A Few Feodosia Pics

Here are some Feodosia pics! These 1st 2 are on the train on the way there:
This was my first train ride but Steve's 2nd. The 1st one was a 36 hour ride from Winnipeg to Churchill and in memory of that trip, this must be said: "On the train the sandwiches were good, but the ice cream...................................................................was EXCELLENT!"

Travelling by train is by far the best way to travel because there are beds! They even provide mattresses, pillows and clean sheets. Unfortunately the temperature isn't regulated and it was 30 degrees during the afternoon.

This was the first day of touring through Feodosia when we went to the fortress ruins and pictures don't do any justice to how gorgeous the Black Sea is!!

Built in the 14th century, Christopher Columbus hung out here before sailing over to discover America. Crazy old!

This is inside the one fortress tower.

This is a Nazi bunker from WWII. Behind it in the background is a tower that was also built during the war and used as a lookout over the Black Sea. The Black Sea used to be a large trading port, however it is said that there are many mines still under the water so ships coming in and out are limited.

The water was SO cold but we each went swimming...Steve for 2 minutes in actual swimwear, myself in my jeans and t-shirt for about 15 seconds.

This lion was in the town in an area of old mansions along the waterfront. It is apparently super old, I don't remember exactly how old but it's something like 2000 years old. The city itself dates back to before Jesus' time but there's really nothing around to prove that.

We headed out of the city on a bus one day to a mountainous area that was also quite beautiful.

And that's all that the computer could handle uploading for one day. I have a whole album prepared for Facebook so sometime I'll try and get it on there.

Quick Update

This is hopefully going to be a quick one, just an update because it's been a while since I've posted. Last Thursday we did another Love Zaporozhye, we made 78 sandwiches, split into 2 groups and hit the streets from 3-6. We had a few new friends with us as interpreters which was such a blessing! Our target receipients were elderly people and homeless people. We had mixed reactions from simple no's to people crying with gratitude. We came home with very few sandwiches and hopefully showed a few people the love of Christ, that He hasn't forgotten about them. Saturday the 4 of us staying in the larger apartment had to move out for 10 days because a group of people had booked it before we got here. So Steve and I are staying at John and Ev's and the boys went to the smaller apartment. That night we went to the Ukrainian Orthodox church for their Easter service from 10:30 till 1 am (when we left, it was still going). It was interesting, lots of pagentry, people lighting candles and saying Christos Voschris (Christ is Risen) seriously hundreds of times. It was confusing and it was standing room only...mostly because they don't even have chairs.... Sunday we participated in an Easter service in Morozevka and then Ev cooked a big Easter dinner for us!! Monday we went out for supper with friends of John and Ev to an Armenian Shashleek aka Barbecue. It was SO much fun! They were amazing people and this crazy meal had 5 courses (soup, a block of cheese, fries with fried mushrooms, meat kabobs, then bbq pork) and we were SO full! But there was dancing and chatting and it was a really good unforgettable evening. Tuesday morning we left at 8:30 on the train for Feodosia for our mid-assignment retreat. The train stop in Zaporozhye was so short that John didn't have time to get off after getting us settled...it was pretty funny...so he rode about 2 hours to the next stop with us, got off and took another train back home! The trainride itself was really fun - large seating compartments (beds actually), we played Phase 20 (yeah I know there are only 10) and had lots of travel junk food. In the afternoon however the heat rose to about 30 degrees in that train and then it wasn't quite as much fun! And the bathrooms were "fun" too....
Feodosia is beautiful! It's right on the Black Sea and we got to do some touring today. We're staying at a retreat/training center for church planters and it's definately full of Ukrainian hospitality! The touring we did today was to the Fortress that dates back to the 14th century (before Christopher Columbus discovered America). It was really overwhelming and beautiful, and as this is Ukraine and NOT North America, you can do all the climbing and exploring on ruins that you want to, safe or not! So that's what we're up to these days, I'll post some pictures once we get back to Zaporozhye on Monday.

