What to say? I'm exhausted! It has been a long time since I last wrote and a lot has happened. I suppose the biggest of these is that we're now back in Ukraine. We flew back a couple weeks ago and had a pretty simple flight with the kids.

As for the last month before we left America? A quick summary of what I remember (not comprehensive, but mostly in chronological order):

* Our Ukrainian friend Ira came to visit us from California.
* I took Leah to the zoo for a day with her cousin and my mom.
* Leah and I both got sick for a couple weeks before leaving. Antibiotics cleared it up before we flew back - praise the Lord!
* Wrote a church newsletter article about Ternopil (you can try to click here ... not sure if it will work, grabbed it out of the email they sent me.)
* Christina's family came to visit us again.
* Leah was diagnosed with a vision problem (lazy eye, can't remember the technical name). She also now has glasses ... can you imagine how hard glasses are to put on a 2-year old?

Aside from an annoying ant problem in the hotel room (not too bad, just annoying), there isn't much to write about the flights. We liked to have nearly missed our flight out of London though just because of being slow - we heard an announcement for final boarding just as we arrived at the gate! Leah was pretty grumpy on that flight too.

After getting into Ukraine (YAY!), we found out that we would be driving ourselves back to Ternopil. We ended up taking a total of 9 hours to drive back which normally takes George about 6 hours - hah! I blame the rain, darkness, and an inadvertent problem with a traffic cop ($30 ticket too!). It was a learning experience though and I definitely feel more confident about driving in Ukraine.

We're still trying to get back on decent sleep schedules. I was chatting with a friend briefly who shared with me that the difficulty in getting your family on a good schedule is directly proportional to the number of kids you have (that was for us math geeks).

Haven't done too much as far as ministry is concerned just yet. I'm planning a few reoccurring things though:

* Re-starting guitar classes, but I think I'm going to make a couple changes. I'll keep the beginner classes separated and make that class more about teaching fundamentals. I'll combine all other levels of students into a practical class where we spend 2-3 weeks learning a new song of their choice.
* Re-starting the baby sitting ministry for Christina's small group for mothers of pre-schoolers.
* I've been requested to create a website/forum for the upcoming worship conference in late July.
* Small/home group study (not sure what about yet though).
* There is a technical device that we're going to give to the family we minister to in Zasluchenya. It is a hard drive which can be hooked up to a TV and play anything that is stored on it (video/audio). We're going to give them a large selection of sound teachings so I've been tasked to go through the materials we were provided and nix the bad stuff.

Esther, a South Korean student from the Bible College in Hungary, is doing her internship here for the last few weeks and will be leaving with everyone else to go to the conference in Hungary. She is a wonderful help and has a really big servant's heart. She'll be missed.

That's really all I can think about for now. We've also got a worship conference coming up in late July along with a missions program (2-3 weeks including outeach) in August so those will be on the radar as well.

Oh, and pretty much everyone else on the ministry team is going to the Foundations conference in Vajta, Hungary this weekend so we'll be by ourselves except for a few others. Pray that things go smoothly. I don't know if they'll be back for next Sunday or the Sunday after. We'd be just too overwhelmed with making another trip like that.

Pictures may come ... or they may not.