Arriving

We arrived in Kiev on the 29th of June 1999. Going through customs was an experience. The customs officials were not the most pleasant people to deal with but we made it and finally made contact with the people from the Kiev Service Center, who got us to the train station for the over night trip to Donetsk. It was so hot and humid that day, that we were perspiring profusely when we finally got all our bags on the train. We sat down and started to wonder how we were going to smell in the morning when we met the missionaries and President and Sister Manzhos. Being military people we are always prepared and with the help of some baby wipes and deodorant, we decided we smelled just fine. Once the train started moving the compartment cooled off and we had a pleasant trip watching the country side pass by. We discussed at length what was going to happen to us in the morning. We wondered what the next three years would bring. Thinking about this was both wonderful and scary. We prayed that we would be able to do all that was asked of us. We went to sleep with the clickety clack of the train tracks and the faint smell of the bathroom. Our train was supposed to be in Donetsk at 0930 but it didn’t arrive until 1230. The office Elders, the assistants, and President and Sister Manzhos were there waiting for us. We got into the van and quickly drove to our new apartment. When I say quickly, I really mean fast. I couldn’t believe how fast and furious the driving habits were in the Ukraine. We tailgated, sped around, and held on as we watched the semi-controlled chaos of Ukrainian driving. We were taken to our brand new apartment. The apartment was nice and we had two bathrooms and three bedrooms and a great living room and a nice office and a great kitchen-all the comforts of home. The place even had a room heater/air-conditioner in each room. We had a Ukrainian lunch and then unpacked a little. We both love cabbage and potatoes and almost any fruit or vegetable along with all meats. The meal was great. We talked with the Manzhos’ about the apartment, the garage, the old mission home, and other housekeeping issues. We didn’t talk much about the mission or the missionaries. We went to the office and prepared to take the Manzhos’ to the train station for the ride back to Kiev. We met a lot of missionaries and members that night at the station. They wanted to say good bye to the Manzhos family. Once they boarded the train and left, we went back to the apartment, finished unpacking, and tried to calm our nerves. We were now on our own. We were responsible for about 130 missionaries in a country where we couldn’t communicate. Exactly the type of experience we had been praying for. At about 10:00 we received a call that some missionaries had been in a fight with some local boys. Nothing really serious but enough to give us a reality check. It seems to me that those first few months missionaries were getting in fights on a weekly basis. Either the beatings slowed down or we got used to the situation because after a while it just didn’t bother us as much as it did that first night. We had written the assistants and asked them to schedule a mission tour as quickly as possible. We wanted first and foremost to meet all the missionaries and as many members as possible. When we arrived home from the tour, we were convinced that we had the best missionaries in the world. Because of the missionaries, we knew the next three years were going to have great spiritual experiences.