Greetings from Ukraine,

Grandparents

Well, I must apologize for the "light" blinding your eyes as you read this report!!!! Jay Don and I just can’t wipe the SMILE and GLOW off our faces as we have just learned we are going to be GRANDPARENTS for the first time!! Brandon and Mary are expecting our first little Rogers in February, 2004! They announced the GOOD NEWS over a "conference chat" to us and Rhett and Julia about three weeks ago. They had told us it would be a chat about our Summer vacation next year~~~~~~We would have a great vacation alright but with ONE more Rogers! At first we didn’t get it but when we caught on, you should have heard the "hollering", clapping, high fives and tears of joy!! I’m sure the night watchman thought we had all gone crazy! We were asked NOT to tell the good news until Mary was past the three month point and until they had time to tell personal friends. They have now told everyone so we can now shout it from "the mountain tops", opps, I mean the computer tops!! After over seven years, we are OVERJOYED, even though it is hard for the whole concept to sink in, especially with us so far away. However, Julia already has everyone here calling me "Babuska" (Grandmother) so I think by the time the little one comes, we’ll all be prepared. Jay Don is already planning to buy Dallas Cowboy out fits! We do ask your prayers daily for Mary and for a normal healthy baby (and Brandon too!)

Opening Chapel

August 11^th saw us here for our third "Opening Chapel". It was just great. There was standing room only and people were all up and down the halls as well. Tim Burrow, missionary from Mariupol and part time teacher at UBI, gave the students a great encouraging lesson to begin the Fall term. Tim had brought a van full, his family, several AIM students, and a new missionary family who have just moved there. It was so good to see all the returning students and see many new faces as well. I believe we have 11 or 12 new students. The first week of school is a Seminar Week where classes only go until 1:00 P.M. Jay Don and Koystya Vituyk, one of our UBI graduates and local preachers taught the Seminar classes for the week. After the first days session all the staff and Tim’s group went to the "traditional" place for lunch, Tequila Boom for Mexican food, Ukrainian style!!! There were about 20 of us and we had a wonderful time.

Ron and Patti Fox from Texas, Dayton Keesee from Oklahoma and Dan Williams from Arkansas are here teaching our first full term. Jay Don is teaching two classes but with all this wonderful help, he can actually have time to run the school. God is good and He has provided plenty of help through the end of the Fall term for which we are very grateful.

I have had them all over for dinner a couple of times and it is a joy to get to know them, and thankfully I was blessed with water and electricity this time. Dayton Keesee was one of Jay Don’s teachers when he was at Sunset, 36 years ago!!! He is now 74 and is the cutest little man and full of energy and lots of stories!!!

Video In the Park

Before school started Rhett, Julia, Jay Don and I went out to the New Light congregation where Jay Don and I spoke and Julia translated. After our lessons and a meal at the church flat, the preachers there had set up a "video in the park". They had asked Jay Don to bring his projector so they could show a video on Creation just in the open square. It was pretty "gutsy" of them but many people showed up. I wish you could have seen the way they "rigged" this up. They had a white sheet strung up on some sticks they found and wires running everywhere. They had two speakers they hauled over from the church flat that gave very loud sound. It was a lovely evening and quite pleasant to sit out under the awesome stars and watch a movie on God’s beautiful creation. The film was all in Russian but you could tell by the pictures how awesome our Creator is and how there is absolutely no way this earth "just happened". Most of the audience were young people who listened well, except of one group who were very drunk and were a bit disturbing but all in all it was a great outreach. The guys who set this up are our UBI students and are really trying hard to do some outreach in their community. The whole evening was another Ukrainian experience!!

Mega "thank yous" to the ones who provided the projector for our use. It is being used in many ways to teach the gospel.

