Youth Service #justyouth

Yesterday evening we had our first youth service! There are always kinks to work out for the next time but we both think it was a great success!! We had lots of new faces, about 55-60 youth in total and everyone seemed to have a great time. 

Greeters at the door - Brian and Steve - we gave out chocolate bars to the first 50 people who arrived (a secret ploy to get people there on time!)

We opened the doors at 6 pm and started the service at 6:30. Before it started people were free to play foosball and hang out.

Our friend Ruslan was the MC for the service: 

Vanya from our church and a band from Molochansk (city south of Zap) that he recruited for the evening:

Steve and Vanya sang a song together:

Steve preached on why bad things happen in life: 

The service was until 7:30 (an hour) but afterwards we stayed open until 9 (10 actually!) for people to hang out. There were cookies, coffee, tea, foosball and ping pong to play.

 We also put the Chile versus Brazil football/soccer game up afterwards for those who wanted to watch.

Our flyers that we were handing out:

Our next service is planned for July 19th but there are some major kinks to work out - like who can do music seeing as how Vanya and his wife might be travelling to New York for six months. We hope that the next one will be even bigger and better and that we can get the message out to even more kids! God loves these kids and some of them have never even given Him a thought. It makes for some interesting conversations and tough questions but we've seen some of them come a long way since getting to know them, and we want to continue that. 

#justyouth - Our First Youth Church Service

Tomorrow is the big day! Our first youth church service! We've been planning for the last month and a half, getting a small team together to work everything out from the layout and music to the message. 

We are inviting people from 6-9 pm to come and hang out drop-in style with cookies, coffee and tea, games like foosball and ping pong and then there will be a one hour program during that time with music and a message (by Steve) probably lasting about an hour. After the service we'll continue the hang-out time. 

Here is the poster that our friend Vanya (New Hope's worship leader) made up for the event: 

We are going to have people out at the bus stop handing out fliers to draw people in and we've invited everyone we know in every circle - our Christian friends have been told to bring a non-Christian friend because Zaporozhye doesn't need a new church for Christians - there are enough churches that start and just glean people from other churches - we want NEW people who have never met Jesus before who we can love and show how awesome He really is!

Please pray for this event - we want to have one of these every month for the summer and then start more regularly in September so we need a team of people who is willing to prepare for the events with us and we need people who will continue to come. We want relationships, we want people to be able to see Jesus when they walk through the door!

Kids Camp

Last week from June 10-12 we helped out New Hope Center with a kids camp for the remaining kids at orphanage #3. Every year the orphans go to summer camps at the sea but there's always a few week window where they are just hanging around the orphanage doing nothing. We did a camp at the orphanage last year but this year decided to take the kids out to do some fun activities. There are only 10-12 kids that were remaining there who are actual orphans - they are transitioning the orphanage into a boarding school - so we took these kids and had some fun. I've been waiting since then for these pictures from a friend so finally here they are! 

Day one started at New Hope Church for some games and then we went to Pobyeda (Victory) Park for some soccer competitions, card game playing, frisbee and then beach. Afterwards we went back to the church for a Bible lesson, lunch and more games. 

Day two they headed to Khortitza Island for games, rock-climbing, swimming and shashlik.

Day three was spent at the beach playing soccer and doing water games.

This week we did a baseball camp which unfortunately was a bust. It was scheduled for three days and one of those days was pouring rain and the last day about 15 people showed up. We found that last summer everyone was really interested and excited to come out for activities and sports and this year there is next to zero interest. It's like everyone wants to just sit around and do nothing although when we present ideas to people everyone is always super excited and can't wait - but then the day of, no one shows up!!! It's frustrating and it's also presenting an interesting challenge to come up with interesting and exciting events to invite people to. Hopefully we can make a breakthrough soon. Steve has been meeting a lot of new people recently - out playing basketball in the park etc. and for the next two weeks he'll be helping out at an English camp so hopefully some new relationships can build out of that.

Connections

One of the benefits of having gone to a school like G42 is the lasting connections - not only with the people we went to school with, but with all of the people who have ever been to school there. We know that people who have been there think the same as we do as far as missions and living for Christ and we're always excited to connect with new people through the school.

That being said, just after the election here at the end of May, we got a message from a guy named Brian who went to G42 the year after us. He had been in Ukraine for a month on the World Race before attending G42 and really liked it and through G42 connections he knew who we were and wanted to see how we were doing with all of the political upheaval. He was also interested in what our ministry here looks like so we as usual, casually threw it out there that if he had nothing up for the summer, he should come out and help. He was really interested and even said that he had felt like he should be learning Russian - so he had been for a few months - and after a few Skype conversations and messaging back and forth with Steve - he booked a plane ticket and will be arriving on the 25th! He has gone to school to be a gym teacher so who better to help with our sports camps and ongoing ministries.

We're excited for his visit - for the help he'll bring and for just having someone with the same mindset (read: not Ukrainian) to hang out with for a bit! It gets a bit lonely sometimes being the "crazy ones" (read: Canadians) who think differently and act differently than the culture around us.

Supper Club Finale

Last summer we tried to continue supper club on Mondays throughout the summer but by mid-July they had majorly fizzled out. This year we decided to take a break for the summer and start up again in September when kids go back to school. We still want to plan events during the week for these kids, they just won't be quite as rigid as every Monday from 4-8 p.m. 

To close out the season we went to Victory Park for a shashlik party. We were pleasantly surprised at the turnout although we shouldn't have been - there was free food promised :) 

Jessica and Tanya preparing the "shampoors"

Me pretending to do something to the chicken:

The girls:

Waiting (and waiting and waiting) for the chicken to be ready:

Master shashlik chef Steve:

August waiting patiently with Vanya for some chicken:

The boys: