#JustYouth November: Minute To Win It

I've never actually watched the game show Minute to Win It but one of our helpers suggested it as an idea for Just Youth. Silly games to win a prize? Ummmm....yes please!! 

Steve gave a message on thankfulness before we got the game started.

Steve calling up our contestants using this handy numbered ball roller that the church has for some reason:

We configured our games so that we could have 36 people in total play one of the games and that was about half the people that were there yesterday.

Picking up mini marshmallows with chopsticks:

Me determining the winner....her cup was full and the rest had one layer of marshmallows in them:

Coin stacking with one hand:

Flipping a pompom suspended from your mouth into a cup on your forehead:

Transferring ping pong balls from one plate to another using a spoon in your mouth:

 Transferring mini marshmallows from one plate to another using a straw:

Blowing cups off the table using a balloon:

Shaking noodles out of one bottle into another:

Stacking cups until one cup goes all the way from the top, to the bottom and back again:

And the final, shaking ping pong balls out of a tissue box tied to your back:

The grand prize was a trip to the banya for the winner and seven of their friends. It's always a hit, we ourselves LOVE trips to the banya and it's always fun to surprise them with a big prize every now and again! 

The next #JustYouth will be December 17th and will be planned by our team because we will be in Canada by then. They plan on doing a play of some kind and a small gift exchange and while we're sad that we'll miss it, we're always thankful that we have a team that is willing to step up and plan the event when we aren't able to be around. 

#JustYouth October: Music Night

We had a big crowd out for #JustYouth this past Saturday evening and had a fun music sing along night. We had a few different combinations of people singing popular songs and we put the words up so that everyone could sing along. 

Our friend Pasha from Molochansk came to sing for us:

We played our favourite true and false game with some fun prizes:

And Steve preached a message that only Steve could get away with...ha ha....basically how God loves you no matter what you've done. Done drugs? God loves you. Smoke? God loves you. Drink too much sometimes? God loves you and will redeem you if you ask Him to.

October Recap

It's been a while since I've posted so here's a recap of the past month, after our #JustYouth event that happened on October first. 

Steve started a ministry with another guy named Lyosha where they go hang out at one of the trade school dormitories where a lot of the graduated orphan guys we know now live. They started by playing sports with them and have started a Bible study and are working towards further relationships through sports teams to play in various leagues - mainly floor ball which is similar to ball hockey and in Steve's volleyball league. 

Steve's volleyball league starts this weekend! He has the gym rented for the next few Saturdays and has talked to a lot of different people from different churches and ministries to put teams together. The point is to have a team made up of Christians and non-Christians with a Christian leader who can get to know all the teenagers and invite them to get more involved in church or Young Life or whatever other ministry they run. Basically we just want to get them to Jesus....that's always the goal. 

Steve has also been in Dez's school teaching English again and has met all the older grades. One girl actually came to our church with her mother the week after he met her which was really cool. To meet youth that are already Christian is pretty rare! 

I had mentioned to Marina a long time ago that I would be interested in getting the boys vaccinated for Tuberculosis. They haven't done TB vaccinations in Canada (other than in high risk areas) since the 1970's but the occurrence of TB in Ukraine is the highest in all of Europe so it was something that I had fleeting, not-overly serious thoughts about. Marina told me that the vaccine wasn't currently available in Ukraine so we left it at that however she called me at the beginning of the month and told me that her friend had found the vaccine and we could get it if we wanted to. So off we went to a "lovely" clinic and first the boys each needed a skin test where they inject a tiny bit of stuff under their skin and then we have to wait 48 hours to see if they react, which they didn't. They administered the actual vaccine in the same manor - just injected it underneath their skin. They said that there should be no side effects and that within three to six months they would get a red bump and that would eventually go away and form a scar on their arm. It was all very interesting and I even got the option to choose a vaccine from Russia or from Bulgaria....um, NOT Russia, please!! Dez was quite upset about this whole fiasco and was quite concerned about getting a needle but in the end they were fine. August did have some hives a couple of weeks later which I assume were related but weren't serious and went away within a couple of days. Also the nurse regretted to inform us that the vaccine is only available for people under thirty.....well fine then, we didn't really want it anyways! 

