)

Photos from both our Thanksgiving and that day's Capernaum club in the dark:

Jaan kept his buddy happy with phone light on swirling glitter.

The darkness didn't stop Bogdan and his buddy.

My buddy twins were fine in the dark.

Residency update

Here's an update on Asya's document process: after the miraculous visa trip, we didn't stop working on what was next. Finally we figured out that we needed to apply for her residency in Kherson. Will pulled together the documents we needed to turn in, and I got tickets and permission for her to enter the city. (Several times along the way here, I've gotten compliments to whomever was doing all the writing, it was obviously done by professionals. Um. Thank you very much.) 

Again, we had almost miraculous interactions. Getting into Kherson can be complicated, but it wasn't hard at all this time. We went to Migration as soon as we could, and this is where we ran into complications. We got there first thing in the morning, to find all the workers standing around, unable to do anything. Because of shelling the night before, their phones and computer system were out. No one had any idea when it would be fixed, or what we should do. We went to another office, in another part of town. They gave us a full consultation and checked through all our papers, but couldn't accept them, because we're not in their district. 

So, for the rest of the week, I called every morning to get an update. We spent time with our friends and helped out around church some. Finally, on Friday they said yes when I called. Asya got a call from the other office then, too, telling her that our branch was back in business. She had plans to help with a children's program that day, so she was not happy that we had to rush across town and turn in her paperwork right then. But we did. It took a while. She did make it back in time to be with the kids, though. 

Her residency card should be ready right around Christmas. We'll probably go back to get it and register her at the beginning of the new year, and then we'll be done with this until the end of martial law. Please keep praying about it until we get to that point. Thank you!