Another Busy Week

Last week Wednesday we headed south to Balkovo for a night to help start some projects in the MB church there. It was a pretty fun time and they had lizards.

The one project was putting up these huge concrete beams that are going to be incorporated into a sunshade outside hut thing, and they were by far the craziest thing we've done so far! It took 5 guys to just push them up and it was insane! You can tell by Steve's face that they were not light, but it's okay because he works out. The man in front is Greesha, the pastor.

During the evening we were there we drove a few villages over to what used to be the Mennonite village of Friedensdorf, where the Voth family originally came from. I had a map of which yardsite was the Voth's and everything but it there are no original buildings left on it so it wasn't an exciting picture. The village itself had a few Mennonite buildings left and was really a beautiful village. It was really cool and surreal to be there because I always loved reading the Voth Book recollections when I was smaller and to actually be in the place where some of the stories took place was really amazing. There is also an abandoned collective farm very close to the village as well which was very eery and a little bit sad.

This is the finished project when we left Balkovo...obviously not finished, but really different than when we started! And it's not about finishing, it's about participating and coming alongside the people to encourage them and help out with the time we have!

Saturday was Petra's birthday, which included a kind of surprise birthday party complete with toilet paper streamers!! They have all different colours here so they're even cooler than when I was little!!!

And what's a birthday without "the cake"? What we thought was powdered sugar still wasn't, so I iced it with the grainy icing, covered it in dream whip (a new twist!) and then Steve spelled out the message with M&M's!

On Sunday we went to the circus. It was pretty cool, not many animals other than pigs, goats, dogs and the occassional monkey but the high-flying acts were really cool!

And even though Sunday was not Easter in Ukraine, we went to a Mennonite church that was celebrating Easter and we each received paska bread, which is very different here, more bready and it has raisins in it. And they're a funny shape.

Monday we went to a school in the morning to talk to the principal about maybe getting in on some classes to talk to kids, and we were thrown right into it that day! It's an English school so we are scheduled to go Monday and Thursdays from 9:15-11:25 just to talk to kids during those 2 class periods. Steve and I were terrified because we didn't know what to expect, but it ended up being an amazing experience to just talk and answer questions. You're not allowed to talk about religion in classes, but if the kids ask questions we answer them truthfully and it's amazing door to have opened to our team! So please pray for this ministry opportunity!!

We also started cleaning up Ukraine Disneyland! In just 2 short hours we had cleared out most of the trash and it was starting to look way better! A few people also came by, one man even helped rake and dig out a tree stump, and another woman invited us over on Saturday to eat Easter cookies and to watch her paint Ukrainian eggs! The people we met there were all so grateful! We were also VERY blessed to have an interpreter with us! Ilena is the daughter of one of John's interpreters and she had the day off school so she was really excited to come out and help us so that we could actually talk to people! Thank God for people who show up at our events when we need them!! God is trying to get His message of love out to these people!!

I think we counted 25 needles in this one little leaf pile. Gross and overwhelmingly sad. Ukraine has the highest HIV rate in all of Europe.

Finally, Tuesday was potato planting day in Morozevka! It was SO exciting to work with Pastor Alexander again! We all love him and missed him!!! All our work has come down to this!! First in the morning we did a little burning across the road from the church which caught a lot of positive attention from the neighbours.

Finally at 2 pm it was potato time!! It took 8 of us 1 hour to plant what we figure was about 1200 potatoes! It was so much fun!!!

We also discovered some kittens that we played with and threw down the new outhouse hole that we dug a few weeks ago (don't worry animal lovers, they're out and unharmed)!

If you want to hear Pastor Alexander's story, there is a 4 minute video on http://www.mbmsi.org/ that is really cool. Today was a relaxing day off and hopefully we'll have more stories for you in another blog soon!!!

Ukraine Disney, Amongst Other Things!

So hey! Hope you enjoy our vid. This was just to give you guys a peek into one of the projects we have picked up and decided to work on of our own free will. We basically seen this park and knew we needed to be a presence and work with God in what he was already doing here. Please pray for us and this area, as we are attempting to help others at their home. We really want the people to take notice and hopefully come alongside us as we try to clean this area up.