My neck issues.....are ongoing. From September 14th to October 14th was the worst month I've ever had with almost no days of relief. There were whole entire days that I spent lying on the couch doing as little as possible in excruciating pain. Finally I got up the courage to send a consultation form to a spine clinic in Germany outlining my problem. They got back to me saying that they would assess my case as soon as I could provide them with the scans they needed - an MRI and four specific x-rays. Thankfully I have a wonderful friend Marina and you get immediate results if you pay for them so Marina had me in for an MRI the day after she called for one and x-rays the day after that (also an MRI is $22 and x-rays are $15 so......yeah). MRI:

X-Rays on the nicest x-ray machine I've ever been on in my life....compared to the last one I was on here that was probably from the 1960's:

I still haven't heard back from that clinic and I'm kind of scared to actually. I'm not sure if I should be praying that I don't need surgery or that I do.....if I don't then how on earth do I live like this for the next fifty years when I haven't been able to find anything at all that provides relief! But if I do need surgery, well that's just scary! So I'm praying that the Lord's will be done and for strength in either circumstance. 

We had planned to celebrate Thanksgiving but I just never got around to making any plans so we didn't and it worked out because I couldn't move at all that day. To our surprise a few Sundays later our church celebrated so we got to enjoy the day then! They decorated beautifully and had a wonderful spread of snacks for after the service. 

I guess that's most of the major things that have happened this month! We had another #JustYouth event this past Saturday that I will post about shortly. Please continue to pray for us here in the work that we do! 

#JustYouth Costume Party and Penny Carnival

On October first we had a costume party for Just Youth. We gathered everyone who dressed up to take a group picture and I think we had more people dressed up than last year: 

I made our family costume again this year - we were Lord of the Rings characters - I was Galadriel the elf, August was Frodo the Hobbit, Dez was Gimli the dwarf and Steve was Gandalf the White Wizard. 

Steve preached in his costume with Olya dressed as a piece of pizza:

We had each member of our Just Youth planning team put together a carnival game for teenagers to play (we had nine in total) and they won copious amounts of candy.

I made a candy guess jar as well which is always a fun prize: 

It was a busy week leading up to this Just Youth and it was totally worth all the preparation and planning. We had so many teenagers just over-the-top excited about this evening and it was awesome to see. 

More Visitors

My aunt Elaine was here with her friend Frieda visiting for a few days at the end of September. We had some fun experiences with them - like our car dying (it's fixed), renting a Ukrainian apartment for them to stay in and a trip to the banya. 

We also spent a lot of time drinking coffee, playing games and doing a puzzle. We always love having guests and have fun showing everyone our city!

Visitors

Steve's Dad, Kelly and Stepmom, Martha came to visit us from September 8-14th. It was exciting for us to host them and we even had a truly Ukrainian experience with the apartment we rented for them while they were here! The host never showed up to give us keys and stopped answering any of our calls so we booked them into a lovely, inexpensive hotel close to our apartment. A truly Ukrainian welcome - plans change and you need to be ready with a back up plan! 

Another fun first - Steve got pulled over at the check stop when we were coming into Zap from picking them up at the airport in Dnipro. That has never happened before and he even had to get out of the car and go into the office with the police officer. The officer kept repeating the same thing over a few times which we've been told is code for "give me *something* and you can go" but instead Steve just told him that he was just going to call a "friend who deals with this all the time" and called Garry. As soon as Steve started speaking English on the phone he was suddenly free to leave. What a fun experience to have with first-timers to Ukraine! Neither Steve or I were worried but we were all praying in the car, because you never know! 

We had a busy first full day on Friday. We picked Dezmond up from school and headed to the largest market in the city because it's overwhelming and awesome! From there we headed to Khortitza Island to do shashlik together. In the evening we headed over to the port down the river and took a river cruise. It was the perfect evening - warm and calm.  

The boat was just spectacular! It's my favourite activity to do with people.... when they're here during boat season, that is!

