February 2 - Home for mentally disabled women

It seems the days and nights just keep rolling by and I have so little time to sit down and write about all the wonderful things God is doing here with our team! I am picking the best stories out to share with you so understand there is MUCH more happening here than what is written about.

We visited a home for mentally handicapped women ages 17 - 92. There were about 100 women living there as well as a few men residents. We drove way out in the country side to a small village on the ice and snow covered highways. You can imagine if the highways are covered with ice and snow, how the roads in the village are. We found the location and the bus driver (mind you, this is a huge tour bus) tried to get on the small road that lead back to the facility. The bus got stuck and started to slide sideways off the road. It was the big event of the village for the day, I'm sure because the men all came running to see if they could help.

This was a farming community so they had plenty of ideas of how to get the monstrous bus back on track. One man even offered to get his tractor and pull us out! We saw the tractor he was offering and were thankful he didn't attempt to pull us because I think it would have been a disaster. The tractor looked at least 50 years old, maybe older! But their hearts were in the right place and finally they got straw and put it under the back wheels. We all moved to the back of the bus, over the wheels and the driver started to rock the bus forward and back as we swayed forward and back in the bus! Finally, it moved and we got out of the ditch!!

That was an adventure in itself but what happened inside was even better! The women's home had been established 300 years ago and for that length of time, had housed many people the public just did not want to deal with or see. There were parts of the building that looked 300 years old like the stairs, the floors and some of the walls! Much of the furnishings were extremely old and many were falling apart. There were layers and layers of linoleum on the floors and a few holes (in the floor itself) which made you wonder if it would even hold you up!

They took us on a tour of the top floor where the ladies lived. It had a regular height ceiling but the doors to the rooms reminded me of Hobbit hole doors they were so low! The beds in the rooms were neatly made with a rug over each one as is the custom in these kinds of institutions. There were a few personal belongings on the walls and in the rooms but for the most part pretty sparse. Some of the rooms held 4 or 5 beds while others had 8 or 10.

After the tour, we were taken to a very steep flight of stairs to climb up to their meeting hall. The precious ladies were seated and waiting for us to come in. As we entered, we went over to shake their hands and love on them a bit. The toothy smiles we got and hugs were priceless. They were overjoyed to have some outside visitors and lapped up the attention. There many levels of mental capacity in that room and some of the ladies appeared to be quite normal.

This site reminded me so much of a place we went to in Kirishi, Russia where hundreds of mentally and physically handicapped men and women lived. They had NEVER had any visitors and the people were so full of joy.

Our team sang some songs and Tawny, our 12 year old gave a testimony about herself. Someone did the Gospel presentation and then we prayed with them. When we finished our part of the presentation, they had a presentation for us! Several of the younger women got up and sang. One girl sang a solo that was absolutely beautiful, we were all in tears. Then to our great surprise, they all stood up (about 100 women) and said the Lord's Prayer, in Ukrainian of course. It blew us away.

We handed out carepacks which contain pens, pencils notebooks toothbrush etc, teddy bears and beautiful hot pink fuzzy slippers! I wish you could have seen the incredible reaction to the teddy bears. They were delighted as they hugged and kissed them. Then we started to mingle with the ladies and give them other little gifts and take pictures. Several people brought Polaroid cameras and began taking pictures. WOW, everybody wanted a picture of themselves with one of us! We had enough cameras and film to get pictures of all the sweet ladies there that wanted a picture.

I had big smiley stickers and was going around putting them on each person. Faces lit up and I got more hugs and kisses than you can imagine. As I made my way down one side of the auditorium, a very sweet little lady in navy blue and red plaid dress came up to me and started to pet my arm. I had a wool cable knit sweater on and she must have liked the texture or something. I turned around and extended my arm to hug her. She smiled which revealed only a few teeth in her mouth and then melted into my arms, rubbing her head on my shoulder like a small child. Her tiny, thin body was glued to mine and she wasn't going to let go. I just loved on her for a long time and she finally stepped back still smiling. She came up to me several more times for additional hugs. I was so touched by her. She could not speak at all but she sure knew about love!

By the time we left we had made 100 new friends and there were many hugs, kisses, smiles and even a few tears as we said our goodbyes and headed out the door. I kept thinking to myself, what if my family took me to a place like that and dropped me off never to return. That was too much for me to consider. We felt sure the director cared about these precious ladies. One of the younger girls even mentioned to an interpreter that the director made sure they had nice clothes.

I really don't know how some of the older ones got up and down those steps but they did. There are some amazingly strong people in Ukraine.

That's it for now, I'm going to bed early tonight to get some much needed rest. Today we drove 2 hours out of L'viv to a small village at the base of the Carpathian mountains. We saw the sun for the first time since we've been here! This is also the first day it did not snow! We started calling the daily snowfall, our manna from heaven!

Blessings to all of you dear friends. Please continue to pray for our team. We have sickness spreading through the team and this is the point in the trip where everyone needs an energy boost to make it to the end!

Love and sunshine smiles from Ukraine,
Dasha