Monday
September 19th

Sunday morning we attended the English mass at St. Alexander's Parish in downtown Kiev. The Priest, Fr. Roche is Irish so that is a good thing. The mass was very nice, and it was more crowded than last week. After that we were taken by our translator, Ochsana, to St. Michael's a few blocks away. St. Michael's is an Eastern Orthodox church that was built in the 11th century, burned down, and then was rebuilt in 1986 exactly as the original. During the service, the priest is basically in the middle of the parishioners during most of the service. There are no pews and everyone stands during the entire service (spoken and sung in russian of course!)
It was very elaborate, lots of incense, beautiful singing, and gregorian chant like choir music.The cupola of the church rises about 8 stories above where the priest stands, with lots of beatiful byzantine mosaics and frescos. The altar was elaborately carved with gold gilding all over and numerous ancient paintings of Mary, Jesus and various saints. It was an impressive service.
After that we went to St. Sophia the oldest original eastern orthodox cathedral, built around 980 A.D. Many of the original frescos and mosaics are still in the church. It was like stepping back in time. The only bad thing is that the weather turned colder. It was rainy and in the 40s/50s yesterday. Today is sunny and a little warmer. Our new translator, Natasha, who incidently looks like a young Hillary Clinton, took us to a shopping mall so we could buy some jackets. Tommorow is our third visit to the adoption center. We don't know the time yet but most likely we'll get a call about 8:00 tonight from Natasha letting us know. A lot of wheeling and dealing seems to happen after work hours. Hopefully, everything will work out and wednesday we'll be on our way somewhere to visit a child.

Christine & Darren