The first person we come in contact with on this journey is Ivan Yurishko. He is a successful enterpreneur in the Transcarpathian area of Khust, Ukraine. I met him on my first trip to western Ukraine in October 1992 and we've been friends since. He is a "can do" person who has helped us organize (among many projects) our Ambassador University ESL (English as a Second Language) project in 1994, dental, optical and medical mission in 1999 and has printed United Church of God literature for us in the Estonian, Russian and now the Swedish languages. He has visited the United States on three occasions and has been our guest in Indianapolis one time.

He was going to drive all the way to Budapest to pick us up, but on the phone today he tells me that the lines of traffic leaving Ukraine take about 3-5 hours to cross into Hungary . That would add considerably to an already a difficult 12 hours of driving, so we insisted on taking the train from Budapest to the sinister sounding town of "Chop" in Ukraine just across the border from Hungary.

Our day will be long tomorrow flying from Indianapolis to Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany, to Budapest, Hungary. Then we take the train from Budapest to the Chop. This will be good for our group as they will see a little of Budapest as we backtrack from the airport to the train station and get a flavor of Budapest.

Then 4 hours to the border where Ivan Yurishko picks us up. Then another one and a half hours to a night's rest before our exctiing schedule begins on Friday!

Keep following us!