10:13pm

My apologies for not keeping up-to-date with blogging our travels! Out here it's hard to get internet and when you do it's often very slow, so I'll put up older blogs as I can. In the meantime, here's a current blog.

We are in Kiev with Maxim and Jhenya (our indigenous church planters here in Ukraine) for a Hillsong conference. Today we ventured into the heart of Kiev city and enjoyed the sites, sounds and smells of this bustling historic place. Sara even got a little shopping in while passing through a massive underground mall.

Maxim doesn't speak English and Jhenya is slightly more advanced in her English than I am in my Russian, so there's an obvious language barrier and no interpreters to ease the flow of conversation. As an example, today Jhenya pointed to her tongue saying "stomach". The kids got a kick out of that. So it's been fun, but we're managing. Trying to communicate is hard work though and I won't say it wasn't partly the cause of a splitting headache somewhere in the midpoint of the day.

We got our first "real" taste of public transport today as well, with a bus experience I'll never forget. Picture being PACKED into a minibus (you pay about 25 cents to ride) for about an hour in rush hour traffic with a sweltering 35 degrees outside. It was like being in a sauna, surrounded by people literally dripping sweat.

Our hotel is right on the Dnieper River, so a refreshing swim was definitely in order during the heat of the day. We have yet to discover the location of the Hillsong conference, and hope that it is within walking distance. We had assumed that Maxim and Jhenya would have some knowledge of this huge (and slightly intimidating) city, and too our "delight" discovered this morning that they know less than us having only been here once before! It was an adventure trying to cross the city to find our hotel.

So here we are. Tomorrow the conference starts and we're all looking forward to it with great anticipation!