Sports Camp: Day 2

Hockey Day!! I was so surprised by the amount of girls that participated AND were really into it!! 

I've never heard so much screaming and shrieking in hockey and 95% of them were holding their hockey sticks backwards but I was thoroughly impressed by their motivation and competitiveness!

The guys pick hockey up fairly quickly...it's just football with a stick really although there are stick control issues as Steve's funny bone will tell you after being rammed during one game. His neck on the other hand is doing much better, thank you Lord!

We had no rain but you can tell from this picture that we had some periods of extreme cloudiness and darkness!!

After the guys and girls played two games each there was a mixed game to finish the day.

The rain held out until we were on our way home which was excellent!

Sports Camp: Day 1

Yesterday was the first day of our multiple sports Sports Camp. We decided to do a variety of sports throughout the week including baseball, volleyball, Frisbee and hockey. 

The day started out quite unfortunately as Steve didn't sleep the entire night because of an unbearably sore neck. He had been bothered a bit with a sore neck in the past couple of weeks but for some reason (um....Satan?!) it decided to be quite debilitating right in time for sports camp! At about 6 am our time I requested for prayer for him on Facebook, hoping that anyone who wasn't yet in bed at home would be able to pray for him and by the time he needed to go meet people the pain was a bit better and he was able to actually move. 

The other downer was rain. It wasn't terrible, it mostly drizzled but the baseball field was completely unusable. Thankfully it was a holiday so the parking lot was fairly empty so Steve taught some baseball basics and then they played Ultimate Frisbee. 

We had about 30 people come out which I thought was impressive for 10 a.m, Monday morning, on a holiday, in the rain!!

We lost the frisbee and some baseballs in the fountain a few times....

Just Youth June: Dance Party

Having a dance party has been our back up plan for almost a year already if for some reason we couldn't secure a band for Just Youth. This last Saturday we finally got to use the back up. 

We still did a true or false game with chocolate bar prizes for the winners....

And Steve shared a message with our friend Katya interpreting: 

And then we taught some fun group dances! We learned some break dancing moves from our friend Ruslan, learned a fun and easy dance with our friend Katya and we watched a few YouTube videos on some other dances we could learn altogether. 

It was really fun and exciting to try something completely different!

Azov Sea

Last Friday to Saturday we were at the Azov Sea with a group of about 30 New Hope Center staff and group home kids. We knew most of them which made for a really great, relaxing time at the sea. 

It was hot and the boys obviously loved spending time in the shells....I mean sand.....

The "thing" about the Azov Sea is that it is a shallow sea (a max of only about 14 meters) so it is very warm and "therapeutic" according to Ukrainians. I don't disagree, how can't a few days on the beach be therapeutic?

An afternoon thunderstorm building over the sea:

The guys played soccer on Friday evening and then once again Saturday afternoon against the guys who work at the camp.

This is Yura - one of the group home parents (not to be confused with the other Yura who is also one of the group home parents):

Steve, Pasha and Tolik doing water gymnastics:

In the evening we all sat around, sang songs and everyone shared how God has blessed them in their lives.

Tanya (former group home parent) and Vera (one of my Moms Club attendees) with her almost two month old baby boy:

The whole group:

I had to take a picture of this country road because it is cobblestone!

 It was the strangest thing driving through the country on a gravel-ish road and then suddenly there would be a really long stretch that was cobblestone.

An interesting vehicle we passed on the drive home:

On the drive home I couldn't help but stare at the countryside and think of my family having lived here and having made the life or death decision to leave 90 years ago. Ukraine is for sure an agriculturalist's dream. We passed butter-coloured wheat fields, blooming flax and canola fields all surrounded by lush green shelter-belts, hundreds of orchards in black, black topsoil, rolling hills.....it was indescribably incredible.

Supper Club Finale

On May 25th we had our final supper club for the spring season. We met at Victory Park and the boys played soccer while the girls observed or lounged in the grass.

After the game was over we went into the bush, built a fire and threw some sausages on there for supper. 

Unfortunately the mosquitoes were terrible so after cooking we abandoned the bush in favor of the non-mosquito infested grass.

Steve prepared a message as usual but there was no one to translate! We had been in Spain while this was planned and didn't find out until that day that no one had informed the usual translator that she was needed that day. So instead our friend Sasha offered to help. She is only 16 and is usually a little wary of speaking English (most people are embarrassed) but Steve said she did a really great job and we were thankful for her boldness.

