Yes, we are back! We realize we have been MIA since mid-September, with one choppy post in between. It had been a busy fall for us. On top of homeschooling for me (Julia) we were dealing with finishing up the house which has proved to be long and exhausting. Nothing is easy here. House construction is no exception. I will save our readers a long explanation of all legal hoops we had to jump through, suffice it to say that there was an easy way to do it, which involved securing a waver from our neighbors on both sides saying they did not mind our house being so close to their houses, and one neighbor refused. The funny thing is, both neighbors' houses are built on the border of our property, which is actually illegal, but I suppose, they got their wavers from the previous owner of our lot. Anyway, we had to get a court order saying our house was OK where it was. We did not have to go to the hearing, our lawyer did it all for us, and we are thankful for that.
The next major hurdle was and is natural gas hook-up. If you mention KhersonGas to anyone here, you will get a sigh and rolling of the eyes. It is probably one of the most bureaucratic and inefficient places in the city. A couple of true stories that we heard from our church members: pensioneers get a discounted rate for gas. Every January they have to go to KhersonGas personally to show papers proving that they are still pensioneers and qualify for a discounted rate. Same goes for disabled people. I suppose, if you are missing a limb, Gas Company wants to make sure it did not grow back within previous year and you still qualify.
How hard is it to apply for natural gas hook-up? As it turns out, it's definitely a test of patience. Basically, there are two ways: to try to apply in person or to hire a middleman to do it. And for some unknown reason, to go through the middleman is faster and less expensive than through the city gas company. When I say "faster" I mean it will take about 5-6 weeks from beginning to actual hook-up. Otherwise, people who do it themselves are on a 4-month waiting list. I am serious. We have 2 couples we know who needed natural gas. One went through a middleman and had gas within 2 months, and the others went to KhersonGas and 2 months later were told they could not have gas because of the wrong size of the gas pipe that runs to their apartment (i.e. they want a bribe). We are going through a middleman. He said he would try to get it done before New Year's but I will believe it when I see it. Anyway, we already had 2 groups of people from the gas company come and inspect the house and draw a plan to where the pipe will run. I am sure there will be more groups.
These were the two major things that consumed my attention for most of the fall. There were a myriad of little and not-so little things as well. We also had to deal with electrical hook-up, but it was relatively painless, except we had to call the guy twice because our electrician did not tell us right away that the amperage would not be enough. Now we have to call the electrical company guy yet again because the outside workers moved the wire on the outside of the house and can't put it back where it is supposed to be. The other interesting experience was finding a guy to do our stairs. Our contractor tried hiring someone he knew, but it did not work, so he asked us to take it on. We made a few phone calls, got 3 guys come and give an estimate, went with the least expensive one (who also was the fastest one at 1 month), and voila -- it was done! We are very pleased with the stairs, and thankful that God lead us to this particular man because he did a great job, and he was relatively fast and the most budget-friendly.
Overall, the house is close to being finished. There are some loose ends that we are working on, such as flooring, toilet/vanities hook up, kitchen cabinets that need to be assembled. We have a fence but no gate yet (it was supposed to be installed last weekend). Security guy is coming tomorrow to finish up. We also need to apply for a telephone line, which will take 3-4 weeks to get.
We are very thankful that God has taken us so far and we want to raise our Ebenezer here. It is so easy to get bogged down in the nitty-gritty and to miss the whole picture. We ARE grateful that we are at the end of a long road and the light at the end of the tunnel gets brighter every day. The other thing we are thankful for is that most of the men working on the house were Christians. In this culture it does make a difference. Our general contractor is a Christian and a pastor of a church in a village, and most of his crew are Christians. We were able to have a few good conversations with the workers and to encourage each other in faith.
Once we have gas and can heat the house, we will start moving. Right now we use electrical space heaters, because at night it gets below freezing and we don't want our pipes to burst. We look forward to being in our own place, with no landlady coming every month, and to living in a house that is hopefully more energy-efficient than our current one. Last winter it got down to 52 degrees F in our bedroom with the hot water heater system working at full power.
Please continue to pray for our house to be finished soon.
We only found one box with Christmas tree decorations, but couldn't find the second one -- last summer and fall there was a lot of moving the boxes in the basement as it was used as storage space for the building materials for our new house. Thus, we did not have stockings for the kids, we just placed their stocking stuffers in 4 chairs.
Here are some pictures of our kids opening their first present in the morning.
It was a delightful time.
The best present of all was to meet the newly adopted son of our friends. They picked him up from the orphanage that day.
Here we all are, giving small gifts to the kids.