Children's Hospital

During the earlier part of the month Jay Don visited the Children’s Hospital that the school helps. I usually love to go but just could not face it that day. Earlier we had gone out in "the boonies" to visit the secretary for the school who had just had a new baby. I have seen a lot of bad things over here but I saw something that day that is just unbelievable and very depressing. This poor lady has no running water in her house and has a new baby and 2 other children, 11 and 13. When you get in the gate a monster of a dog was there and it was very trashy looking. Further in, she had a huge vegetable garden that looked pretty nice. The baby was in a pram thing with a mosquito net over it while she slept. It was rather hot so she had the baby outside for it's nap. She can't open her windows and of course she has NO fan. We were invited in. When you first came in there was a small hall thing for shoes and then a long screen type thing hanging in the doorway to try to keep the flies and mosquitoes out of the house. The first room was the "kitchen". There was a nook thing that you sit at and then one small counter where she had a drain rack full of dishes and baby bottles sitting all over. There were several buckets of water on the floor. There was NO sink(why have a sink when you have NO water??) and there was NO stove!!! There were cats and cat food everywhere. There were canning jars everywhere and I ask her how she canned???? They never heard of a pressure cooker. She had a hot plate thing with 2 burners on it . She said you get the jars hot and pour the food in them. She had some type of thing that just screwed the lid down real tight. I have no idea how it works but people can here big time so it must work. Any way I just could not imagine having a family of 5 and cooking on 2 hot plates, NO oven. She did have a big fridge. The bathroom was right off the kitchen. It was one big room but she had plastic tubs everywhere with water in them and one with clothes in it for washing. I thought how do you manage a household of 5 and wash all the clothes and yourselves like this and have to heat the water on top of all this???? I know many people had to do this years ago, but this is 2003!!! You then walked up some scary stairs that were straight up and there was a room that both the older kids shared, boy and girl, and then a room about the size of a utility room that she had a black and white TV in and an old couch which was her living room. The other room was here room where her bed was the old kind of divan that you lay out for a bed and the crib for the baby was in her room. It is so hard to fathom that people live like this. I feel so sorry for her I can hardly stand it, just sort of made me sick when we got back home. She seems very happy with it as she was living in a 2 room shack that didn't have water or a bathroom. There was an outhouse. She showed us where it was and we just went OHHHHHHH!! When I got back to my nice, clean, cool apartment I thanked God over and over for being born in America and into freedom. We didn't think we were rich but by these "standards" we were!!! I was feeling so low I just couldn’t face the hospital. However, Jay Don said the kids were all up and in good spirits and the director very thankful for the visit, food and medicines.

Mary Lee's Birthday

I had a lovely birthday in spite of being in lots of PAIN!!!! Wednesday, Aug. 13th I was walking to the bank, about a 30 minute walk from our apartment. I was happy as lark, humming and NOT watching where I was going and BOOM, in a split second I was FLAT on my stomach on the concrete sidewalk. I have lived over here 2 years and I KNOW you do NOT take your eyes off where you are walking because the sidewalks have huge step offs, holes, pot holes, cracks and every other means of DANGEROUS wearing down that you can think of. I was walking at a rather good pace, looking up at a building, wondering if it were a restaurant and then there was a drop off I missed, I twisted my ankle and tried by best to keep from falling but I fell hard. I'm sure I looked like I just slid into "home plate"!!! I was stunned and in shock it hurt so bad and just lay right in the middle of the sidewalk for a few minutes. Finally a nice young man came up and helped me get up. I sat on a wall thing for a few minutes trying to realize what had happened. It felt like everything in the top half of my body was broken. My ribs felt like they were throbbing. Finally I walked onto the bank, changed some money and went down to their restroom area. I washed off my hands, and elbow and knee that were bleeding and TRIED to compose myself but I was in a lot of pain. I sat in the bank for a while and then headed back home. Before I got home I stopped at Fat Guys and got some soup. It was a West Texas Wind Storm day but I decided to eat outside as I just wasn't in the mood to listen to loud music and smell smoke. So I sat in a section where NO ONE was. In just a matter of minutes 4 loud men sat at the table right next to me, all smoking. I was so mad. In the next few minutes the rest of the tables ALL filled up. By this time the waitress had brought my soup and as I was just fixing to start eating it, a man sat right down across from me at MY table. He said something in Russian and I thought maybe he was just resting there until the rest of his party got there. When my waitress passed I looked at here like~~~"What's UP???" She told the guy he couldn't sit there and he got up. Well, he walked up and down and saw that all the tables were taken, and sat down again!!! By that time his waitress brought out a tray with a Corona Beer, a mug, a shot glass and a graft of vodka. He immediately poured a shout of vodka, downed it in one gulp, poured the beer until the mug was full, downed that in one gulp, poured another shot of vodka, downed it in one gulp and then asked for his check as he was downing the remaining beer. He looked at me and said, "Ochin zharka" ( very hot) and took off as fast as he came. I just sat there in amazement that he could even walk!!!!!!!!!! After I got home I looked at my ribs and they were all swollen. The kids wanted me to go get an X-Ray but I wanted to wait and see what happened. I iced every part of my upper body and then took a hot bath and iced again, took Tylenol and tried to sleep. I had a rough night.

