We just came back home from our last doctor appointment. Miriam’s ultrasound result was good (cysts are almost completely gone) so that means we will be leaving Minnesota next Tuesday (July 29th)!!!! In just 8 days….We are very excited about this! Of course, leaving is bittersweet in the sense that it is always sad to say good-byes to friends and it is hard to leave a home congregation that is so loving and nurturing. But we know that Ukraine is where we are supposed to be and that’s why we are very excited to get back there soon!
We were able to take a week of vacation last week. Our friends let us use their lake cabin near Crosslake, MN. What a blessing! We loved every minute of our week up there. This is our favorite picture but you can see more pictures at http://www.chmiels.com/vacation/
We would like to ask you to pray for safe travel for us. Miriam will need to get a shot of Lovenox couple hours before our flight to prevent blood clots. We still need to find someone to help us with that. It is something you should be able to do yourself (esp. if you need this shot more often), but this is our first time so it will be a lot easier to ask someone who knows what they are doing .
Also, please pray for our Ukrainian visa situation. Our Ukrainian visa expires in October 2008. To renew your visa, you have to go to a Ukrainian consulate outside of Ukraine (we would need to travel to either Poland or the Czech Republic). We think it would be much better to renew our visa now, when traveling through Prague, than to finally get to Ukraine only to leave again two months later. But in order to be able to apply for our new visa, we need certain documents from the Lutheran Church in Ukraine. So far nobody was able to get those documents for us. So please pray that if it be God’s will for us to take care of the new visa now, pray that either our pastor in Lviv or the Lutheran Church headquarters in Odesa would be able to come up with the right documents soon.
Thank you so much! God bless you!
Tomasz and Miriam
