Summer Activities: Beach Day

 Friday was a lovely +35 degrees Celsius day to spend the evening at the beach. We hit the sand at 4 p.m intending to play volleyball but were immediately kicked off the one in the shade by the "professionals" who we're pretty sure are not actually allowed to kick us off. But this is Ukraine.....so we smile and be friendly and leave, ha ha. The guys played frisbee for a while and then decided that there was really no point in putting up the net at another court so they just played "circle" volleyball for what ended up being probably an hour and a half anyways! 

The sand was so hot that we couldn't make it from the shade to the water so they have these cement slab walkways to help you survive the trip to the water.

While I would love to play volleyball, a whole host of people highly discourage me from playing because of my neck which I know is for the best. So this week to keep me busy at the beach, Marina so kindly brought me some Russian reading.

I really wasn't interested and I don't like being forced to learn against my will but I ended up reading another book she brought along and it was really helpful and I actually enjoyed myself. I've been trying a lot harder lately to learn because if I don't force myself to learn, no one else will....except Marina apparently.

Me, Marina in the middle and Olya on the right.

We met Marina seven years ago on our first trip here and Olya we met at church. We have become good friends with her and her husband Andre who Steve does a lot of ministry stuff with and they have two little boys who are six and three.

Summer Activities: English Camp/Club

From July 26th to 28th we had an English camp at New Hope Church. Between all three days we had about fifteen people rotate through but usually only eight or nine per day. It's a little frustrating because teenagers ask Steve all the time to teach them English but then none of them ever come when we do have English clubs! BUT; We are slowly learning to be adaptable and expect things to go way differently than we think they will, so we were thankful for the eight or so people we had every day. 

Day one: 

Day two: 

Day three: 

Summer Activities: Beach Day

Last Friday was sunny and +38 degrees Celsius - so hot that we couldn't even touch the sand, except for in the shade. Yesterday was +22 degrees Celsius, super cloudy and super windy, with skies like these:

But teenagers still came to play volleyball, and there was definitely no one fighting with us over the shady court this week!!

The lady in the black tank top (sitting in the picture below) came and sat there among all of our things and we had no idea who she was. She was really intrigued by us speaking English so she finally asked me where we are from and why on earth we are here. I told her that we are from Canada and are missionaries, here to work with teenagers to tell them about God and Jesus Christ. Apparently my Russian isn't that good and she later went on to ask Marina all the same questions about us and was quite fascinated by us. She shared some fruit with the kids, watched the guys play for a while and then went on her way after probably 45 minutes.

I thought this sand art by Dezmond was so lovely until I looked closer and realized that those are smoke butts sticking out the sides. Lovely. 

Yes, it was only +22 and yes, it was windy BUT that man sitting on that bench is wearing a PARKA!!

Man, I tell you - Ukrainians are weird about the weather!! I had a good laugh this week because my sister Erin was telling me that the temperature at home was going to be in the +30's and there were heat advisories on the news. I laughed because just the day before Marina told me that there were advisories on the news in Zap that it was ONLY going to be +30, so make sure you bring a sweater wherever you're going! Ha ha I suppose +30 here is very cold compared to +40 that it was last week! We had this week of cooler weather (+22 to +28) and now it's supposed to be hotter into next week again.

Summer Activities: American Football

Thursday was a beautiful +26 degrees Celsius....a perfect day for some good old American football. As always, Steve starts with the rules. 

And where was I? Being a human sandwich of course!

 That sweet little girl is our friend Marina's daughter, Sofia. Marina is our photographer for the summer and sometimes Sofia tags along.

Summer Activities: English Club

On Wednesdays we meet in the park at five to basically play the game Taboo with kids. Steve has tried having a lesson in the past but the teenagers just want to get straight to the game which is an awesome way to learn English anyways! In the game one person chooses a card with a word on it and some words associated with that word. They have to get their team to say the word, while not saying any of the associated words. There are many words that they don't know so then we teach them. Everyone really loves it and I'm not sure how much longer we'll be able to play before we go through the entire box of cards. Hopefully we make it to the end of summer! 

This week we played Taboo at the park from 5:00 until 6:30 and then we headed over to New Hope church where we were going to watch a movie, have snacks and pop. Unfortunately we couldn't find the right cable to connect our laptop to the projector so instead we played another game and had chips and pop.

When we were cleaning up and ready to leave one of the guys started asking questions about our "interesting" church......I guess if you're used to the Orthodox church then it's very strange going to a church building like ours! So Steve got to share with him a whole bunch of the Gospel and it was really an awesome opportunity. We have learned that for some strange reason we always get the BEST opportunities to talk to people when we're busy cleaning up and in a hurry to go home so we've learned to stop rushing and start talking instead, no matter how long it takes!