Museum of Folk Architecture

On rolling countryside not far from our temple location is a collection of typical Ukrainian rural buildings moved from elsewhere in the country to become a natural museum.  A group of us temple missionaries went there on Sept 5, their annual day when the buildings are opened up for view with attending people in folk costumes, and a fair.  This is one of several examples of the orthodox church buildings.  The three sections of building are the entrance, the middle open chapel with standing room and front altar with a wall covered with icons which separates it from third section, the holy place accessed by two doors where only priests are allowed. 

This swing was interesting to us!

These are beehives!  Notice entrance/exit holes and slots cut to access the honeycombs.  We also liked the decorative  shingled roofs.

We could see why they would pick Fall for their open house.  The gardens and flowers were at their best.  Sunflowers of all kinds are the national flower.  The homes had been recently painted.  Inside they were festooned with flowers and fresh herbs.  Typically in the homes there were large living rooms with fireplaces for heat/cooking on either side of a front entrance hall and lofts overhead accessed by ladders for storage and sleeping.  There were also storage and barn buildings--all thatched.

There were many groups of these wooden windmills to harness wind power for grinding grain.  Ukraine is known as the breadbasket of eastern Europe with very deep rich topsoil.  Notice the bracing so the wind won't topple the building.

The Day of Dedication---Sunday, Aug 29, 2010

There were 3 dedicatory sessions with President Monson, President Uchdorf, Elder Nelson and Elder Walker in attendance.  The sessions were transmitted by satellite to 55 locations in the temple district which covers Ukraine, Moldova, Belorus, most of Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Armenia.   This is the uplink van parked behind the meetinghouse.  You can see our patron housing to the right and the spire of the temple over the top of the roof.  Because so many of us have been fascinated with the demise of the USSR and the beginning spread of the gospel in these countries, the eyes of church members have been drawn to this temple opening.  Gerry Avant from the Church News and Carol Mikita from KSL Chanel 5 were here for more than a week between the last days of the openhouse and the day of dedication.  A crew of producers were here interviewing youth involved in the cultural celebration on Saturday night and then after the same youth had been at the temple dedication.  They were set up just outside our apartment all day on Sunday and said interviews would be posted on lds.org at a youth site that is new there.     

The saints were so excited to have President Monson attending, being in Kiev.  He was his cheery self in the Saturday celebration sitting and playing a ditty at the grand piano as he walked by, and at the cornerstone ceremony teasing those who were to put mortar between the stones.  As he exited the temple at the end of the day he took time to touch people's hands, chat with youth, note children, etc.  People in this part of the world only see him on the screen in general conference.  They were delighted by his singing the little part of "so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good bye... good bye, good bye, good bye..."in a high voice as sung by the von Trapp children in "Sound of Music"  They saw him as a real, tall, friendly, kind person, not just a face in a picture or on a screen.

Because Nathan Rasmussen served his mission in Kyiv years ago he wanted to return for the dedication of the temple, like many other returned missionaries.  When he began planning the trip, his parents, my only brother David and his wife Sue, decided to accompany him for a tour through the countries of the area.  They arrived in Kyiv on Saturday and we met at the cultural celebration.  They attended a dedicatory session at the stake center downtown Kyiv and then came to spend the rest of the day with us on Sunday.  We had dinner, wandered around our "temple square", relaxed in our apartment overlooking the grounds, watched Pres. Monson and his entourage leave, and took a picture of us together.  They also attended an endowment session on Wednesday morning where we saw them before they returned to the USA.  It was wonderful to have them here with us.

I titled this post "the day of dedication" because not only was the temple dedicated, but the members dedicated themselves to attend the temple and have been showing that dedication ever since.  In the week following we had record crowds on Monday with many new endowments, weddings/sealings and 4 overcrowded sessions lasting until late afternoon.  All week long we had saints who were still in Kyiv from far away doing work for their own ancestors before leaving to return to Moscow, Novosibirsk, Latvia...  They gave us hugs after being in the temple for several days and cried.  We did too.  The Kyiv temple workers who are helping us are wonderfully trained form their many trips to Freiburg Germany and are so excited to be able to come once or more each week to serve.  The members in the area are coming often, again with family cards to do ordinances.  We are most impressed with the many young adults who come and come and come.  We converse in broken English/Russian but we are doing the Lord's work and are sure that many people who are deceased are also aware of what is going on in Kyiv.

Sunday Outing to Chernigov

By assignment of the mission president we went with the elders to their branch in Chernigov.  The city is about as old as Kyiv and 90 miles to the north.  We took a taxi bus to the subway and then went from the west end of the line across Kyiv to the east end of the line.  Here we are with the elders (a threesome) in the subway (aka Metro).  On Sunday there aren't many passengers.  We caught a taxi bus to drive us north to Chernigov through wonderful interesting countryside with farms and small rural dwellings.

We still had to take a city taxi up the main street and got off at this great location to remember!  It is an orthodox church.  Here with us are the Parks, the mission office couple from Benton City, WA, who were attending to take care of branch business.  We walked a couple of blocks west to arrive at a small, almost unremarkable, location where the branch of about 30 members meets above the stores.

In spite of the location, the branch was full of wonderful faithful saints.  They gave great talks and lessons.  We had missionaries and members who sat behind us for translating although we were understanding part of the Russian.  They were surprised that we could speak and understand a bit of the language.  We hope that we continue to be assigned to this branch.  The meetings began at 11a and went the full 3 hour block.  Most of the young adults that were in the branch have left for school or work.  The counselor to the young branch president has 3 younger children still at home who probably comprise most of the Primary.

Returning with the Parks we took the city taxi bus to this memorable spot to board the taxi bus to Kyiv!  We had to wait until the bus was full of passengers before the driver would leave.  We were glad we had brought sandwiches with us for a late lunch or we would have been more tempted to buy ourselves something!  Then we had the ride through the country back south to Kyiv.

On our return subway ride, going above ground over the Dnieper river that runs through Kyiv, I took this picture through the window of the famous Motherland war monument state and Orthodox church on the hill.
Our travel time was 3 hours each way, but we loved the opportunity to get out into the Ukraine countryside, to see the crops growing and the rural homes.  We also loved the strength and spirit of the Chernigov saints.

We have Arrived!

We left with 3 other missionary couples from the SLC airport Tuesday morning, Aug. 17 to fly to NY. After changing planes we flew through a shortened night nonstop to Kyiv arriving Wednesday morning, Aug. 18. Our temple President Galbraith (on the left in the gray suit) met us at the airport and drove us to our new home on the temple site in Kyiv.

This is how close our apartment building (on the left) is to the temple! We are on the second floor and on this side so our windows look out to the temple--the first thing we see in the morning and the last at night! The exterior lights on the temple do not stay on all night but we have drapes we can pull that shut out light.