Just Youth: February

We're always trying to come up with new cool ideas for Just Youth and Steve had the awesome idea to do a game show - but not just ANY game show.....but The Price is Right! We watched a whole bunch of episodes and chose games that were the simplest to recreate and then divided them among our team of helpers. We were so excited to do it and even though it was so much work, it was totally worth it because everyone loved it! 

Our friend Antonio was the host, and I was the lovely model to show off the prizes and set up the games.

 

 For some reason the church had this awesome bingo ball thing so we marked everyone with a number when they came in and then just randomly chose balls to choose contestants.

Our first set of contestants including Pastor Sergei from our church.....who I think won the most prizes.....

We had everyone write their bid in order and as per the game, whoever was the closest without going over got to play for a larger prize.

We had about 70 people and then our team and we always chose a whole new set of contestants which gave 24 people a chance to play. 

Another group of contestants: 

The game More or Less:

 A kid playing "Squeeze Play":

For the "big wheel" we obviously couldn't make anything that cool but thankfully the internet is full of awesome things like virtual wheels! We used a wireless mouse so that everyone could spin on their turn.

This is our new friend Kate (or Katya) who has been helping me with my doctors appointments: 

It turns out that she won the showcase showdown prize of paintball for her and seven of her friends!! However she recently had emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix and the doctors say that she will need surgery for a hernia so afterwards we offered her the other showcase showdown prize, which is a very relaxing, non-painful trip to the Russian banya (sauna) for her and seven friends!! 

Afterwards Steve shared a message and used Dezmond as an example, asking how much he was worth. 

The point being that we were all worth Christ dying for us and that gift is free to anyone who wants to accept it. 

This Week

It was already ten days ago (February 12) that we celebrated August's fourth birthday! 

We've been busy since coming back - Steve has started helping out with a Friday night small group for youth through New Hope church as well as going to Young Life.

I am going to be more involved with Moms club once again - they have been struggling to find someone who will make food for the ladies and their babies and well, that's my specialty so I'll go, make food, visit with the girls a bit and then leave the deep discussions to the local ladies. I have been impressed with the topics they have covered and I'm pretty excited about being able to be involved again....and food is my real niche area, ha ha. If there's food needed, I'll be there.

We have been going to supper club here and there - we were there this evening and it was lovely visiting and playing games.

Dezmond has been back at soccer practice which is Monday, Wednesday and Friday evening but we usually choose just one of those evenings to go. He really likes playing soccer but doesn't necessarily like learning drills and practicing!

This Saturday will be Just Youth and we're putting together The Price Is Right game show! Obviously we're not going to be giving away cars or trips but we think the kids will love it and we're always looking for new ideas especially since our band is on official hiatus.

I have received six of ten injections for my neck issue....so far they are not helping at all but we're not done the full regimen so we'll see what happens when they're done. The one I got every day for five days has been a breeze in comparison to the one that happens every two days....it is directly into my neck muscles in three spots and well........I'm still alive ? ? ha ha. I also was prescribed some pills and a topical cream today so we'll see if they help.

Our friend Craig is coming to visit us! He will arrive next Monday and will be staying for almost three months which we're super excited about! We're looking forward to showing him our city and to get him involved in all the things we do! I know it will be eye-opening for him because well...Ukraine.......ha ha but I know he'll be a huge help and support to us as well just having a fellow Canadian around!

Sharing Time....It's A Long One

For the last year and a half I (Jo) have been dealing with mild to excruciating pain every day in my neck, clavicle and/or arm. It started as a freak injury in 2011 and has just progressed slowly over time to be worse and worse.

This year while we were home in Canada we decided that something needed to be done so I saw my doctor, a sports doctor and a physiotherapist. The physiotherapist determined that my C5 nerve in my neck was very inflamed but after six sessions in three weeks, she told me that she felt that she wasn't helping me and that I should go somewhere else for a second opinion. By that point, I was in so much pain every day that I could hardly focus and I felt like it was really negatively affecting the things I could do. We didn't have time by that point to get another opinion, so we determined that when we got back here I would seek medical care, which would be the first time we've ever sought medical care here.

