Catching Up...

It's been a long and busy time since our last blog post so hopefully this can be a bit of a recap on what's been going on.
It was super hot the last few weeks in Zaporozhye so we spent a few afternoons at the beach along the Dneiper River. It's a really cool, although not really clean beach but there's a pier and a boat restaurant that are pretty cool.

We also finished up the Disneyland Playground project.

One evening Steve, Travis and Joel were walking to John and Ev's apartment when a cop came up to them and asked for their passports. They had enough Russian to explain to them where they were so they were going to go get them but the cops wouldn't let them walk back to the apartment. So they got into the cop car to drive the block to our apartment to get them but the cops didn't stop, they just drove them straight to the police station and then asked them again where their passport were. We finally got our friend Alex to come and pick up all the passports and take them to the police station for them and then they were released. They were there for about one and a half hours. What an adventure! This picture is Petra and I eating cherries and waiting for our husbands to be released from jail.

Dan was asked by our friends from Molochansk who are in a band if he would drum for them so that they could participate in a concert in Tokmak. Their drummer left the band a month earlier and they really wanted to be in this concert. So Dan went for 4 days to practise with them and on June 6th we all drove to Tokmak in the evening for the concert. They ended up being the headlining band and were amazing! They were the only Christian band in the show and were able to share their faith as well as singing songs with Christian lyrics. It was so awesome!

The band, us and some of our friends.

June 7th we had a Disneyland Fun Day for the kids that live in the community. It was a great way to meet people, and we had games, food, face-painting and Dan and Travis did a "Silly Song with Larry". The people were so excited about what we had done and it was a great chance to tell them why we came to Ukraine!

The last week in Zaporozhye we had a kids' camp for the kids at the English school. In preparation for this, our friend Lukas from Molochansk (but he's actually from Germany) had been staying with us the week before and the guys had made a movie series that paralleled the theme for the week. The first day we talked about the fact that God exists and then the 4 days afterwards we covered one of the 4 spiritual laws each day. Lukas was able to come back for the camp week so the guys showed their movies and then followed each one with a skit to tie it into the message of the day. Each day we played games from 3-5 p.m and then from 5-7 p.m we went into the school and had singing, teaching and then discussion time. It was SO cool to help these kids along in their journey of finding God and we got to know the kids on such a deeper level.

Each day was SO hot we had an abundance of water games! We usually had between 20 and 25 kids.

Steve taught on the last day about how God is accepting and inviting YOU to relationship!

We made a lot of friendships that will hopefully last a lifetime.

Saturday was our last day in Ukraine. I spent the day with Ev cooking up a storm for the barbecue we hosted for all our friends (other than the school kids). We had about 50 people show up and we had a small service-thing where we "graduated" from Russian class and thanked the people who helped us a lot.

Marina made us a beautiful poster that everyone signed.

And then we jumped on the overnight train to Kiev! Train is by FAR the best way to travel EVER! You can sit, stand, sleep, eat and go to the bathroom, it's wonderful.

Spent Sunday touring Kiev with a guide that John had found for us. Marina came with us because we booked an extra train ticket (so that we could have 2 full rooms on the train) so it was nice to spend one last day with her.

We stayed at a seminary for the night and then were whisked to the airport for our flight at 6:20 to Amsterdam where we met with the team that was in Lithuania. It was great to see them again and to be able to fly back to Canada together.