Khmyelnitskoye...say that 3 times fast

Khmyelnitskoye aka Friedensdorf is the village where Jo's Grandpa Voth was born. There is a map that exists of this village with the exact location of the yardsite. We were able to go there on Sunday and take a few pictures of the yard that we assume is the right one. We assume this because on the west side there is an empty lot, and to the east there is an original Mennonite house.

This is the original house next door:

In the afternoon we went back to Molochansk to hang out with our friends. Steve and I went to visit Olga (who we stayed with at the beginning of May) and she was SO excited to see us! It was wonderful to see her as well and she "forced" us to eat dinner while we were there. We had just eaten a little while before that so we said we'd have a LITTLE bit of soup...which turned into soup, vereneky, bread, and fried eggs! What an amazing generous woman!!

Afterwards we spent the evening playing games with all the youth/young adults. It was so nice to see our friends one last time before we leave!

Tuesday we worked in Morozovka for the whole day, hoeing potatoes and cementing. It was really hot and sunny so we all look like lobsters now. Like my white tank top?

Tuesday was also Kristine's birthday so we had a party with some of our new friends and Travis and Dan made her a pinata.

At her request, I made chocolate cream puffs and a chocolate roll in lieu of birthday cake.

Thursday afternoon and evening we went to the park and performed our drime (play to music) and then started conversations with people about it. We weren't sure how people would react and we weren't surprised with the mixed reactions.

We had 2 interpreters with us to help us talk to people and were able to not only talk but pray with a few people as well. It was really good and some of the best conversations were with the friends we brought from the school. Some of the girls from school came to see it as well and we invited them over for supper so it was fun to hang out with them as well.

Today we spent the day in Nicolaipolia cementing and doing haircuts and manicures. It wasn't as successful as Morozovka's haircut day but a few people still came so it was fun. It was another hot day as well so we had a barbeque supper there as well. Steve spent the day working with his shirt off but didn't get as burnt as the other day! Tomorrow we are cleaning at the beach with school kids again from 10-2 and then we are going to the Kozak show at the old oak tree and Steve might go to a foot ball game.

These are the kids that Steve and I have in our younger class. They are 6th Form (grade) students and are 11 and 12 years old.

Thursday we went for a souvenier factory tour with Ksenyia, one of the girls from the English school. Her dad manages it so we got to go for free and see how they make ceramic stuff.

Afterwards we had tea at the office, bought some souveniers and planned a day trip to Chortitza island with them.

Friday we spent a good chunk of the day painting at "Disneyland"! A woman and her children came out to help for a little bit and we got a lot done. Thanks to Dan, part of the curb and street a block away also got painted red. Doesn't it look amazing??

There's still a lot more to paint so hopefully the weather will be nice for the next few weeks so we can get all the painting done. We're planning on having a grand opening-type event on June 7th with games, treats, face-painting and stuff like that for kids from the community.

Saturday we had a cleaning day at the beach! We spent the morning as a team picking garbage. There was SO much built up from many years of littering, it was so depressing. The only thing that got me through was the thought of all the kids who were excited to come and help us in the afternoon and the thought that these kids are the next generation of Ukrainians who are not going to litter!

 We had about 30 kids show up, and there were 3 huge piles of garbage at the end of the afternoon. We estimated that we collected about 150 bags full!!
Afterwards we played on the beach, had some snacks and some brave boys (Steve, Dan and Travis included) went for a swim in the Dneiper river!

Sunday we went for the tour of Chortitza Island with Kseniya and her parents. We first went to the museum of the Cossacks then took a walk to a fort that was built for a film about the Cossacks.

We also saw the 3rd oldest tree in all of Europe. It is somewhere between 700-1100 years old, depending on who you talk to. It's mostly dead except for one branch that you can see in the mid-left hand side of the picture. I also learned to whistle with a piece of grass.

After the tree we had a shashleek (BBQ) on the beach. It was drizzling from time to time but was still lovely.

Best part of the day? Ice cream at Del Ice afterwards! This place was serious about ice cream! It was expensive but SO worth it!

