Molochansk

We have a number of connections with Molochansk (pronounced: Mah-lo-CHAHNSK )and were invited to come out for a sports day by Pasha - one of the members of the band that usually plays for Just Youth. Along with Igor we took the marshrootka there Wednesday evening. 

We stayed with Pasha and his family (Father, Mother and Grandmother) and when we arrived at about 9 p.m they had a massive spread of food for us, chicken, bread, salad, potatoes, cookies and kompot (homemade fruit juice but it's NOT juice!). After supper we visited with Pasha and Steve got some guitar tips.

At 10 a.m Thursday morning we met at the Mennonite Center to play games. We played a series of fun kid games that involved a TON of sprinting....we are sore today! And then we played volleyball with this massive ball:

We took a break from 12-3 and Pasha took us to a Stalovaya (cafeteria pronouced sta-LOW-va-ya) for lunch where we had macaroni, cutleton (basically a big meatball pronounced kut-LEH-ton), salad, bread and kompot to drink.

After we ate Steve and I went to visit our friend Olga who we stayed with six years ago and then again four years ago. She is now 82 years old and while she has a very hard time getting around and trembles a lot, she is still full of Jesus and joy.

She wanted to send us home with the entire contents of her garden and despite our refusals we came home with pears, cucumbers, onions and more garlic than I know what to do with.

At 3 we met with the youth again to play baseball. It was somewhere around +32 with no shade in this blistering hot field. It was quite brutal but the kids rarely get to play baseball - only when Canadians come out to visit them - so they really wanted to play!

Yes, that IS a goat in the outfield....there were several of them.

We played for 2 hours before heading back to the Mennonite Center.

Steve shared why we are in Ukraine and what we are doing here and some of the "kids" there remembered us from 6 years ago when we were there for the first time. This girl named Dina translated:

Afterwards there was more volleyball - just regular volleyball this time.

We stuffed our faces with blackberries from a tree in the yard:

We headed back to Pasha's house at about 8 and were greeted with more food than we could imagine - pasta, salad, some vegetable thing that was delicious, corn on the cob, fried chicken, bread, cookies, homemade grape juice and more kompot. I think Steve was rather insulted (not really) when Pasha's grandmother called us "weak eaters" because he's never been called that in his life! I thought it was hilarious of course because usually Steve has a snack before we go anywhere to eat AND we usually bring our own snacks but there was just SO MUCH FOOD! Enough for at least twice as many as us!!

We stayed another night and then caught the marshrootka back to Zaporozhye this morning. Pasha's grandma got a hold of our bags this morning and sent us home with even more garden produce - tomatoes and more cucumbers and then cookies and candies. We were so thankful that Pasha's family were such gracious hosts and it's always fun to stay with people and to get to know them.

Buuuuut it's so nice to be home too! I'm glad that our traveling escapades are done for a little while!

Young Life Camp

From July 13-20 we were at Young Life Camp in Novonickolaivka which is south of Odessa on the Black Sea. We had an overnight bus trip to get there once again and got to see the Ukrainian countryside along the way. Over night I didn't sleep very well but there was absolutely NOTHING outside to look at. It was just pitch black with the odd far-off light every once in a while and the "highway" was pretty much a cow path. I was absolutely sure that we were on some random gravel road half the time because we were rocking all over the place with bumps and swerves! It made for difficult sleeping and also negatively affected my recurring shoulder injury so that I was in a lot of pain the next day after arriving. 

Many many sunflowers and lots of various livestock: 

Because we are a family we stayed at a "resort" (I use that term VERY loosely) right next to the camp with all of the other families, of which there were many, most with children smaller than ours.

 The best part for me about this place was that I could send the boys down to the sandbox to play by themselves and I didn't have to worry about them at all. There were other kids to play with and it was completely fenced in and I could read in our room, just peeking out every once in a while to see what they were up to or to settle the odd dispute.

The view from the balcony area:

The dining room building where we ate:

Apparently even though we weren't at the actual camp, "resort" food isn't any better and was in fact, quite a lot worse than the food the kids ate at camp. There was a decent amount of it but it mostly consisted of kasha - which is directly translated as "cereals" - any type of cereal grains like cooked buckwheat or any other number of cooked grains that are just not good to eat....at all. Some we were able to pass off like oatmeal but it was a stretch. Thankfully there were potatoes and rice some days as well and breakfast was usually the best meal of the day with bliny (Ukrainian crepes), omelets, or even cyrniki which are little cottage cheese pancakes. Also I learned my lesson last year at camp and we brought tons and tons of snacks - most of our luggage was food! There was a store at the camp but it was pretty much just ice cream (which was of course, very necessary) drinks and snacks.

