We're Finished, & Igor's Visiting.

Ahhhhh... it feels so good to have the kitchen done! I cooked the first meal in the "new" kitchen on Saturday morning when I made a big breakfast for our Ukrainian guest, Igor Kucher, who is in town with some others from his country to walk in the Talbot School of Theology graduation on Friday. The group arrived last Friday night and will leave next Sunday morning (nine nights). I'll put up a few pictures on this week's happenings...

First I'll show you the kitchen, as it looks right now. See the nice bowl of oranges over there? We went last night and picked them at the Morsey's house.

I'm so shocked that I don't have a huge bookcase full of books to cram in here! I've been weeding them out, some are down below and a few went into the library. Isn't that nice?

Saturday night we went to a Kenya Night at church. This is Faustain, who is at Talbot. He and his family are here and in our Joint Heirs class and he's modeling one of his bright Kenyan shirts. There was a nice fashion show with several things that could be bought to help support the team from church that's going to Kenya this summer.

On Sunday the Ukrainian group brought greetings from their various churches, with Mark Saucy introducing each one. They said they enjoyed the services - they were in both.

This is our guest, Igor (pronounced eager), who is 41, married to Svetlana with two kids, Andrew, 12 and Anya, 13. He is a teacher at a seminary in Odessa and also helps pastor a large church that includes an orphanage. Odessa is about 300 miles from Kiev.

Here we are, ready to eat dinner after church! On the left is Elijah, who was visiting with us that afternoon. He's married to Valentina and they have a 6 month old baby. They met when she was 14 and he was about 22 and got married a few years later!

After some naps we all got pulled together and went over to the Steven's house to help celebrate Heather's graduation from Cal State Fullerton! Hooray! Ping pong was fun and just about everyone eventually got involved. Nice.

Daddy had fun talking to Elijah.

Later Elijah took this picture of us out on Gretchen and Kirk's driveway.

Igor and Elijah wanted a picture of themselves on the sidewalk out in front.

Next stop... Downtown Disney! Wow, now that was an attraction! The guys really loved seeing everything. It was ALL interesting to them!

We walked all over the Grand Californian Hotel, and this is a shot in the Conference Center. They had fun making a little movie of the "magic" paper towels that come shooting out the moment you tear one off!

Now there's a goofy looking lady with some normal looking men...

This morning I had to get a picture of Igor squeezing himself some orange juice, a fun new experience! He helped us pick the oranges last night. Each morning I take him to Biola with me when I go to work. David bought a bunch of avocados from some kids and we've been totally enjoying them!

Here's a better shot. Ukrainians always value being snappy dressers, so they all brought suits for those important occasions. Igor is dying to see a real downtown with skyscrapers... that's what he's used to. I think we'll take him downtown LA on Saturday morning if it works out. He was wondering if he could WALK there. No. So I think it's the right thing to do!

Have a good Memorial Day weekend!