Email Received 02/25 – 5:00 PM Ukraine Time:
Hi!
We actually didn’t get to sign the lease – the landlady is nervous about renting to Americans because she fears that we will get homesick and will take off in the middle of the night. So, Lori (the missionary here) is going to sign the lease in her name for us and will serve as our middle man. We trust Lori and she trusts us, so it is a good arrangment. We believe that after the 3 first three months, Tatiana will trust us and will allow us to put our name on the lease. Although she is nervous about leasing to us, she is taking good care of us. She will fix a few things (which originally we were told we had to take it “as is”), and she decided to buy us a rug for the main living area. The floors are all wood and rugs are expensive, so this is a huge blessing. She also told us we could change the locks and not give them a copy. It is common here for landlords to come and go from their tenants apartments as they please; if you complain, they make life difficult. There is one missionary who’s landlady would come several times a day and use her water so that she didn’t have to pay as much for her own; she figured the American was rich enough to pay for more. So, we are blessed that Tatiana respects our privacy. She has also agreed to let us paint, as long as we get her approval on the color scheme. Right now they are all bright pastel colors.
Our tutoring has been secured. We will be studying with a friend, Snezhana. She lives about 30 minutes away, but we think she will be wonderful. We instantly connected with her, and she was already giving us advice and small lessons as we hung out with her during the day. We are going to have lessons 3-4 times a day for 2 hours. She warned us that we would have tons of homework, but since language is our main focus for a while, we expect it to be strenuous. There is also a professional translator and interprator who teaches English at a university here. We met with her and she has offered to meet with us weekly just to help us out and give us hands-on practical application – ordering food, shopping, etc.
Other than that, God is opening many new relationships who serve in ministry here. Many work with youth and orphans, both of which we have a heart for. I’ll give more information about those later.
We leave to return to Budapest tomorrow – a day earlier than originally planned – but things have been so smooth here that everything was taken care of more quickly than anticipated. It will be nice to have 2 days to just do touristy things – visiting castles and museums.
Love you all. See you soon.
~Josh and LIndsey
Me on Mission 