The Building Hunt Begins

Part of our dream when we were planning to move to Ukraine was to open a drop in center. We obviously haven't yet, but it's always been in the back of our minds, yet the longer we are here the more the idea has changed into something even grander. 

We want a space where we can run our programs all in one place. Along with doing a drop-in center we'd love to have English clubs, a big kitchen for cooking groups, musical instruments and maybe a recording studio, an arts and crafts room, a cafe with lots of fun Canadian treats, a big area outside where we could do sports among other things. We'd also love to have a few rooms for anyone who needs a place to stay or for any teams that would come in to give us a hand.

The more we thought about it, the more we thought that an old Soviet kindergarten would be the perfect building. Not only are they usually sprawling two storey buildings, they usually have a large fenced yard that has plenty of room for a basketball court, football, volleyball, maybe even a skate park - who knows.

Steve would always walk by this kindergarten and wish that it could be ours: 

It's obviously not in use but when we walked past it last week there was a lady doing yard work. Steve and his intern for the summer, Yegor went in and talked to her about who the building belongs to and whether or not it's for sale. It turns out that she was really friendly and helpful - it belongs to one of the factories and she wasn't sure if it was for sale but she gave us the phone number for the administrator.

All that being said, kindergarten buildings like this are generally owned by the government and cannot be sold. We haven't called the administrator yet but have already been told by a lot of people to not even bother trying because it's impossible. However, we know that God can do the impossible and that's what we're counting on! IF this is the building for us, there is no stopping His plan, and if it's NOT the building for us, then He'll show us which one is and He always knows something that we don't know. Please pray about this building - we're excited to see what God will do as we move forward with our BIG plan. And while we're just in the very very beginning steps, it's exciting and kind of scary all at the same time!