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.