Moving towards Christmas

The gray has turned to white. No, not my hair - in fact today a nice man at the salon helped me to turn that in the other direction. :-) No, I am speaking about the weather here in Moldova. The mild gray days have turned to bitterly cold white days.

It takes more energy to do everything, but each day the roads are more passable and the taxi and rutiera drivers a little bit less grumpy. Today, even with -17 C. temperatures, the sky was blue and so somehow things weren't so bad.

However, yesterday was another matter. We had teams going out to the villages to conduct children's Christmas programs. But the snow was falling like crazy and even with our monstrous new "tank" (as it is affectionately dubbed) the snow was a bit much to handle. The team got there and back safely, praise the Lord, but had a bit of an adventure through the snowstorm. Look how deep the snow was!

Alida reminded us how difficult it is for folks in the village who, even in this weather and in -20C temperatures still have to make their way outside to the toilet facilities. Need to keep a shovel handy if you want to get there in time!! Next time you take a few steps in your slippers to your warm bathroom and turn on hot running water, please pray for the folk in Moldova who are living in the villages with only an outhouse. They need to go to the well to get water which they heat using a woodstove in the house.