May 23, 2013

This last nine days has been a week of new faces in old places -- new faces being visitors from the US, Moscow, and Germany,  and old places because we spent this week visiting many historical places during the week of  the celebration of Kyiv’s 1531 year birthday. 

On Monday, the Area Legal Counsel from Moscow (old and new) arrived in town. Robert Lockhead, Gary’s boss for the last year has been called as the new mission president for the Donetsk Mission. Gary’s new boss will be Brent Belnap from New York City, who was interestingly Joe’s stake president for many years. Gary worked with them until Wednesday evening when they left for Turkey. They met with legal counsel, the US Embassy, and we were able to have dinner with them on Tuesday evening.

Dinner with the bosses

On Tuesday our friends, Joan Reed and her sister and brother-in-law, Lynn and Greg Detweiler, arrived from the USA. So it was a fun ten days of reviewing the sights that we have come to take for granted here in Kyiv.

Friends from home

On Wednesday we were able to catch the last of the lilacs and rhododendrons at the Botanical Garden. Some of the lilac trees here were planted in 1848 and are still blooming.

Field trip to the Lilac Festival

Smelling the lilacs

Lilacs and rhodadendrons

165 year old lilac bush

We also went down to the Vydubytsky Monastery where there was a marriage taking place in the old cathedral.

Wedding at old chapel in monastery

Grounds at the Monastery

We then had lunch at our favorite little Crimean Restaurant “Krum” and then had a bus tour of the city finishing up with dinner at our apartment.

On Thursday we went out to the Museum of Folk Architecture and Rural Life in Pirogov Village. It was lightly raining when we got there but not really enough to dampen our spirits and the spirit of the open air Museum. Gary and I have been there a few times but have never seen as much of the area as we did today. There are 150 hectares (370 acres)  divided into territories depicting the different regions of Ukraine with everything from windmills, watermills, chicken houses, churches, and houses dating from the 1500’s to the 1800’s. We met an architectural historian from Great Britain who told us that it is the finest collection of windmills and architectural buildings from the early ages that he has ever seen. We had a wonderful lunch of cabbage salad and borscht at an outdoor restaurant before ending our four hour, nine and a half mile walk through Ukrainian history.

Windmills at Pirogov

Ancient windmill

A new friend

Great fence

House and stone fence

Kitchen, bedroom, dining room, drying room, etc.

Root Cellar

Best cabbage salad ever!

Friday I had arranged for a wonderful tour guide, Helen, to meet us at the Golden Gate where we started our tour of that area of the city. St. Sophia’s is Helen’s favorite tour and she is so very knowledgeable about the history of this area that it was important to have her along on this part of our day. St. Sophia’s is one of the most popular sites in Kyiv and was built by Yaraslav the Wise in 1017-1037, before most of the architectural jewels of Europe even existed. I walk by St. Sophia’s at least once or twice a day and will remember not to take it for granted like I have been the last little while.

The tour

Horse chestnuts in front of St. Sophia

Bakery at St. Sophia's

St. Sophia's original Byzantine fascia

After a fun lunch at Limonade, we walked down to St. Michael's Cathedral, then down Desiatynna (tithing street) to St. Andrew's Cathedral and then down Andreyevsky Spusk, (Andrew's descent). St. Andrew's street is filled with street vendors and artists and leads down to Podil which is the oldest part of Kyiv and reminds me a lot of New Orleans. We enjoyed seeing all the sights on the way down including the Museum of One. This museum is dedicated to the history of Kyiv's most popular street and has displays from and tells the story of each address on the street--A very historical and fun little museum.

St. Michael's

Souvenir Street

St. Andrews

St. Andrew's Descent

St. Andrew's Descent

Museum of One

Artist at work

Saturday I met up with Joan and company at 10:00. We had a great morning. First we went up to Ivano Franko Park taking pictures by the famous monuments. Then we went up to the House with Chimeras which is probably the most unusual house ever built.

Joan and Yakovchenko

House with Chimeras

We then went to the National Bank of Ukraine (Federal Reserve) after which we walked over to Mariyinskiy Park, where the revolutionaries were lining up for the big National Day parade. After walking by Mariyinskiy Palace which is being restored, we went over the Kissing Bridge where young lovers kiss and put a lock on the bridge and throw the key into the Dnipro River to seal their love. The Kissing Bridge leads to Khreshatyk Park where we saw the Puppet Theatre, the Friendship Arch of Russia and Ukraine (dedicated 9 years before Ukraine’s  independence) and then back down to and through the thousands of people at the parade of revolutionaries. We met up with Gary at Krum (it took him over an hour to get there by foot as all the buses were stopped at St. Sophia’s.) We later found out that all missionaries were to have received a bulletin from the Embassy telling us not to go to the Parade of Nationals because there could be possible trouble, but since we did not receive the alert we were in the middle of the excitement. And to top the day off we went to the Opera Natalya Poltolvka at the National Opera House.