On Saturday afternoon we headed out to Nicolaipolia to visit with Garry.

He showed them all around and told them the Mennonite history of the village and we had a great visit with lots of walnuts to go around.

On Sunday after church we went to our friend Ara's home where his dad has a business doing Armenian shashlik. We had been there once before and it was incredible, and this time was no different. The BEST shashlik we've ever had without a doubt and he always makes sooooo much food!

Our friend Ara used to be an officer with the Ukrainian National Police and we had told him long ago that Kelly might be coming to visit and he was so interested in meeting a real Canadian police officer! So he had plenty of questions and was great company during our meal.

We finished Sunday with a trip to the Russian banya. Everyone must know by now that it's my favourite activity, ha ha. A hot sauna and an icy cold pool are only half of what I enjoy - the atmosphere, the visiting and the snacking! I made some rollkuchen and watermelon to bring along with us in between dips in the pool and frying in the sauna.

On Monday we left the boys with our friend Marina and took the overnight train to Kiev with Kelly and Martha. We knew that they NEEDED to experience the train but we were also nice and booked the train that is much newer than the typical old Soviet ones we usually take! In Kiev the next morning we found an apartment-type hotel to stay in on the 29th floor of a building so we had a great view of the city.

Kelly has always been very interested in World War 2 so we took him to the World War 2 museum which is basically tank and artillery heaven.

I was surprised that the museum itself was only in Ukrainian - I was sure that being in the capital with more tourists there would be English. It was still interesting and massive - it would have taken forever to actually read through everything if there had been English. The room that moved me the most was the "hall of memories" which was a massive room filled with personal photographs and things of the soldiers and their families.

This is heading down towards Independence Square, or Maidan as it's more commonly known.

This is where the protests turned ugly in early 2014 and 100 men and women were killed. There are photographs of each person and people walking around selling things and asking for money for the war and the hospitals where the wounded soldiers are taken. There are bullet-holes in the trees and it's just an overall surreal feeling walking by all of that.

The next day after lunch at Pazatta Hatta (a chain of Ukrainian cafeteria restaurants) we threw Kelly and Martha on a bus to the airport and headed back to Zap on the inter-city train which got us back home by ten in the evening.

It was fantastic to show more family members our city and bits and pieces of our life here. It's always so much fun to see visitors react to things that to us are already normal! I felt like they really enjoyed their time here and hope that we showed them enough nice things that they'll come back for another visit in the future!

August Starts Preschool

We started August at the same preschool that Dez was going to up until now. It's three days a week for three hours each of those days so we're hoping it's an easy introduction to Russian. 

August asked every week for two years to go to school like Dezmond and now finally it's his turn aaaaaaaaand he hates it. Like, cries every morning I wake him up to go, cries when I leave him - usually sitting on a chair by himself in the corner of the room. So we'll see what happens and if he comes around! After class he always seems to have enjoyed himself so it's not like he sits there and cries the whole time!!

Dezmond's First Day of School

Today was Dez's first day of grade one! September 1st is the official first day of school in Ukraine and there is a ceremony which is known as "First Bell" with dancing and an actual ringing of a bell. The school has a black and white "uniform" but looking around at the other students, it was pretty slack. 

We were told to meet his teacher at the front of the school at 8:15 a.m but when we arrived at 8:10, the program had already started and everyone was at the back of the school! We stood around for a while and then eventually wrestled through the crowd to get Dez in with his class. 

I have no idea how many students go to his school but just his grade one class is 90 kids, split up into three different groups. There were SO MANY PEOPLE at the ceremony!

Dez is in there somewhere!! He was holding a red balloon and he rang a bell with some other kids to signify the opening of the school year. 

They sat in the classroom with the teacher for a while and then the parents were allowed in to take pictures of their kids....sitting in the classroom. Then we were all ushered outside to the front of the school to where another photo shoot happened.

Then we went home, I think we were there by 10:30. Class for the first few weeks starts at 8:10 (UGH!!!) and goes only until 11 and then it will eventually get longer as the year goes on.