Easter Day

Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed!

As the Easter season continues, I want to go back to Easter Day, which was April 12 here. I was rushing to get us back from Kherson to Ivano-Frankivsk in order to be able to celebrate with the church here. As the leader of the children’s ministry, I had planned the day’s activities and left instructions of what to do if I couldn’t be there, but I didn’t want to miss it. The other teachers and I were excited about the idea of baking “Resurrection rolls” with the kids. I found us an oven to borrow, and they did a quick version at Capernaum club the day before without me. Then on Sunday morning I did it again with the church kids. We had all the kids together for the Easter story, baking, and a craft. Unlike our small Christmas celebration, I think every child who could come did, plus a few. It was great and wild fun. The main thing was that they heard the story of Christ’s death and resurrection and felt the joy of the day.

This little one was disappointed that her marshmallow disappeared. Oops.

After the kids' celebration, there was food for the whole church, then fellowship and games. Then our own family came home, took photos and rested. I'm not sure I like this pattern of holidays and travel that we've had--rushing back from Poland just before church Thanksgiving, in a bus all day Christmas, trains from Kherson on the eve of Easter--but that's just the way it has worked out. And, like I've said before, I'm especially loving the Easter season this year.

Little bits of news

Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed!

(Today is day 12/19 of the 50-day Easter season.)

News items listed:

• Our trip to Kherson to turn in documents went well.
• We got back just in time to have a lovely Easter Day at church. That's our family Easter photo above.
• Now I'm trying to fully savor the Easter season. 
• We hosted a picnic for the pastors of this region (photo below). It was such a beautiful day!
• Bogdan sprained his right index finger and experienced the emergency room here again. No bandura playing for 2-3 weeks, but he can still draw.
• He is at a Young Life conference now.
• Asya is also away.
• Spring is beautiful!
• And...

We just found out that Jaan's residency application was rejected because of a mistake. None of us caught it, and neither did the Migration lady when she painstakingly accepted our applications. You may remember that the beginning of the process is an official letter from our inviting organization, which is the church here, to the Kherson administration, asking for their approval. The mistake was in that letter, so fixing it has to go all the way back to the beginning. We had several days of up and down here, with the mistake being found, then a possible easy solution, then a final no about that easy way today. So, Will's restarting everything for Jaan. Once it's all ready again, Jaan will go apply again.

Trip to Yaremche

Last week was Spring Break for most kids here. Our family didn't take the whole week off from school, but we did have a special field trip on Friday. Having an experienced outdoor guide as one of our Sunday school teachers is giving us fun trips together, and I really see these times building good relationships among the kids and teachers at our church.

We started out pretty early in the morning, to get on a train up into the mountains. Our group was eight kids, three Sunday school teachers (including me), another mom, a grandmother who happened to be visiting her grandchildren for their break, and a dog.

The order of the photos is a little jumbled, but you can see that we walked through Yaremche, explored the Dovbush Trail--which was our main destination--then back down through the town and to McDonald's (or was that our main destination?). After that, one little guy fell asleep in the train station, while the rest played games and waited for our return train.

Bogdan's 15th

On March 12 Bogdan turned 15. The morning of his actual birthday he made brownies to take to art class later in the day. Then he celebrated his birthday there. His teacher and classmates really made the day special for him, surprising him with a cake and presents. They gave him art supplies and special military patches and had tea twice, once with the younger class and once with just the older group.

The next day Bogdan got to celebrate with his friends. He invited four boys he enjoys spending time with, two originally from Kherson and two from here. They played outside while Will grilled meat. Then we had dinner. More play until it was completely dark and cold. After that, they came in for tea and opening presents.

Bogdan had a great birthday and was well celebrated by lots of people who love and appreciate him.

Change in plans

It feels like everything changed yesterday. I had figured out that my first step toward Ukrainian citizenship could be getting the electronic signature I need to register for the language test. I had tried to do it various ways by myself, but it was complicated by our strange expired/not-expired residency status. I finally enlisted the help of an immigration lawyer in Lviv. Yesterday was my day to meet up with him. (Also, unknown to me, Jaan--whose immigration status is the same as ours--was also working on big plans that are also thrown off now.) As the train pulled into Lviv, I opened Facebook on my phone to read the lawyer's directions to where I was supposed to meet him. That's when I saw a post from Migration, announcing a new resolution.

We have been legally living on our expired residency cards. There was a Resolution 1202 (I just typed the number from memory, I know it so well), which said that passport and residency cards that were legal at the beginning of martial law, would be legal until 30 days after the end of it. Yesterday's resolution walks that back for temporary residency.

So, I had my appointment with the lawyer, I did get my electronic signature, and we also discussed this new development.  In a way, it actually makes things a little easier for the moment. We know exactly how to get temporary residency again, there's nothing difficult in that, just a lot of work. (We just finished about 4 months of work to do it for Asya.) So we have a specific, simple direction to move in, instead of citizenship, which feels like a tangled mess of yarn that I'm just picking at, looking for an end piece to start working from. Even the lawyer admitted that yesterday: this is complicated.

This new development won't hurt my quest for citizenship, it only throws me off from it temporarily, taking time and money in a different direction for now. Hopefully getting residency renewed can move me along the citizenship path, too. 

Oh, also after a long, long day of travel to and from Lviv yesterday, I was exhausted. But this morning I was woken up by distant explosions and a new schedule of severe power outages. Sometimes all of this is just hard. I hope that doesn't sound like complaining; I'm stating the way it is.

Please keep praying for us, as I know you do.

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." (source)

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.