Summer in Full Swing!

Here in Krivoy it is getting nice and warm finally and now I am sitting here reflecting back on our 2 teams that have come and gone.  It has been an amazing summer so far and is not over yet.

We started off with a group led by Dennis and Sandy Ford.  They brought their team for 2 weeks and the first week we did a bible program at the Rehab Center.  This is a place where they use to only send boys but now they have a group of girls also.  The kids are in this place for 9 months if my memory is correct and then they get placed back in their homes or the orphanages they came from. The sad thing is that these kids get worked with and then put back into the same dysfunctional families so there are a bunch of kids that get sent back to the rehab.  But one cool thing that the director told us was that they are also trying to do some stuff with the families to be able to figure out where the root of the problem is because it is not always with the child.

After that week we moved across town to a Baptist Church where we lived in a dormitory.  This allowed us to live closer to the boarding school camp where we would be doing our program. This place was closer but we still had to take a bus for 45mins each way to get to the camp, but it was well worth the trouble.  #9 Boarding School is a place that our teams have been working with for at least 4-5 years and our relations with the staff and the director is the best it has ever been.  But the one issue was that we were not allowed to talk about God at that camp, which posed a real problem for us.  Our teams have never been shy to let the directors know that we are teaching about God and so when we were told this it was a bit of a blow. We then discussed with the team how we could still work with the kids and came up with to teach them life truths that focused on Christian living without referring to the Bible.  one good thing is that all the kids there know why we come (to share Gods word).  The week we spent there was lots of fun and we had a lot of fun times with the team from Canada!!

 

 

After our 1st team left some of us had a bit of down time but Vika and Tanya (2 girls that work with us) worked at a local Bible camp that the ministry supports.  So they worked for the next 10 days in the kitchen at the camp and we were also able to sponsor 8 kids from the orphanages to go to that camp and another 41 to another camp with your donations!!!

Then on the 1st of July our 2nd team arrived.  This was a brand new team from North Carolina and they would be only staying for a weeks working at Solnechney orphanage.  It is always exciting to have a new team come but this year different because we had 4 kids under the age of 12 come with their parents! We were a little apprehensive about having younger kids but after the first day all our concerns were wiped away.  These 4 kids barley if ever complained about being tired or anything and were real troopers. 

 

One really cool thing was how this team came to be.  The team leader Shad Kayser we met a few years back when his family came to adopt 2 kids from Krivoy.  We met the Kaysers and ever since then have kept in contact and last year Shad mailed me about bringing a team this summer and we began planning and he also brought back the daughter that they adopted for the Boarding School.  The week that we spent with the American team was great and we bonded really fast and by the second day it seemed like we had known the team for weeks! We were only able to work at Solnechney for 4 days and then we also went to the baby orphanage and the handicapped orphanage.  But God really had his hand on everything that happened during this trip and I know our Ukrainian team was really uplifted by the encouragement from both teams. 

We had lots of fun  with our 2nd team but also got into a bit of trouble! LoL, it was on the 4th of July and we had bought some fireworks to celebrate and that evening set them off in the playground where we would set them off every new years.  But after we set off the first set of fireworks a man approached us and showed us his ID saying that he was the police!!! And then told us that we were not allowed to set the fireworks off that close to the buildings.  Then right at that moment the whole American team was on the balcony singing the American Anthem and the cop said "also tell all those people to stop making so much noise"!  The cop was very nice and we tried to be quiet the rest of the night.

So that is what has been happening so far in our lives and we will be going don to the Black Sea for 10 days of rest and then have our final team from Salmon Arm arriving on the 8th of Aug which we are really looking forward to!  So ill try to post when I can about the rest of our summer!

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!

Christmas Gifts!

Well it has been a while since I have posted so the next few days I will try to catch up on all that has been going on since Christmas!! We always have a great time during the Christmas season with being able to go to the orphanages earlier in the day since the kids are not in school and are given more freedom since the kids have to school work to do.  Also a fun thing is that Ukrainians love to celebrate, and we were invited to countless parties and concerts that the orphanages put on.

One fun thing that we were able to do with donated money was buy all the kids Christmas gifts! It was not much but the kids loved it.  We were able to buy 2 pairs of socks and some candy for each kid.  This does not sound like a lot but when you are buying for 400-450 kids people in the stores look at you strangely for having two buggies packed full of socks.  They would just stare and some brave people asked us why we had so many and we were able to share with them who they were for.

We are so thankful for all your donations and really could not do it with out your donations so the least we can do is show pictures of the kids receiving their gifts.

How your donations have helped the kids!

    First of all I would like to start out by saying how grateful we are for all the donations that we have received to help this ministry grow over the years! Without generous donations we would not be able to help the kids in the orphanages like we do.  Also since the decline in the economy world wide I heard of a lot of ministries were losing donations or receiving smaller ones but thankfully with this ministry we only saw an increase of giving.  It seemed that every time I went to check our balance after I had withdrawn money from the bank machine there was more in the account then when I first withdrew the money!! Praise the Lord!!!! And now I would just like to share a few pictures of where it is your money goes.

    This first picture is of a boy named Yan and he is from #9 boarding school and over the last month we have been able to support the group that he is in by buying tool for woodworking and paint for these boys to use.  These boys are not the typical group because they look for ways to earn money to finance their art project.  They take on small cleaning jobs to earn money that they then buy stuff for their group!  It is just incredible the heart that this group of 15 boys have and their determination of their male educator to look after the boys and help them learn skills that will help them once they graduate.  We will be posting more pictures of their group in the near future.

It reads "Thank You for your help, from the bottom of our hearts. #9 Boarding School

    This groups of girls we helped buy material for them to make dresses and these girls are very talented as the dresses that you see them wearing we all handmade by them! The red dress was made in one evening and with the encouragement of their educator they have been able to put on small fashion shows.

    These are a few pairs of wrestling shoes that we have been able to buy kids that are training.  This last weekend we were able to attend a wrestling competition in our city where a lot of the kids that we knew were competing and they did very well.  There is even one girls from #9 boarding school that placed 1st is all of Europe for her weight class.

    These kids are just a few that we were asked to provide glasses for!  They are not that expensive to have the prescriptions filled and I know that a few Canadian team members have taken the opportunity while they were here to get new glasses.

    As winter is now upon us we thought it might be nice to replace the windows in our team apartment.  The city heat keeps the apartment warm but with holes in the window cold air likes to blow in.  So we now have a very nice warm apartment that actually now almost keeps in too much heat so the windows have to be vented to cool the place down.  But I would rather have it too warm then to cold.

 
    There are also many different kids that the ministry helps support in English, art and dance lessons.  And here is a picture of David holding up some of the art supplies that we were able to supply.  At each orphanage there are so many different kids that are very talented and we want to try to help them in any way we can to help further on their dreams.

    These last pictures are of different materials we have been able to provide the different orphanages this last year.

We helped another Canadian work team with funds to renovate some of the kids sleeping areas!

These bars on the windows were added to keep the kids safe at night!