The next morning (my birthday) I could hardly move from the waist up. I could walk fine. I was at the school for chapel where Rhett was the speaker. It was indeed an awesome way to start the day. He has improved so much in his speaking. He talked about how wonderful God can work in your life when you let Him. He did a great and made us cry with joy!!! After chapel I was given several bouquets of flowers, some other gifts and then Jay Don had bought a beautiful Roman/Greek small fountain to surprise me. It was sitting on my desk. It is just beautiful and I love the sound of the water running. For over here it is stunning. I will try to enclose a picture. Between my sweet husband, my children, the staff and the students I was sure made to feel special. Also before we left for the school, Ashley and Alexis had planned to be on line so we could have a chat. It was great to hear their voices. Later when Jay Don was finished with classes we spent the rest of the day walking and looking around and then at 7 he took me to Titanic. He had "reserved" the piano player and we had a lovely evening. We took the piano player some sheet music of Pachelbel Cannon and he played it perfect never missing a note the very first time. He is sooooooooo good. I had California Rolls and we had a calamari appetizer that were delicious. I slept better that night but was still in a lot of pain and had much swelling. We don’t think I broke any thing but I sure may have cracked a couple of ribs on the left side. I talked to an American nurse, Marion Bush, and she said there is not a whole lot you can do even if you do break ribs, maybe tape them. I sure felt like a big fool, laying in the middle of the sidewalk and not even any ice to slip on!!! I just pray that nothing on the inside is "damaged"!

Shevchenko

Last Sunday Jay Don preached at a congregation called Shevchenko. They used to meet in a rented building but now they have a new building. They have done an excellent job doing the remodeling. We did not know that this was to take place but after the service one of our students got married, so we were privileged to see the ceremony. Jay Don is asked to speak at many of the area congregations so it keeps us going all over the place on Sundays. It is great to see the places and the progress that is being made by our students from UBI. We have now had 50 male graduates from UBI and about 90% of them are preaching and working full time with the church. We have had 25 female graduates and they are busy teaching children’s classes, ladies classes, and teaching their neighbors.

Patti and Ron Fox, Jay Don and I all went out to Kubachev today, where Rhett preaches and of course Julia translates. He did a great job and we are all so proud of him. You can tell the people there just love them. Julia’s brother has been here a couple of weeks and he did the Lord’s Supper talk. He just turned 17 and has been carrying most of the load at his home church since he was 14. He did a great job and is such a mature sweet young man. He and Julia had just come back from the Black Sea. Rhett and Julia had paid Ilya’s way to go there for his birthday gift. He has never seen a Sea. He has to return to Omsk Wednesday.

We again we want to thank you for you love, support, and prayers. Don’t forget to pray for Mary and the baby.

Love, Jay Don and Mary Lee

Ludmilla and her child

Mary Lee with fountain and flowers

Jay Don preaching at Shevchenko

Jay Don and Mary Lee with newly-weds

Jay Don at Children's Hospital