We will resume supper club in fall, but will continue to have a few events throughout the summer as well to keep the kids connected.

In all honesty supper club is one of the most difficult ministries we are involved in, not because of the kids but because our leadership team just cannot find unity. Everyone has a different plan for what it should look like or who should be involved and Steve and I have spent many hours just praying and trying not to be stressed about it! It's a relief that it's done for the summer and we hope that fall brings a new sense of unity to our team because we're all there for the same reason and we all have the same goal in mind, we just all want to do it differently. Please pray for this ministry and our team. We know that God is working and doing amazing things and we don't want something as simple and silly as our leadership team not working well together to get in the way of sharing the Gospel with these kids.

Trash Clean Up

At Just Youth on Saturday we invited everyone to come help us do some trash clean-up this past Tuesday. We had nine people total which isn't 70, but also isn't zero!! We walked from Mayakovskaya Park on Lenin street down towards the beach, cleaning along the way. 

At first I really anticipated more garbage and was pleasantly surprised with how little there was.

However, once we got to the beach we filled those garbage bags like nobody's business!! People love to have barbecues on the beach and then just leave everything behind. It took about two and a half hours for the nine of us to fill 34 garbage bags which I would say is a successful time! Then we bought drinks for everyone and played frisbee on the beach.

We already thought that for our next trash clean up day we'll have a race - we'll get everyone to pick teams and then race to fill up the most amount of bags in a certain amount of time for a cash prize! THAT should get more people out and more garbage cleaned up!

#JustYouth: May

We had our May Just Youth event this past Saturday. We were anticipating a smaller crowd than usual because Saturday was also graduation day for all the schools but we still had about 70 people in attendance. Our band from Molochansk was back to perform again and they were great as usual.

We did a true or false game that was really fun and we all learned some new facts (did you know that the almond is part of the peach family?!).

Steve spoke about God's love and did a little skit with Dez as an illustration:

Afterwards we had coffee, tea and cookies and everyone stayed to play games. It was a great evening and we invited anyone who was interested to come help us do some trash cleaning on Tuesday.

Spain

I'm really behind on blogging so I'm going to throw out a bunch of posts about old stuff. 

From May 11-20 we went to Spain. We wanted to meet the current class who is graduating in June to invite them to come help us over the summer, we wanted to refresh and prepare for the busy summer up ahead and we wanted to meet with our mentor there. And well, Spain. 

We chose a time when friends of ours who live there were back home in America so we were able to stay in their house which was just amazing. This is the view from the front porch:

 They have a private backyard which was absolutely amazing. I forgot what it felt like to be "normal" and have our own outside space! We spent so much time out there with the boys, playing with the garden hose and relaxing.

We attended classes at least once a day and were able to see two of our favourite teachers. The boys coloured and played with games they borrowed from the English school that happens in the same building.

Watermelon and rollkuchen. Nothing else is needed in life, ever.

We went to the beach one day but it was very cold. The boys loved playing in the sand with the current interns we went with.

Friday night is still Tapas Night and was at Mijouse (one of the intern houses, where we stayed last August for the reunion). They did a barbecue where everyone brought meat and it all got cooked up. Then we just hung out there for the longest time. THIS:

 ...is what we miss the most. COMMUNITY. People hanging out, someone with a guitar, telling stories and just being. It was awesome. Also, I didn't see the boys for almost 3 hours - there were so many fun girls to play with that they just didn't need me. On the way home that night August hugged me hard while I carried him and said: "I missed you!" like I had been gone forever.

Sunday morning we woke up and climbed the mountain up to the church, which is about a 15 minute climb. Dez was ready to keep going but maybe next time he'll be big enough to hike further.

Sunday evening we went to Malaga to our friends Shanda, Tara and Laine's apartment where they have a church service every week. They are infiltrating the artistic community in Malaga and it was awesome to see all the people who were at their place from all over the place. Shanda and Tara were on staff while we were at G42 and it's really cool to see them doing their ministry thing. This is the view from their living room:

Church:

We left very early on Wednesday morning and felt ready to come back to Zap. I'm not sure if we convinced anyone to come help out for the summer but we definitely made some new friends and had a wonderful time. We made one friend who isn't attending G42 but is living with some friends in Mijas who Steve really hit it off with and he is thinking about coming out in August so hopefully that can happen.