A Long, Hot Day

Boarded the bus for a moderately long travel day from Cherkassy to Poltava, another city where I have not yet visited. These were some of the worst roads on which I can ever remember traveling, but even those roads end eventually. En route, we made a fascinating stop just outside of Kremenchuk at an outdoor market/road side bazaar. Finding the restrooms was interesting; admittance was by walking through a fish market. Another "first" experience...plenty of fresh fish, smoked fish, all shapes and sizes, and the combination of smells on a hot, humid day was fascinating. Another distintively Ukrainian memory. As we traversed the narrow walkways of the bazaars, there were lots of shish-kabobs grilling on open-air grills, and a variety of things for sale including soft drinks, coffee, tea, bottled water and ice cream. We dutifully added to the local economy, and entertained a lot of people who had apparently never seen a tour bus or a bunch of raucous Americans! Upon our arrival in Poltava, we checked into a lovely Hotel Palazzo with (wait for it....) A/C units in every room. Heaven. Just enough time for a quick lunch, then to get dressed and board the bus to head to the church for a concert. A church in the round, the choir loft was the perfect size for us, and we settled in for some pre-concert rehearsing and refinement. The Gretchaninoff "Lord's Prayer" was one of the pieces we have continued to tweak, and this time was for adding in the incantations of the priests at the very end. It was a wonderful way to feature our resident "priests" from the priesthood of believers - tenor Serhiy Bilokin and bass Oleksandr "Sasha" Korchevniy. Steve Calvin shared thoughts on these newly-added texts before our concert; "the Lord be with you; and also with you" and "in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" as essentials of what we do and who we are on this tour and in our singing. The Lord was with us, and with them, and indeed we invoked the Trinity as we sang of the joy of our faith, through all the aspects and trials of life. Radist (Joy) + Perezhevanya (living life through its difficulties) = Abundant Life.

Ephesians 3: 20-21 - Now to Him who is able to do 
immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine,

according to His power that is at work within us, 

to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus 
throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

All of this energized us for a blazing hot concert, describing not only the performance, but the unusually elevated temperature in the room, (even with windows wide open, another delightful first!) for a packed roomful of appreciative audience members. Our printed programs thankfully provided a complimentary fan for many of them! Our concert was well-received, and afterward there were lots of warm interactions with audience members, young and old and in between. I happened to be standing near DP when some admiring teen age girls told him he was the most joyful conductor they had ever seen, and he had inspired them. (what a wonderful thing to say!) He graciously responded that this was precisely why we had come:  to bring inspiration through our music, and that we did tonight. Ironic that just before the concert, I had shared the Ukrainian word for joy (radist - pronounced RAH deest). Thanks, God! Several phrases struck me personally tonight: first from the spiritual Sweet Home which which features the soaring soprano solo by Gwen (Clanton) Budish. We sing: "I came to Jesus as I was, weary and worn, and I found in Him a resting place, and he has made me glad" which connected my mind to another phrase from My Song in the Night -"O why should I wander, and alien from Thee, or cry in the desert Thy face to see? My comfort and joy, my soul's delight, O Jesus, my Savior, my song in the night."  So far, I cannot even sing that phrase. I cry and mouth the words. Finally, both heaven and earth join together beginning with the angels' perspective of praise taken from My God My Portion and My Love - "Let all that dwell above the sky, and air and earth, and seas, conspire to lift Thy glories high and speak Thine endless praise." And, that is just what we have sought to do: conspire to lift high the glorious praise of Almighty God. In our entertainment-starved world, and even here in the "new" Ukraine, this makes it sound exactly like the audaciously counter-cultural act that it is. Slava Bohu. SDG