The National Museum of Folk Architecture and Life of Ukraine
This national museum is a collection of the various architectural forms found in every region of Ukraine. The oldest exhibit dates back to the 16th century. There are farm houses, barns, wells, beehives, windmills as well as portrayals of home life with traditional clothing and furniture. This is very much like the Open Air Museum in Tallinn, Estonia, but much larger. I will let the pictures speak for themselves.
Log farm house with thatched roof
The main room of the house where all household projects are started as well as preparing and eating food.
This is a typical wood stove used for heating and cooking. That looks like a baby cradle hanging from the ceiling.
Many floors have straw as a covering. There are quite a few tasks that are done in this room
Tool room. Notice the holdfast in the center to secure wood while shaping and carving.
Making do with whatever was on hand - a beautiful woven fence made with green tree branches.
A school room that could hold up to 50 students. The teacher had a room to live in. Yes, that is a giant abacus (sort of).
One of many windmills that dot the landscape.
This was a little mill, but it looked like an outhouse with a giant fan.
Again, with the artistic weaving for an out building.
The windmills were built on a pivot. If the prevailing wind changed, the mill housing would be physically rotated on the pivot for best results.
Any guesses as to what these are? These are beehives made from hollowed out tree trunks and then fashioned with a tiny roof.
Ukrainian needle work is famous. Here is a loom for weaving cloth.
Not sure what this represents, but you can see the traditional clothing on these women. Lots and lots of needle work.
And to top it all off, here is some authentic Ukrainian folk music.
This country is rich in culture and tradition. We are just beginning to see just a little bit of it. There is so much we could learn, not from just these people, but also from those who went on before and left a legacy for generations to come.
How to start this post is somewhat challenging. My heart is broken. I am reminded of a video about a boy who had been to the dentist. The effects of the anesthesia had not completely worn off yet and so he asked in his bewildered state, "Is this real life?" I ask myself the same question. Just a heartbeat away (or so it seems) we were in the capital city of Kyiv, rubbing shoulders with our Ukrainian friends. We moved freely among them soaking up their culture and becoming acquainted with their food and wonderful bread. Now, we have learned that our friends must now find shelter as their lives are in peril. The fortunate ones who live near the temple are now huddled together in the basement of the patron house. The feeling is surreal as I ponder on how quickly our life in Ukraine was flipped upside down. We read in Matthew 24 about the prophesied events of the last days before the second coming of Jesus Christ. We imagine what those things might be like, but our minds h
The Big Exodus It all started innocently enough. O n Saturday night, w e were hosting a little birthday party at our apartment for some of our senior couples. I had made a cherry cheesecake and a big apple pie. The Merkley's brought ice cream, the Southwick's brought drinks and the Blau's brought extra chairs. When we are living so far away from home and family, we tend to look for any opportunity to make life a little easier. As I was saying, it all started innocently enough. Halfway through the pie and ice cream, the Southwick's received a call. Then the call went to the Blau's. The grim look and apparent shock was followed by the announcement that we must evacuate. This new directive from church headquarters signaled the evacuation of both the Kyiv/Moldova and the Dnipro missions by Wednesday. The topic of casual party conversations changed rather abruptly. The question on everyone's mind was, "Where will we go?" The party soon ended as all involv
Well my friends, here we are again. This is our third time serving in Eastern Europe. This time, we are in Kyiv, Ukraine. We have been assigned to work in records preservation. The church has contracted with several companies to digitize records from the many archives and museums throughout the country. Our assignment, so far, is to upload (ingest, as they call it) the many hard drives (shuttles) into the computer system developed for Family Search. The camera operators use solid state hard drives to capture the images from the archives. With many operators throughout Ukraine, we receive many shuttles every week that need processing. We are also responsible to keep track of the financial records. We currently live on the temple grounds in the housing made for temple missionaries. When the temple goes to phase 4 and we receive the temple missionaries back again, we will need to move out to make room for them. In the meantime, we are enjoying our little place here. Our journey here came
Some choice experiences for you, thanks for sharing. Our thoughts and prayers are with you. Be of good cheer.
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