Oh, What A Day!

A rainy day today, but a million great things happened to make it a great day! 

First of all - it's always a good day when you get to crack a new 4.5 kilogram jar of honey!! The size of these jars always blows me away. You'd think this would be a year's supply of honey but well, we like honey. 

Steve had Survival Club today - yeah, have you heard of Les Stroud? Well he's the Canadian guy who does Survivorman on TV and it's always been a dream of Steve's to survive somewhere in the woods for a while. One of our friends here has the same passion so they meet together with a bunch of teen aged guys to teach and to work on their skills - building shelters, starting fires from nothing and stuff like. They eventually want to do an overnight trip somewhere to really be immersed and expose these guys to actually surviving.

While Steve does that, I have the girls over for baking! We made chocolates today - put junk (raisins, coconut, peanut butter balls, peanuts) in molds and poured melted chocolate over top. Next week they asked for pizza which I'm happy to do. 

There is a missionary couple from Crimea staying with our friends Garry and Teresa in Nicolaipolia while they decide where to go next - they left Crimea for obvious reasons....as in, it's now Russia and they couldn't be there anymore. They worked with Tatar people there and are now possibly moving to Turkey where there are quite a few Tatar people also. Teresa directed me to their website where this couple is having a virtual garage sale to get rid of everything they own....well that sounds like a great place to find kitcheny things like a waffle iron!! You have no idea how exciting this is in a land of dehydrators and multi-cookers as practically the only small cooking appliances available in stores!!! 

Guess what's for lunch tomorrow!!!Among a few other kitchen items, and tools, Steve also picked up a really small tent and cooler - things that are hard to find here of good quality.

Steve had a meeting this evening with the leaders at New Hope Church about the youth service we had talked about doing. They asked him to come to their regular leadership meeting to talk about it. He will be preaching in church on June 1st and then we'll have our first youth church service on June 14th! We hope to have one a month over the summer until September when we'll start doing a once a week service, or maybe every other week, we'll see. The church leaders were excited about the idea and really willing to help in any way possible.

We met a man last year who is here from India studying at the medical university (very very common here). He is a friend of friends of ours and we met him once at their church and then didn't see him again for over a year until very recently I ran into him on the marshrootka and then only a few days later again at the grocery store. He called this evening and said he wanted to drop off some food for us! Fresh, real Indian food!! Cokes, napkins, forks, everything we might need for a feast!!

What a blessing! I ran out to the bus stop and got it, and he went home again - he just simply wanted to share some food and I am blown away by his generosity.

Just another reminder that God is good, takes care of all our needs and likes to bless us abundantly.

April 21-26

It's been a beautiful week weather-wise. We planted some grass in our window flower box and bought a very small barbecue to place out there as our own "yard". We haven't actually tried the barbecue out there but when we do, we're hoping we have no complaints from neighbours about it. 

 On Tuesday I baked with the graduated orphan girls. There are four living in the group home and then two girls who are house parents but so far only a few have come at a time. It's been nice though because my kitchen is pretty small and this way I'm getting to know the girls on a more one-on-one basis. If there were all six, Jessica and me it would probably be mayhem in my kitchen! This week it was Tanya, Jess and I and we made donuts:

 They were awful. They were crispy on the outside with a soft middle that just melted in our mouths, blech, so terrible. And the gooey sweet glaze? The worst!! Of course, I'm lying, they were amazing. Each one was like a little ball of joy that you could eat. Jessica and August:

 Oh the fun discoveries we find when we wander around:

Dez is going to preschool three times a week and is having a lot of fun. He makes a laughable craft most days - not because his crafting skills are lacking but because the craft itself is usually really odd....for example: 

I was informed by Dez that it's a turtle, which I mean - of course it obviously is! ha ha The best part is that they usually send home the crafts wet so that there is paint everywhere and it falls apart halfway home. Other than that, Dez is really seeming to have a good time there and hopefully over time his Russian skills begin to develop. 

Today there was baseball at Raduga Park....but there wasn't actually any baseball. There weren't enough people to play so some of the guys played soccer instead and in doing so, gave the field up to another group of people who wanted to use it. In the end we all just went over to the beach and had some shashlik. I walked from home to the park and had nicely packed my three kilograms of marinating chicken in a bowl wrapped in two plastic bags. Somewhere along the way I looked down and realized that my chicken marinade was leaking through my stroller basket and onto the ground. When I got the bowl out, it was a disaster!! Both plastic bags had ripped open and there was chicken trying to make it's way out too. I managed to save all the chicken but was left with a huge mess that I had to carry with two hands while pushing the stroller. A quick phone call to Jessica and she came to my rescue with a new plastic bag. Crisis averted.

 Our shashlik fire:

 It was about +22 and sunny, a beautiful afternoon to spend at the beach. Steve is pretty red this evening!

 The first round of chicken is ready!

 There were 12 or 13 of us altogether - we didn't tell anyone we were going to shashlik, just decided that anyone who came from baseball to the beach would get fed.

 L-R: Jessica, Katya, me, Katya

Easter

Христос воскресе! Воистину воскресе! 

or as you will know it: 

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! 

We were at New Hope Church this morning for their Easter service and it was a full house. 

