This week is our visitors week, as we are having three conference meetings held at the Ukraine and Moldova Annual Conference Office (our apartment). The United Methodist Women's Council meeting will be held today, the Annual Conference Financial Committee tomorrow, and the Annual Conference Administrative Council on Friday. All of the committee members will be getting nice Ukrainian snacks such as these and will be well supplied with pens, some of which actually write.

Our visitors week started off, however, by a visit from Raiya Pinchuk and Sasha Lutsiak from Chernivtsi, a city in Western Ukraine. Raiya is the wife of the pastor of the church, Alexander Pinchuk and Sasha is the church lay leader. They will be attending the Russia Initiative Consultation, which will be held in Kansas City and had their interview with the US Embassy yesterday. Since they had to be at the embassy at 7:00am, (the embassy processes 200-300 visa interviews per day) they came a day early to spend the night with us. Here they are after the interview, with the smiles of those who have just received a visa.


A common joke about the strictness of the visa application process to get a US visa is that the last Soviet institution in Ukraine is the US Embassy.

Raiya's husband Alexander spent 7 years in prison because of his faith. Actually, it was about 3.5 in prison and the rest in a mental institution. He refused to serve in the Army (Ukrainian Christians from the Soviet period have a strong pacifist tradition) during the Afghanistan war and was asked was it because of his faith. When he answered in the affirmative, he was then visited by psychiatrists. They asked him the standard question in cases such as this, "Do you believe the Holy Spirit speaks to you?" When he said yes, the diagnosis of schizophrenia was immediately given, backed up by the admission of the patient of hearing imaginary voices. He subsequently was committed to a mental institution. Hard to believe this happened only 15-20 years ago in Ukraine. Now Ukraine has one of the best statutes and application of the statute regarding religious freedom among the former Soviet republics.