National Bank of Ukraine

Joan and Lynn at fountain in Mariyinskiy Park

Parade line up

Restoration of Mariyinskiy Palace

Kissing Bridge (Lovers Bridge)

Locks on Kissing Bridge

Puppet theater

Parade

Riot control

At the National Opera

Sunday after church we had dinner at our apartment and then went on a little walking tour of the Monastery by our house, Babi Yar and Khruschev’s dacha.

Monday (are you getting tired yet?) we decided to hire a taxi and go out to Chernobyl.  Gary has wanted to do this ever since we have been here. Our knowledgeable taxi driver told us to bring our passports, wear long pants, long-sleeved shirts and bring a change of shoes. That sounded pretty complete. What we didn’t have was a permit granted by three government agencies in Ukraine which takes about two weeks to get and costs $200 a person. So we did get to the outside gates of Chernobyl but not inside. It was a beautiful two hour drive though the country though, and we stopped to take pictures of some storks in their nest and of a little community cemetery.

Planting

Cemetary on the way to Chernobyl

Storks feeding babies

Outside the gates at Chernobyl

Back in Kyiv we went to the Chernobyl Museum and rented the headsets so we could get the minute details of what happened on that fateful day back in 1986. We finished off this day by going to the National Philharmonic of Ukraine.

At the Philharmonic

Tuesday was our day to tour the Lavra including the caves. We met at the statue of the starving little girl in front on the Famine Museum which is located right next to the Lavra. Five spikelets of wheat in her hands symbolizes the “Law of five spikelets,” which was the name that peasants gave to the government resolution of the Stalinist regime that sent people into camps just for gleaning the fields after the harvest. Because of this holodomor, (death by starvation) the people in Ukraine never throw away even a crust of bread but feed it to the birds. It is estimated that seven to ten million people died of starvation.

 

Statue of the starving little girl

We had a very thorough tour of the Lavra or the “Caves Monastery” which is the number one tourist attraction in Kyiv. The enormous ensemble of white churches with green and gold rooftops represents the spiritual heart of the country and is symbolic of Kyiv’s survival throughout a millennium of adversity. Some of the churches date back to the 11^th Century. The caves are a very popular place during Easter when there is a pilgrimage of   thousands of Ukrainians and other tourists that come to pay homage to the oldest saints of Ukrainian Orthodoxy whose bodies are preserved in the tunnels.

 

Bell Tower at Lavra

Church from the 11th century

Lavra 

Lavra Church

Walk down to the caves

Part of Lavra complex

We also went to the World War II Museum which is called the Great Patriotic War Museum and is located under the Motherland Statue (a 530 ton statue that is 108 meters high). This museum is an outstanding memorial to the people that died in Ukraine and Russia during World War II. We had Helen join us for these two tours and she was once again a wealth of knowledge. 

Walkway to WWII Museum

Exhibit in WWII Museum

Wednesday was last minute shopping and souvenir buying day and then we enjoyed dinner at a wonderful Italian Restaurant for our last night together.

 

I wanted to mention also that on Wednesday I was able to see Lena’s mother from Zaporizhzhya at the Temple. It is hard to believe that it was a year ago that Lena stopped by to see us on her way to stay the summer with her family. I also can’t believe how much I have learned since her visit here and it was especially fun to be with her mother a year later.

Lena's mom

Thursday evening after our friends from the USA left, some friends from Germany, Ted and Marion Nagel,  stopped by to see us before they departed on a cruise of the Black Sea out of Kyiv. We were introduced to them by my cousin Marcia Stuart so we all met for dinner and had a wonderful evening.

 

Stuarts and Nagels

Our thoughts and prayers are with our friends and loved ones at home and we are always so grateful for the blessings of family, friends, and the gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives. 

Quote for the week is from Neal A. Maxwell:

“God loves us and, loving us, has placed us here to cope with challenges which he will place before us………because God loves us there are some particularized challenges that he will deliver to each of us.  He will customize the curriculum for each of us in order to teach us the things we most need to know.  He will set before us in life what we need, not always what we like.  And this will require us to accept with all our hearts the truth that there is divine design in each of our lives and that you have rendezvous to keep individually and collectively.

May 22, 2013