God is Working!

This last while has been a busy time with Luba working full time and me at the orphanages in the evenings when Luba is done work! She is working so hard and I am so proud of her for the time and effort she puts into her teaching. Considering that she was not even planning on being a teacher (since her degree is in Financing).  But she was offered the job and jumped in with both feet.  There are days when we goes to work for a 7:30 class and isn't home until 4:30pm and then eats and is back preparing for the next day until at least midnight! I know that there are many people out there that work a lot but for Luba to Teach at the College and teach English in her spare time!! I mean WOW!! What an amazing wife I have.  But with that in mind it is sometimes hard because we are so busy but we still make time for each other and go on dates, hang out with friends and family!

For those of you who do not know our family over here let me introduce them to you!  Luba has her mom and one brother and he is married and has 4 kids (2 girls and 2 twin boys and another on the way). So to say the least their house is a little bit hectic but we love to go and visit and hang out with all the kids!

Nastya, Anya and Luba

Andre, Marina, Vitya, and Alosha

These last few months have also been very emotional as we have seen 7 kids that have been adopted to amazing christian families in American and 1 more that the family is coming to get him and take him back to America in the next few day!!!! We have grown up with these kids and even though it is sad to see them leave we know that God has a plan for them in their new family.  We have also been able to get to know the families and we can see that God has hand picked each family for these kids.  One cool thing about these adoption is that the kids who are being adopted are not very young, they are almost teens which is a rare thing for kids this old to be adopted.  After the age of 6 the chances that a family will adopt an older child plummets so a lot of kids start to lose hope that they will ever get to have a real family.  But over the last few months we have seen a lot more hope in the eyes of these kids and others that there might be a chance they will get a mama and papa!

Artur (soon to be an American), Rusya, Vika and Vika (who is in America)

Our team and 2 girls that just left for America

Saying goodbye!

Last of all I wanted to mention that our grad bible studies (kids who are in out of the orphanage) have been going really well.  Last week we had 20 kids show up plus our team.  We have these bible studies to be able to keep in touch of the kids who have left the orphanages and also for them to be able to hear the word of God.  For probably 1/2 of the kids that show up this is there only exposure to the gospel and the encouraging thing is that they keep coming back time an time again! In the last while there have been a few girls that have had babies so that is introducing a new aspect to your meeting.  We are then able to help where needed or just to be able to play with little cute babies and give the mothers a break! So please pray for these kids that come to our bible study that God will work in their lives and that they will hear the message each week they come.

Paulina and Marina

Eva, and I

A Fun Week!

As many of you by now know Curtis is back in Ukraine!! Our team met him at the train station at 6:15am to welcome him home. They really should make the train from Kiev come a bit later in the morning but we survived.  And as some of you might know it was a bit lonely during the days since we can't usually go to the orphanages until the afternoon without Curtis here to hang out with and eat all his Cheerios! So I was a good brother and bought him a brand new box and presented it to him at the train station, he didn't look too excited but when he got home and had no food at all I think that he appreciated it.

 

There has been a lot of things going on and one very special thing was a wedding of a girl named Larissa.  She graduated from Zarechney orphanage about 4 years ago and is now married to a good christian guy. The wedding was a lot of fun with wedding games, lots of food, and dancing.  I am just so proud to see what she has done with her life as she had some difficulties after her 1st year of school, but changed everything and now is totally living for God and always attends our grad meetings. I remember her from the first year that I went to Ukraine and it has been a pleasure to see her grow up into the women that she is now today.

We also celebrated Sveta's birthday, for those of you who do not know who Sveta she is a girl that graduated from Zarechney orphanage 3 years ago and now part time is helping in our ministry! She helps with crafts and also does bible stories for some of the little kids that we work with. It is great to have her as part of our team as she grew up in the orphanage and now is going back there teaching about God to the kids that she knows. We went out for dinner and then on the walk to McDonald's for ice cream we kinda had a snow fight and be the time it was done we were covered in snow and walked into McDonald's covered in snow!!

This last Saturday we were at Solnechney orphanage and approached one of the educators of an all boys group and asked if we could work with her boys every second week.  Her answer was "yes please that would be great because groups come to the orphanage but never come to our group".  So we were able to spend an hour playing games with the boys and when we asked them if they would want us to come to their group again they all said yes please! So please pray for us and this group, because working with the older boys has always been a struggle as they are not very interested in joining in with us when we come. Working with the boys groups has always been on my heart since the day God called me to move to Ukraine and I have sort of got side tracked because the younger kids and girls groups are always so inviting and open to our team coming that it is just easy not to go to the boys groups.  But seeing the fun the boys had this weekend really woke me up that we need to try extra hard to get in with the boys no matter what.

Today we had a great day spending time with the little kids at Zarechney orphanage and were able to give them Lego that was donated to us from Olga Maslo (Ukrainian missionary).  We also had been given some photo cards from the Bellamy's (Canadian missionaries in Dnepro) that are called "Smiles for Children". The kids really loved them and one art teacher wanted one because she really liked the drawing on the card and wanted it for the kids to practice painting!