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.
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!
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