Our friend Olya made an appointment for me at a private clinic and then went with me to translate. I saw a neurologist....she did an assessment and then gave me a paper to take with me for a CT scan. I went with another friend, Kate on Monday and it was pretty interesting. I have never had a CT scan before let alone in another country so it was a pretty cool experience. The scan itself took all of ten minutes and then we had to wait for the results. They gave me a big x-ray-like paper (seen below), a CD and a written analysis to take back to the doctor. If you were wondering about what the inside of my neck looks like.....wonder no more.....

Kate snuck a shot through the observation window of the nurse prepping me for the scan:

As soon as I got home I google translated the conclusion portion of the analysis and it said that I have a prolapsed (herniated) C5-C6 disc in my neck and the beginning stages of what sounds like Degenerative Disc Disease which by the way, is MUCH less scary than it sounds! It's basically just chronic neck/nerve pain like I've been dealing with anyways! I started googling it and it made a lot of sense - there were all of my symptoms and everything I had felt for the last year and a half! 

The next step was to make an appointment with the neurologist again so I did that Thursday afternoon. I handed her the analysis and watched as she read it over and then she said: "okay so you don't have a herniated disc, it's simply muscle spasms." I was so confused and in disbelief!! She insisted that muscle spasms were the cause of all of my pain because they are intertwined with nerves and such so if I get 10 needle injections of various anti-inflammatory drugs, I will be cured............CURED she said. She kept referring to the medication as "the cure". I obviously wasn't feeling very confident in her by this point because it didn't take a rocket scientist to translate "prolapsed disc" - it's the exact same words in English as it is in Russian!! But in the back of my head I kept thinking - I've been in pain for so long, I will try (almost) ANYTHING to make it better! So I gave her the go ahead to do the first injection....3 needles into the muscles at the back of my neck, and it was terrible, ha ha, I'm such a baby! I also asked for all the names of the medications so that I could google them extensively when I got home. 

Olya and Kate were really shocked and surprised by what the doctor said because they also had read the analysis from the CT scan. They immediately started researching other private hospitals to go to for a second opinion and now that the CT scan is done we could take it to anyone. So we'll try these injections (as much as I LOVE needles, eeeek!) and then if it doesn't make a difference, then we'll go elsewhere. 

So there's this series of five injections directly into my neck muscles (which is really 15 injections because she wonderfully (NOT) stabs three places every time), and then there's another series of five injections just into a major muscle anywhere on my body. I went back for that one today and it was quite easy and not terrible at all, although this entire evening I have been battling stomach issues, I'm not sure if it's related, hopefully not. 

Here's today's nurse, washing up before she stabbed me: 

 The lovely needle room:

In conclusion, these last few years I haven't really shared much about it because it always seemed like something that I didn't want to bother anyone with. Even Steve didn't know the full extent of the pain I was in because I figured that it would get old telling him every day, "guess what, I still hurt today, just like every other day!" I guess I figured that it would eventually just go away and it wasn't really affecting my life that much anyways at that point - I could still carry my kids, exercise extensively and do everything else, until very recently of course. 

We have been praying for healing in our Bible study group and at other times and we really do believe that God can and does heal but in my case, for some reason, the answer has been no or maybe just "not yet". So we ask that you'll join us in prayer for healing, whether that comes in a crazy miracle or at the hands of a doctor whose hands are directed by the Father. 

I thank you for continuing to support us in prayer and financially as we look forward to another year here in Zap, serving the Lord! If you have any further questions or if there was something I didn't cover that you're wondering about, feel free to email myself or Steve! 

A Few Things This Week

On Monday Dezmond turned 6!

We celebrated with presents, cake, popcorn and a movie (at home) and we went to his favourite restaurant (Ukrainian cuisine) called Pazatta Hatta. He really wanted cherry verenky but unfortunately they were all out! Thankfully there are other sweet and doughy things like bliny (Ukrainian crepes) that filled the void left by the absence of vereneky.

I was at Moms Club yesterday because Jessica was around to be my translator! We had coffee and far too much food and the topic of discussion was how to have a happy marriage. 