More Happenings

May 9th is Victory Day for Ukraine - the day the Soviets kicked the Nazis out. This is celebrated with a parade in the morning that commemorates everyone who fought for Ukraine's freedom (from the Nazis at least). We went with the school kids and then hung out with them for the rest of the afternoon.

It's tradition to buy flowers and hand them out to the veteran of your choice so we participated.

Saturday night we surprised Evelyn with a Mother's Day dinner.

Monday we planned another Love Zaporozhye afternoon at the park, handing out cookies, singing with the guitar and kicking around a soccer ball. Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate so we abandoned post an hour early. Before the rain it was really hot though!

Tuesday we went to Morozevka and had a haircut/manicure day! It was really fun and at some points interesting...the man in the background of this next picture was clearly drunk when he came for a haircut. He almost pushed an older lady out of the way to be next in line and I was halfway through his head-shave with my horrible clippers when he got up to leave! I had no idea what was going on, he mumbled something about someone expecting him to be somewhere and he left with a half-shaved head! About 30 minutes later he suddenly showed up again with his own clippers from home and I finished the cut. It was pretty weird.

All together I did 12 haircuts and there were more people than we had time for. We're planning on going back another day soon hopefully and possibly visiting some other villages as well.

Please continue to pray for us and possible ministry opportunities when we get home!

A Bunch of Stuff

Two weeks ago Tuesday we planned a cleaning day at "Disneyland" and had invited the kids from the English school to come and help out. 25 kids showed up! It was a great time! We picked up garbage off the streets, scraped paint off and started painting some of the equipment. It was amazing to see so many of them there and they were excited to be helping clean up their city. We also had the chance to tell them about God and his love. It was awesome!

Thursday we left for Molochansk for 5 nights to partner with the youth group there in a kids' evangelism week. We played games, had a picnic, had a mini outdoor amazing race (in the rain) and had services every evening. The best part was just hanging out in the evenings with the youth.

One of the guys from Molochansk named Vitali brought out a metal detector to the picnic on Saturday. We had no idea what we were looking for but it turns out that there was a battle in that area during WWII and there were holes in the ground where they were sitting in and trenches for tanks and things.

These are examples of some of the things Vitali has found - gas masks, grenades, helmets, machine gun rounds, cutlery and rings with swastikas on them, he has even found 3 bodies! 2 German and 1 Russian! I keep telling Petra whenever we dig holes anywhere that we're going to find dead bodies and this is the proof! Steve found some bullets dated 1935 so that was pretty cool. He went to Vitali's place to see all this stuff and has some pictures with helmets and things.

Also on picnic day there were poisonous snakes. Vitali is also a wild animal handler, not really but he did dress all in camo so the animals probably just didn't see him. This snake was really big and venomy. Sick.

Most of the evenings we were there we went to someone's house to hang out after the service in the evening. There were usually a lot of us crammed into a small space!

Right by the field we played games in there was this beautiful abandoned theatre. It was amazing inside but so old and falling apart and there was a lot of vandalism and apparently the basement is a frequent hang-out for drug users.

Tuesday all the kids were back in school and the evangelism was over. Andre, the youth pastor took us to see these rocks.... they're Ukraine's stonehenge. No one knows where they came from or when, there is just a random pile of rocks in the middle of nowhere that are surrounded by sand. And don't be deceived by this picture, these rocks are MASSIVE.

So massive in fact, and so randomly placed that there are tons of little caves and tunnels underneath all these rocks. Steve, Dan and Travis tried their hands at kersplunking, as we like to call it. The tiny spaces they got into were incredible and at one point we even lost Dan! And the final tunnel was probably 100 feet long with the lowest point being about 7 inches from the ground to the rock. Steve had to dig in the sand to make it through.

Since returning from Molochansk we went to the school again, got trucks to clean up garbage from "Disneyland", and Saturday was Victory Day celebration for Ukraine. I'm planning on posting another blog on some of those things but don't hold your breath!