On the Farm

Tuesday morning we woke up bright and early to catch a ride out to Nickolaipolia to spend some time on Gerry and Teresa Verhoog's dairy farm. Dez has been asking for weeks to go see the cows so it was finally the day! 

This is the current barn and Garry started four years ago with about 40 cows (I think he has 120 right now). They use this barn for the trade school students to learn - so far the only course they have offered is a dairy nurse program and in fall they will start another group. 

We traveled down the road to where the old village collective farm barns are - one of which has been purchased and is being renovated to be their new barn. The barn is massive! I can't remember the exact numbers but they are hoping to have between 150 and 200 cows in here. 

They had a team here in March (?) who worked really hard on the barn and were supposed to have a few more over the summer, however with the current political situation many teams have cancelled so Garry is hoping that the barn gets finished on time for the start of the school year. There is one team that is hopefully still coming but if anyone knows any people with construction experience and free time this summer, let us know!!

On one end of the barn will be a classroom:

There are two bathrooms complete with showers being built in the barn as well:

The yellow you see in the roof is....

....chimneys painted as Ukrainian flags!!

 Garry has been digging a well to supply the barn with water and was working on that yesterday.

Dez was happy to help:

A neighbour with a load of gravel came by:

 All afternoon Steve was helping with cement for around the well.

 It was a beautiful sunny afternoon so we sat outside in the yard for lunch and had some "bootter brat" which is sandwiches. Garry was telling us stories about the village and how he got all of his hired men. He also brought over some weed....and by weed I mean literally marijuana! It grows wild in the village, here is August with a bunch:

 ....but if you're thinking any crazy thoughts, don't bother! Apparently marijuana in the wild is not potent at all, it has to be cross-bred and made specifically to be hallucinogenic (- or whatever it is -) and this stuff may as well be lettuce leaves!

Garry and Teresa live in an old Mennonite house:

Nickolaipolia is one of the most preserved Mennonite villages around because it was largely untouched by any wars. There are many Mennonite houses, a church and a school still being used as a kindergarten here. 

Shortly after lunch I could hear the boom of thunder in the distance. This slow-moving storm eventually worked it's way over us and made for some beautiful pictures over the garden and barn. 

This cow was really curious of Dez and August:

Teresa is currently in Canada preparing for their son's wedding so I offered to cook some supper for the crew: Garry, two hired guys who live with them, Masha their translator and another woman who was out there to learn about attending the trade school in fall.

At the evening milking time Garry taught Dez how to milk a cow! You can see how thrilled Dez was obviously!

In the milk house:

It was a lot of fun to be out there and we look forward to more opportunities to be there in the future! Please pray for students to apply so the trade school courses can go ahead in September as well as for the barn to be completed in time! 

Our First Day at the Dacha

Max and Anya worked with John and have now taken over the leadership of New Hope Center. We have gotten to know them over the last year through all sorts of different things - church, being involved at the center and Max was our main translator with our first landlady. They invited us out to their dacha today - a dacha is basically a garden - some will have a house and some do not - but either way they are usually somewhere outside of the city. It was a beautiful sunny day - the perfect dacha day so we headed out there after church. Their dacha is only about five minutes outside of the city and it is so beautiful! 

The garden: 

They have potatoes, corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries, gooseberries as well as various fruit trees, flowers and grapevines.

Dez digging in the dirt:

Max and Steve chopping wood for a fire to make shashlik for supper:

After lunch they brought out two hammocks for afternoon naps in the shade. August in the hammock with Katya (Max and Anya's daughter):

My view of the covered eating area from the hammock:

Building the fire for the pork shashlik:

Suddenly just as we were getting supper ready it started to rain! Fortunately it only lasted five or so minutes but the fire needed some protection in the meantime and Steve volunteered:

There were thunderstorms going by all late afternoon/evening but we just had the one short shower and then just watched the lightning and listened to the thunder while enjoying the sunset.

Steve and the boys in a field (with Jessie the dog):

To end the evening the boys got wheel barrow rides which they thought were just awesome.

It was so hard to leave! It was so peaceful as well as being an awesome place for the boys to run around and play without having to worry about broken glass or garbage everywhere - such a change to the parks and places we usually frequent.

May, Week #2

May means that strawberries start popping up in the markets! While strawberries are good, Steve is holding out for raspberries and I can't wait until watermelons make their appearance! 

May 9th was Victory Day and it was definitely kept low-key all across the city. We went to the beach with some friends for a shashlik which in my opinion, is the best outing any day of the week.

 Shashlik is just barbecue, but they definitely do it differently here. Usually when we shashlik we make a fire, let it die down and then set up this metal contraption with skewers of marinated chicken (or pork or more rarely due to price, beef).

 People will still call regular barbecuing with coals shashlik but they don't really do propane barbecues here.

For "a few days" in spring the city turns off the hot water to clean the system. Last year "a few days" ended up being three weeks but it didn't matter because our apartment had a hot water heater. Well...this year we're just hoping and praying that it's not actually three weeks because we don't have our own source of hot water! It went off Monday morning and this is how I've been heating water for baths:

I have 21 liters worth of pot space plus a two liter electric kettle that I boil and that add up to a pretty good amount of water in the tub! Jessica has invited us to her place to shower so we will probably go that route in the next couple of days!!

Today we were out at a camp for an event called "Time to Live". It is put on by New Hope church, Tomorrow Clubs, Young Life and another program called Real School that is run out of New Hope. They invited four schools from the city as well as the oldest class from orphanage #3 to attend a day filled with activities, games, a program and what they like to call "master classes", which are basically sessions to do crafts or sports. Steve was there first thing in the morning and I was able to be picked up later on in the day but as expected, it was pure and utter chaos the entire day. Both Steve's, and my master classes disappeared into thin air....skipped over? Forgotten about? Who knows! But it was fun to be there none-the-less - a beautiful +26 degree day to spend outside!!! 

