Just Youth 3

Saturday night was our third Just Youth service.

 
It was another awesome evening that started off with a bang - our musical performance this week was Radion and his wife Irina. He performed and did really well on X-Factor Ukraine and is friends with some people we know who were able to put us in contact with him. His wife Irina - we met the first time we were in Ukraine five years ago and we've seen her a few times here and there but we didn't know that they were married until earlier in the week after we had already set this up.

 They were really professional and great at getting the crowd involved. He played guitar and sang and Irina played all sorts of interesting accompanying instruments - the harmonica, tambourine, and this mouth keyboard!

We did a little improv game that was fun:

Then Steve spoke on God's love for us:

 As he pre-read the message to me earlier in the week I smiled and thought to myself that there's no question that we're not holding back the Gospel or the weight of the message we have. Steve isn't one to sugar-coat anything and these kids got both barrels on Saturday!

It was so hot all week so we decided to go a different direction with food and drinks. Previously we just did tea, coffee and cookies but this time we did iced drinks - homemade lemonade, iced tea and iced coffee that we kept in coolers loaded up with ice. And we did cut fruit and vegetables. We had been told earlier in the week by our friend to just do fruit because "Ukrainians don't eat raw vegetables." Oh yes, but you see - I have observed your culture and I have noted that once all the stuff you WANT to eat is gone, you'll eat the rest of it anyways.....any guesses to how many veggies were left at the end? None.

 After the service was the usual games and hanging out time.

It's so awesome to see this event doing so well! We love to see familiar faces and new faces as well! We have one truly awesome story from the night but I'm going to keep you in suspense and let Steve talk about that in his next update (which will be at the beginning of September to recap the summer).