This past week was more time in Nicolaipolia, moving bricks, tilling, cementing etc.

Friday night at soccer in Nicoliapolia they played outside because it was so nice out! Steve found a turtle shell in the field and it was really cool!

Us 3 girls were sitting on the side of the field when a group of people drove up on motorcycles and one guy had a motorcycle with a sidecar! I wanted to sit in it or take a picture but seeing as how we don't speak Russian...then one of the guys came over because he heard us speaking English and he spoke a teeny tiny bit so he wanted to see why we were there. And it turned out it was his motorcycle with the sidecar so we ended up all getting a ride around the field! It was so cool and straight out of an Indiana Jones movie (Other than the fact that we were giggling and laughing and there were no nazis)!

Today was an especially cool day! It was our FIRST Love Zaporozhye Moment Day! We decided to do these days once a week where we do random acts of kindness. So that being said, we made 160 cookies, saran-wrapped them all up and then headed to the park with the big fountain from 3-6 to sing worship songs and hand out cookies!

After Russian lessons this morning we asked Olga to write out a sign for us that said: "Have a treat! God bless you!" or something like that....we couldn't read it (we can sound out the words but then have to go look them all up in the dictionary). Then we hit the pavement!

Sang worship songs for almost all 3 of the hours and had some cool conversations with people. Olya, a girl we met at a youth group showed up and she was totally a God-send because without her we wouldn't have been able to talk to anyone! She interpreted for us and hung out the whole afternoon!! It was cool because she was excited to be doing this with us as well. We're hoping to get some of the youth groups from the city involved in what we're doing so that when we leave, some of the things we've started will continue. The fountain guys were hard at work getting the fountain going so that was cool too, a hopeful sign of spring!

One of the guys in this next picture came by and was really interested in Dan playing guitar. We talked to him for just a few moments before he invited us to come hang out with some of his musician friends, and invited us to Hortitza Island for Saturday. We are already busy that day but we got his number to get together later. About an hour later all of a sudden he came back with a group of his musician friends and they hung out for the rest of the time we were there. It was so cool because they were typically not the type of people we would've thought would be interested or want to hang out but they were playing their drums along with Dan playing away at worship songs, it was SO cool!! And a few of them spoke a little English as well so it was cool to be able to talk a little with them.

And last of all, we found our beloved Vanilla Coke! It was a beautiful day once again and beautiful days require refreshment of the finest kind!!

Tomorrow is a free day! Then Wednesday-Thursday we're heading south to Bolkovo to do some work in the village there. So das ve danye till after then!!

This, That and a Whole Batch of Saskatoon Perogies

On Sunday we went to Ketusivka which is the former Mennonite village of Petershagen, where Jo's Opa Friesen was born. We attended the Sunday morning service at the Mennonite church there which is a growing and multiplying church with a lot of kids and youth. The building itself was the original Mennonite church that was built in 1892. After the Mennonites all left for Canada or headed back to Germany at the end of WWII, it was used as a granary and a goathouse and this is what it looked like in 1994 before any restorations were done:

This is what the church looks like today:

It's amazing to think that members of Jo's family would've lived here and walked the roads of this village; gone to this church building to worship the God who created us and whose hand is always upon us.

Monday was a relaxing day in Zaporozhye with grocery shopping and team time. Tuesday was spent in Nicolaipolia moving more bricks....but it was a beautiful 20 degrees and our tanlines/sunburns were definately welcomed!

Wednesday, today, was a free day. We picked up a few grocery items from the market, checked out a few second-hand stores where Steve bought a sweet new jacket. Jo tried her hand at making saskatoon perogies for the first time ever, and although they are larger than Oma's (how does she get them so tiny???) they turned out mighty tasty! Although Oma has a few more years of experience under her belt.

Tomorrow is another day in Nicolaipolia and another ESL class in the evening for Jo and Petra. We also have a Russian lesson first thing in the morning so hopefully we get a good night's sleep!