 AND it was the first ploav (ploaf like loaf but with a V) of the season!!

 It was good but we were informed by an appalled friend that "this isn't REAL ploav!" Well, I would have never known and I thought it was delicious but that just goes to show how Ukrainian I am not.
Card making masterclass with Jessica:

We had Bible study this evening and it's always so refreshing! We meet with Garry and Teresa (the couple from Steinbach who farm in Nicolaipolia although Teresa is at home in Canada right now), Masha - our friend who works for them, Jessica and a handful of other random people who sometimes come and sometimes don't. We've been going through different books of the Bible - reading a couple of chapters and just talking about them and it's such a great time of fellowship and learning, we really enjoy it. Today Garry brought us fresh rhubarb and some fresh milk from his dairy farm. They produce 700 liters of milk a day and we're looking forward to a "field trip" to the farm next week!

Tomorrow night Steve and our friend Ruslan are going to an area outside of the city to do a survival camp-out and then Saturday morning there is a Young Life fishing event happening in that area as well so maybe we'll have some fresh fish for me to not know what to do with cook on Saturday.

Plans are being made for summer - our busiest time of the year - so pray for the youth to be available to come to our baseball/sports camps, Young Life camp and whatever else we will have going on!

May So Far

 So back a month ago or so we planted our own lawn in our window flower box. It has grown in quite lush and full and this was it before Steve "mowed" it with a pair of scissors: 

We got away with not really reading the news for the past few weeks but this week we did read some articles. Things here in Zap are still really fine - you'd never even know that there was a war going on in other parts of the country because the only thing we've noticed while being out and about is the rapidly growing amount of Ukrainian flags everywhere. It's really cool - marshrootkas have them, people are hanging them out their windows, I even saw a sporting goods store had foam camping mattresses in blue and yellow on display in the window stacked to look like a flag!

New Hope Church gathered a whole bunch of non-perishable food items and drove it out to the army stationed east of Zaporozhye, protecting us. There are about 200 military men out there and sadly it seems they have had very few visitors since they headed out there a month ago so but that meant they were really happy to see members of our church - with food, gifts and New Testament gospels to hand out! They apparently got a ride on a tank and got to hear some pretty crazy stories - apparently a handful of guys were out having too many to drink and they woke up the next morning in the army!

May 9th, which is Victory Day - is this Friday and the usual parade and celebrations that gather lots of people together have been cancelled. They are saying that 'something' could happen this day, so it's best to not gather in groups and to keep it quiet this year. We are so thankful that Zap has been safe and quiet so far and we trust God in whatever may or - as we've seen many times already in this "war" - may NOT happen! It's too frustrating keeping up with the news, we don't know who to believe because both here, Russia and "the west" have different stories and versions of stories and in the end we know that God controls our lives and our movements so as far as we're concerned we wake up each day joyful and ready to do what He asks us to do and continue with whatever plans we are making.

This is the only election billboard we've seen in the city and most of them are covered in green paint....I guess someone isn't a fan of this guy for president....we think this might be Yanukovich's (the ousted president) party so it makes sense why he's disliked:

May first and second are holidays - Labour Day and what one friend laughingly described as "Hangover Day" which is kind of sad that for a lot of people that might be true! The Young Life leaders gathered on Thursday in Valicky Luke (a.k.a the boonies along the river) and then Young Life club happened there Friday overnight to Saturday. I stayed home with the boys because they were sick and the weather was ugly and rainy but I did send along 10 liters of chili to feed some campers on Friday! 

 

On Sunday evening Steve preached in the Baptist church. His message was on 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 - about rejoicing and praying always, a fitting message for the tense times people are facing these days.

 At Monday supper clubs we have been experiencing an extreme lack of girls. To counter this problem we've started doing planned crafts to hopefully entice some girls out of the woodwork. The first week we did some paper flowers and this last Monday we made body sugar scrubs. These girls are two - with their scrubs - that come from the Young Life crowd:

Yesterday while Steve was at Survival club, I had the girls over to bake/cook. Luba - this gal - requested pizza last week so that's what we cooked!

Luba is the one who pushes me the most with speaking Russian. At first it was frustrating because she would make fun of me for speaking Russian but now it's just frustrating because it's so hard and tiring having to speak so much Russian!! I really do appreciate her for wanting to help me and I do find I've improved a lot since having these girls over. I'm glad that all of our other friends don't push us with that much intensity but it feels good to have to try so hard and to have some successes in communication - even if they're small!

Vera chopping meat:

 L-R: Jess, Tanya, Luba, Vera

A few weeks ago I was really wondering about what "my" place in ministry here is. It's obvious that I have the boys and they take up a lot of my time and I love being able to be home with them - and I do love being involved with the things Steve does when I have the chance but it's not like I'm on the soccer field with him or working away with the fire bow at Survival Club trying to make fire! It finally occurred to me to just look at the things I love to do and go from there. What do I love? Sewing, crafting, baking/cooking and doing hair. I truly believe that God takes the things that He's given you a passion for and uses those things for His kingdom. I am l.o.v.i.n.g the doors that are opening with these girls while baking on Tuesdays and with the *few* girls on Mondays - just doing what I love, teaching others and being creative together. Where I wasn't sure I fit before, I now feel I have a place that fits with who I am and the talents I have been given. I've also been giving hair cuts to a few of these girls and it's nice to have them trust me enough that even with a language barrier, they still let me take scissors to their heads!