The building we stayed in, our room was on the second floor and was pretty much a wooden sauna box:

I decided after watching some of the activities happening that as soon as camp is over, training should begin for the next year's camp. The activities are brutal, mostly involving a ton of physical endurance and stamina.

This is the ladder we used to climb over the fence from our resort to the camp....until some rungs broke. If we went through the front gate we had to walk farther around and then ring a buzzer and wait for someone to let us in so mostly this was easier although slightly dangerous as well.

The hill path leading down to the sea:

There were jelly fish everywhere in the water but we were told that they don't really sting:

The beach was backed by a massive sand cliff:

We had one good thunderstorm go by one day but otherwise the weather was hot and sunny.

Steve and I in our matching Ukrainian t-shirts:

Ruslan who lead the Zaporozhye team which was about 37 kids plus leaders on top of that:

There are Young Life groups in Chernigiv, Chernovtsi, Kiev and Zaporozhye so they split into two different camp weeks. We were there with all of the Chernovtsi group which they broke into four separate teams....and then our team:

 The Kiev team and the Chernigiv team were arriving the day we left to have their camp week.

We had great weather so most activities happened right on the beach and there was always a morning and evening big group meeting as well with skits, games and a speaker who shared a message about Jesus. At the end of the week everyone had the opportunity to accept Christ and each kid there has a mentor who throughout the week will meet together and share with them.

Steve was on the work team and his job was to take video of all the activities. Here is he behind Igor carrying his video gear:

Sand castle building competition:

We thought camp ended on Saturday and we were going to leave on Sunday but we found out at supper on Saturday that camp went until Monday! We were already sick of the food, so tired because sleeping was nearly impossible in our sauna-room and the flies and bugs were so awful every time we tried to open the door to let air in but it turns out that Sunday was the best day yet. Beautiful beach day, great food and lots of fun with the people we knew.

We left Monday morning and headed to Odessa where we spent three hours wandering.

We needed to see the port because it's the biggest commercial port in Ukraine but we must have just seen a small portion of it because I wasn't that impressed! ha ha We had a great time with our team though!

Finally we headed back to Zap. The original plan was to bus back over night but the bus driver had another job the next day and wanted to get back to be able to rest so we arrived back in Zap at 2 a.m. Along the way we saw some really interesting things - for example, outside of Odessa there were semi trucks lined up on the side of the road for miles and miles, thousands of them and we couldn't figure out why! Also there was a lot of combining happening along the way home:

We were so thankful to be home and sleep in our own beds finally but we did have a great week at camp! 

Baptisms

At the beginning of the month our friends Igor and Tolik were baptized. These two guys grew up in an orphanage and after graduating from there, moved into New Hope Center's group home. They lived there for 2-3 years, all the while having Christian house parents who they attended church with, attending our Monday supper clubs as well as many other interactions that lead them to accept Christ as their personal Saviour. We have gotten to know these guys the most in the last year and were beyond excited for them that they made the decision to be baptized. They attend the Voz Rozhdenya Baptist church that Steve has preached in a few times and is the most connected with Young Life so we knew a bunch of the other people who were baptized as well. 

Tolik on the left, Igor on the right: 

Steve was one of the guys who helped everyone into the water:

Steve hired Igor for the summer to help out with all of our summer camps and activities so we've gotten to know him even better over the last month and it's so exciting to see the changes in them as they grow.

The Rest of Sports Camp

Day 3: American Football

Here are a few more pictures from our friend Sasha of the American football day: 

Day 4: More ball hockey

And a group picture from ball hockey day:

Day 5: FINALLY Baseball!! And Wrap-Up Party

We were waiting all week for the rain to stop and for the field to dry up and finally on Friday it was dry enough to play baseball! Aaaaaaand I took no pictures of baseball, ha ha BUT afterwards we all headed down to the beach to do shashlik altogether. 

We played some water volleyball while the chicken cooked:

And Steve gave out prizes for the best player in each sport and to the people who showed up every single day:

Steve also shared how/why we came to Ukraine and what we're doing here for the new faces that came. All in all Steve was really really excited with how the week went. It was such a relief to have something go so incredibly well, to meet new people and to have a lot of excitement come from something we planned. It was an awesome way to kick start the summer!