 Our friend Olga leading/singing a song.

After church there was food and fellowship so we stayed and chatted with the President (??) of Lithuania Christian College (LCC), who is originally from - where else - but Winnipeg!! It was so awesome to meet her, out of seemingly nowhere and it's always great to have connections to people who are meeting the Ambassador of Canada to Ukraine on Wednesday! ;) You just never know why you meet people when you do but more connections are always awesome! We have a few friends from here who are currently attending LCC as well.

After church we (us, Jessica and Eleanor - who is from Steinbach and has been here for three months teaching English) went to the store and picked up everything necessary for Easter dinner. We took it all over to the New Hope boys' group home and prepared it all and had dinner with them.

There are four boys currently living at the group home - these are all boys who have graduated out of the orphanage (several years ago) and were placed in this group home by John. They come to our Monday supper club and Steve has been playing soccer with three of them a few times a week. Jessica has known them for five years and is like a big sister to all of them and we're really excited to be getting to know them better because it takes a lot of time and effort to get "in" with these guys. Our boys love them - we barely saw them after arriving there until we left - they are playing hide-and-seek and soccer outside, it's so great.

We "cheated" and bought rotisserie chickens....but we ate Easter dinner OUTSIDE!! It was beautiful!! They have a beautiful courtyard surrounded by blossoming fruit trees (cherries, apricots, apples and some other fruit that apparently has hair on it!! Any guesses?? We had no idea!), it was just the perfect place for dinner.

 Eleanor and Jessica: 

Playing with the boys: 

Fruit trees: 

The house and the ground covered in blossoms: 

My homemade paska for dessert...I hope it met (surpassed actually) Ukrainian standards, which for paska seem pretty low....we've equated eating their paska to eating a cardboard box, so you can only go up from there. 

The guys and Eleanor - she leaves for home tomorrow. 

L-R

Kostya, Pasha, Igor, Eleanor, Tolik 

Annnnd....my first ever attempt at paska. 

Anything smothered in icing should be good, and it was. 

Spring

It is spring! The trees are green, this week has been mostly around +20 degrees every day and it's been just lovely. 

My friend Marina called one day a couple of weeks ago with information about a preschool (they call it kindergarten here) for Dez. We wanted to get him into one for September so he could hopefully learn Russian but she knew of an opportunity now. We went to see it one day, Dez tried it out a few days later and he got approval from the director to continue going. We were a bit nervous about it being in Russian but they do a little English lesson every day so that means that there is a teacher who speaks English. I think the teachers were just as nervous as we were about having him in the class but so far there have been no problems. He goes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 10 am until 1 pm. 

These two chocolate bars are totally different, and made by totally different companies.

 I usually buy the one on the top but last week I foolishly grabbed the one on the bottom - seeing the blue package, yellow sun and bird apparently wasn't enough to determine that I was buying the proper bar. There has been some debate among friends as to which company copied the other and usually I would side with Roshen (the bottom bar) because anything Roshen makes is amazing, but this time I have to be against them because of the more detailed package on top. Also for some reason their version of this chocolate bard won't melt when heated....which is a bit worrisome, ha ha. Some days I wonder why anything still surprises me here.

 Some of these old Soviet playgrounds were probably really cool at one point, but now they're a little old and worn, and the boys are usually one fall away from needing a tetanus shot (that's probably a joke).

We grabbed some lunch at a cafe yesterday. Generally speaking any cafe you go to in town (unless it's a specialty place like sushi or pizza) will have food that looks exactly like this:

It's good food but the lack of variety between restaurants means that we rarely go out to eat other than at the American Embassy (McDonald's) every once in a while. There is one Ukrainian restaurant called Pazatta Hatta (which translates to Fat Belly) and it's really good, really Ukrainian food so when we need a borsche or sweet vereneky fix, that's where we go.

Monday night "supper" club is continuing despite moving from New Hope's former center to their church building. New Hope Center is now located in a building closer to where we live but it's made up of smaller rooms for training graduated orphans in things like sewing and hairdressing. There has been a bit of drama surrounding supper club (unnecessary and unwelcome drama) so please pray that those that oppose us would not be able to and would instead see the progress we have been making and see the good things that have come from it.

I have started baking at our apartment on Tuesdays with some of the graduated orphan girls (and our friend Jessica) and it's been so much fun. I love being able to share a skill I have with others as well as getting to know these girls better and being able to practice speaking Russian.

Steve started another English club this past week so now he is involved in three different clubs. Hopefully some relationships can be built out of this new one like has happened in the first two he was a part of.

And once more, pray for Ukraine as a country. Most of the bad things we hear are from the news back home and we really haven't heard too much from here. We have been told that there are police surrounding Zap that have been stopping buses of pro-Russian protesters and sending them back to where they came from, which is super cool! Steve and I are pretty sure that we live in the coolest Ukrainian city of them all. But prayer for the country and continued peace here would be awesome and appreciated!

Thank you to everyone who supports us and reads our updates/blog/emails! We are so thankful for each and every one of you who is a part of what God is doing here in Zaporozhye!!

Update Video

In case anyone missed it, HERE'S the link for our latest update video. Steve sent it out via email today so hopefully you all got the chance to take a peek.