Report #13–October 10, 2021

Featured Photo: Caleb arrives at Kyiv’s Borispol Airport!

It has been several days since I was able to send aa report. The silent days have been filled with trains, planes and automobiles as I travelled to Kherson. Ukraine. On the morning I left Ivano-Frankivsk it was a crisp 29F degrees and cold autumn rains are forecast for the mountains this week!

While I was leaving Ivano-Frankivsk Caleb was leaving Montgomery. His travels were scheduled to have him arriving in Kyiv, Ukraine Saturday. Our schedules worked out so that I could meet Caleb at the airport, get him a good meal, and get him ready for his final flight of the day into Lviv where Ruslan would meet him and then travel 2-3 hours by car from Lviv to Ivano-Frankivsk.

Caleb arrived in Kyiv looking like the weary “walking dead” and I feared that jet-lag would put him to sleep and he would miss his connecting flight to Lviv. But all worked well and Caleb pushed through like a trooper!

His trip was not without misadventures. After 5-hours waiting to board in Atlanta, Caleb arrived in Amsterdam over 1 hour late. He had to run from one end of the huge Schiphol Airport (Amsterdam) to the other end as he only had 20 minutes to board. He made it but was exhausted. The new flight protocol says that boarding ends 30 minutes (or something like this) from departure and if you are not checked in at the gate, you do not fly. I know some Americans who leisurely stroll through the airport not believing this (they say “I have a boarding pass and am checked in so what’s the rush?”) until they get to the gate and find they are not onboard that flight because they thought they did not have to rush.

Caleb landed in Kyiv and had his positive test sheet ready and was waved through. All went well but the COVID folks wanted to put some kind of tracking program on his phone. He was trying to send emails but the fiasco in Amsterdam and the poor internet service in both Amsterdam and Borispol made it almost impossible to communicate. We finally got a brief email saying he was waiting for baggage. Tanya and I anxiously waited for him to clear Customs and come out but he did not show. Finally, Tanya went back into the Customs area but was sent out without any information. Finally, Caleb came out saying that his check thru was lost and he had to fill out all kinds of paperwork on that.

We ate, got him to the check-in for his flight to Ivano-Frankivsk and then had to leave as we were catching a train to Kherson. We had planned to fly but the Kherson airport is under repairs and no flights are scheduled. I’ll be in Kherson until Wednesday evening when a train will take me back to Kyiv and I’ll catch a flight to Zaporozhe! Caleb made it to Ivano-Frankivsk after 1:00 a.m. on Sunday. He was scheduled to preach in Ivano-Frankivsk on Sunday. After worship he will be taken to Zelena where he will preach at an even assembly there. On Monday Caleb begins activities in the village schools during the day and will teach evening classes on “The Church of the Bible.”