We went today and purchased the finishing touches for our bathroom.

Steve being very handy, installing things: 

We now have a new shower head that sits above our heads and isn't strictly hand held, which is a novelty for a Ukrainian bath tub. And a medicine cabinet with a massive mirror: 

Apparently medicine cabinets are "very American" and it was kind of hard to find one that was just a plain mirror with a cabinet behind it.

Back in Zap

Our flight left Winnipeg at 6:30 a.m February 2nd so we stayed in a hotel near the airport so that we could get that little bit of extra sleep.....even though we never really sleep before a flight. We actually left late because the pilot wasn't there....once he arrived he apologized saying that he forgot a bag at home (or wherever he was staying) and then got a speeding ticket on the way back to get it! All I was thinking was "I have to be here two hours in advance but the guy who drives the plane just gets to show up on time?" ha ha. 

Despite our late departure we still arrived early in Toronto, leaving us almost nine hours to kill. We still had a gift card for the movies that we got for Christmas so we headed to Mississauga to catch a movie with the boys.

Back to the airport to prepare for our Toronto to Vienna flight.

The next morning flight from Vienna to Dnepropetrovsk was slightly delayed as well which was fine because the boys fell asleep almost as soon as we got to our gate on these awesome benches they have. ALL airports need to have these!!! It's sad that most don't!

The boys slept the entire flight which was an hour and 15 minutes longer than it was supposed to be - we got over Dnep and they told us that there was fog and they needed to be able to see 500 meters to land and could only see 200 meters.

We circled for 30 minutes to see if the fog would clear at all and it didn't in that time so they redirected us to Kiev which was so disappointing! We were SO close to home and then to fly 400 km further away, ahhhhh it was sad!!

After we landed we called Garry who had been at the airport to pick us up - he found out that we weren't coming and left. We also called Ruslan who was waiting at McDonald's in Dnep for over an hour for us....sorry friends!!!

Once we got our baggage an airline representative informed us that they were putting us on a bus to Dnep which sounded awful - a more than seven hour bus ride only to arrive in Dnep at 11 p.m or later. We knew we could stay with Ruslan and Katya but it was just so inconvenient! We went up to the Austrian Airlines booth and they told us that they would provide tickets on the express train to Dnep, which would also arrive at 10 p.m so once he got to the railway counter Steve asked if they would instead put us on the overnight train all the way to Zap, which they were happy to do.

We had a few hours to kill before the train left at 8:16 p.m so we got some food and relaxed at KFC right next to the train station. We were so happy to discover that our train car was really new! The bathrooms were still clean and smell-free in the morning! They also had a panel in the room that told us whether or not the bathrooms were occupied AND they didn't close the bathroom when we went through all these little towns (normally they close the bathrooms because....well.....the toilets empty onto the tracks. I know.....ew).

I slept a solid 8 hours on the train, until 5 this morning. The boys were wiiiiiiide awake by 3 and we arrived in Zap at 5:40 a.m. We came home to a new bathroom!! We knew that this reno was happening while we were gone but we were very very curious to see if it would actually be complete, and it was! Unfortunately, or fortunately rather, I have no before pictures but our bathroom was royally gross before! Probably 60 years old, black mold, peeling paint and just all around yuckiness so I'll save you from all of that and present our new, very Ukrainian (read as much into that as you want) bathroom:

Because of the renos there was a thick layer of dust on everything so we cleaned from six this morning until about 11 when we declared a much deserved nap time! We intended to sleep for an hour and a half but every time our alarm went off we would set it for just one more hour.....and we did that three times! But hopefully by tonight we'll be somewhat normal in our sleeping pattern, we'll see what happens!

All of that long journey really could have gotten us down but we've thought a lot lately about thanking God for the bad things too, mainly because of the story from Corrie ten Boom about her sister Betsy thanking God for the fleas while in a concentration camp. If you haven't heard the story, I recommend googling it :) But it made us realize that when bad situations get us down and make us grouchy, even though it's really hard in the moment, we need to thank God for those things because we just never know what He is doing!