Two days after the incident with the landlady, she showed up at our house again and asked for the gas heater manual. I thought she was going to give us a hard time again, but she sounded and looked different. “I am not insisting that the problem is with the heater. And I see by your gas heater meter that you are heating the house normally.” Then she went on to admit that the house did have some mold problems before, only on the first floor. “I just have no idea what’s going on. I am concerned for my house and for you guys to live in a damp, moldy house,” and she started crying. The landlady went on to say, “Of course, I am not going to make you move out.” As I wondered what in the world had happened to her, she asked what ‘faith’ we belong to. I wondered what that had to do with the present situation. “Nothing, I just have a question for you,” and she related this story. A few months ago, one of her sons brought home (to the house next door to us) a statuette of the devil. Since then, she seemed to keep having problems. Everything went wrong, she kept having conflicts in her family, etc. She asked her son to take it back, but he wouldn’t. She is afraid to do that herself, fearing she may offend the devil and he will bring even more misfortune to her family. “I wonder if the problem with this house has anything to do with that statuette. What would you suggest that I do with it?” I told her that the devil is powerful and is looking to destroy man’s soul. Regardless of her son’s intent, it was foolish of him to flirt with the devil by bringing home a statute of him. I told her she needed to get rid of that thing. She said she was going to also ask an Orthodox priest’s opinion on the matter. Now, I don’t know about the devil making our house damp, but we see that not only did the Lord answer our prayers, but also made our landlady think about spiritual things. Please pray for more opportunities to witness to her and for her salvation.

Praise the Lord, Andriy is completely well by now and none of us got sick from him! Also, today I saw the immunologist and my immune test did not show anything seriously abnormal about my immunity. Apparently, my immunity is low, due to low activity of neutrophils (cells of the immune system). However, it will take another test or two to show whether this is my regular condition or if it is just the present condition of my immune system. The doctor prescribed seven weeks worth of treatments to boost my immune system. After I am finished, I am supposed to take another immune test. In the meanwhile, I should also see a gastroenterologist to check out my digestive system. I am slowly gaining strength every day and the doctor said it will take at least a month to get back to normal. Please, continue to pray for my complete

The immunologist’s simple recommendations and prescriptions, along with an immune booster shot, did the job and the very next day I began to feel better. My digestive system started working, appetite returned and I felt like my vitality began to come back. That was very timely because that day I NEEDED the energy… to deal with our unreasonable landlady who is giving us hard time again.

About a month or so ago, we noticed a wet spot on the cealing in the corner of our bedroom. I thought the roof had some leakage and asked the landlady to come and see. Her son got in the attic and said everything was dry there. She immediately “knew” what the problem was: we did not heat the house enough. How did she know? Well, in Ukraine the customer is always wrong, so it must be our fault. A few days later those spots appeared in all 4 corners of the house and they began to grow in size and get really moldy. We decided to really warm up the house, but when we turned to heat up, the spots got even wetter and wet spots appeared in other places. In some places, literally streams of water were running down the walls. Interestingly, the temperature in our house only went up 1/2 a degree that day. I told the landlady that we did just as she said and here is the result. She immediately came up with the problem: it is the gas heater we installed last winter. It can not suffciently heat the house. Thus, she began to accuse us of ruining her house. I called an architect friend, described the situation and without even seeing the leaks, he said it’s a waterproofing problem. The landlady insisted it is not: according to her, the house has always been dry and warm. In reality, as long as we have lived there, it has always been damp and cold and we have always had mold problems.

Following the suggestion of our architect-friend, we cleaned off all the mold and have been drying the walls and ceiling with a blowdryer, and appliying an anti-mold/anti-fungus solution. As of now, the walls and ceiling are practically dry. Yesterday, the landlady brought two “specialists” to prove the heater was the problem. (Now, in Ukraine it does not take any training or licensing to become a “specialist” in construction: one day you just decide you are one and.. viola! you are one.) The first guy was a heating “specialist” and he said the heater was the problem. The guy obviously had no clue what he was talking about and also looked like he was still recovering from a hangover. Then she brought another guy, a constructor “specialist”. This other guy seemed knowledgeable. He examined the house for about 30 seconds and said, “It has nothing to do with how the house is being heated or the heater. The heater is just fine. It’s not the renters’ fault. The house has a waterproofing problem.” The landlady did not like that answer. “Then”, she said, refusing to calm down, “you are simply not using your heater enough and thus are ruining my house”. Sure, we just love to live in a damp, cold, moldy house and decided not to use the heater. Because we are “ruining” her house, she told us we had to get out and remodel her house before moving out. Frankly, I wish we could move out because we don’t like the dampness and mold ourselves and were even wondering if this could be a contributing factor to my ongoing health problems, but there is no real alternative right now. She has threatened to kick us out before, but that time she calmed down. We hope she calms down again and would ask you to pray that she does. In any case, we are not planning to move out in the middle of winter, but she may try to make our life here miserable.

To make things even more difficult, this afternoon Andriy came down with a high fever. Apparently, there is a pretty bad flu going around the country and many schools are closed for quarantine. A sick child in a family increases the risk for other family members to get flu too, but with Wendy being pregnant and with me being so run-down, it presents a real danger. We are taking all the precautionary measures that we can, but understand that they don’t always work. Please, please pray for Andriyko to get well quickly and for the rest of us not to get sick!