Our hearts took us back to Light of Love Mission in Vinogradov. Seeing the children was the first thing we wanted to do because we love the interaction with them. We marvel at the the amazing outcomes from the labors of the Polichko's.

Equally amazing is the spirit and action of Ivan Yurishko who is a Ukrainian who is able to work through and rise above all the inefficiencies, jealousies and lack of vision of so many and make something WORK!

Ivan's personal home is being remodeled. All the windows have been replaced, the walls inside have been straightened. A new addition has been added in back. We have stayed with him, but could not this time because of the house being torn up.

Ivan owns two businesses: Orienda and Shturmer. Orienda is his construction company and Schturmer is his printing operation. He started Orienda in 1991 and Shturmer in 1993, about the time I first became acquainted with him.

He just acquired a new industrial property and will use it as a cement mixing plant. It's located right on the Reka River close to where it empties into the Tissa. He's been busy looking at German website trying to a buy a used cement truck to bring back from Germany. Construction abounds in Khust. Convenience stores and petrol stops are everywhere. Businesses have brightly-painted store fronts indicated a cheerful optimistic spirit. A positive spirit based on a what they called a "wiggling economy" is prevalent.

We drove out to Polichko's in Vinogradov. It is Sunday morning and it is an Orthodox holiday. The day before we saw branches from Linden trees being cut. In a village before Vinogradov we stopped by an open air market in front of an Orthodox church. Many vendors were selling trinkets. While walking by of them, we noticed a man shouting at a woman who was crying. He then kicked her boxes of wares and all the packages spilled out. He then hurried down the line of vendors in a bullying manner and we saw people giving him money. He told the people that he was the caretaker of the church and that they needed to pay him for helping him with the upkeep of the street. Most likely he was just collecting the money to put into his pocket. He had a most bully, nasty and cruel spirit. We felt so badly for the poor woman who was picking up the packages that had been strewn about.

We continued on to Vinogradov and saw the children. Katherine and Kassy both were very involved. Kassy was playing volleyball and letting various kids listen to one song apiece on her I-Pod. Katherine was more deeply involved with the individual children, in particular Natasha and Katya. It was very hard for her to break away from them after our almost three hour visit.

Bev and I had a chance to talk to the Polichko's away from everyone and discuss their needs. They have constructed a building for what they were hoping was going to be a school. They have received help from Switzerland and Holland. But, it will be difficult to make it a school and they have decided to turn it into a family home for orphans. The plan is to have 20 boys live there along with two families. The boys would go to school as it were from home and be made to feel that they were from a normal family situation. It looks like this plan would be the most practical one for this building. I had first seen this building in 1991 on my first visit to Polichko's...its construction is slowly coming to an end.

From Polichko's we drove back to Khust. On the way back Ivan showed us the industrial location for his new cement plant. We are more than one hour late to lunch at the pastor Vasyl Mondich's home. But, we are told that that is OK. People are often one or two hours late with no explanation.

We then spend the afternoon with Vasyl and Svetlana Mondich. He was the first Sabbath-keeping minister I met when I came to Transcarpathia for the first time in 1992. We often stayed at his home on our visits. We began staying with Ivan Yurishko more after Vasyl and Svetlana had their daughter and son-in-law move in with them.

We talked over all times and brought each other up to date on what we were doing. We missed him on our last two visits in 2001 and 2004 because he was working in the Kiev area.

After a refreshing conversation and a fun pizza lunch, we went to Ivan's business to connect to the Internet for the first time on this trip. It was the best connection we've had, but still I had trouble getting my email and uploading the travel blog. It works very well for awhile, then slows to a crawl over and over. It was very frustrating to do much and after about two hours in frustration had to be satisfied with the little that I was able to post. What I am writing now I'll probably not be able to post until when we get to Estonia on Friday where there are excellent Internet connections at the hotel we stay at.

About 8:30 Ivan's wife Nina came by and we went and had dinner at a restaurant in Khust. This is a rarity...we mostly eat at people's homes. Restaurants were almost non-existent on our first visits, but now you are seeing more and more of them. We had a veal meal and tried to figure out the continuation of our travels. Should we go by train and rent a car in Kiev or should we drive. We drove down to the train station and found that there were no train tickets available for Kiev. Ivan has borrowed his sister's new VW SUV that they had just bought in Germany.