Molochansk Boys

These are three of the graduated orphan guys Steve has been working with since September, but more so in the last month since getting back here from Canada. From left to right: Stas, Andre and Phil (Stas and Andre are brothers).

There are five of these guys in total and they have been coming over every Wednesday. We feed them all our food out of the fridge, Steve teaches them a bit of English (they know none) and they talk about God. It is awesome. Steve also plays floor ball with them on Tuesdays and they come to play volleyball on Saturday. Steve is so excited about these guys because they love playing all sports, they want to learn English and most importantly, they WANT to learn about GOD! It feels like the perfect scenario and even though Steve's Russian isn't always sufficient, just having them here and having this opportunity is completely a God thing. Please pray for these guys and that they will continue coming over, getting to know Steve (and the rest of us) and that they will continue to seek to know God more and come to salvation through Jesus!

February

We have SNOW and our first three weeks here were COLD! It was downright weird, ha ha. 

We celebrated Dezmond's seventh birthday on Feb. 8th.

We usually go to Igro Boom (kids place center) sometime around the boys' birthdays and we went with our friend Andre and his older son Eric this year. We ordered the pizza that the waitress highly recommended.....I can tell we had been out of Ukraine for a while when we actually listened to a pizza recommendation....and it was as un-pizza-like as it could be, with lettuce and cooked eggs on top.

 It tasted fine though, although I wouldn't have called it pizza.

Volleyball has been happening every Saturday from 12-2.

Yesterday there were 28-30 people who showed up to play which was awesome!

August's fifth birthday was February 12th:

The graduated orphan boys that Steve has been wanting to work more with ever since our friend Lyosha passed away in December have been coming to our apartment once every week. Steve has also been going to floor ball training with them, they're coming to Just Youth and volleyball on Saturdays. They are interested in learning English and studying the Bible together and Steve is excited to be working with them.

Steve started teaching English at school 71 (Dez's school) again and is hoping to renew ties with school 31 as well. There is potential to get into another school as well so he's hoping that works out.

On Friday while the boys were in school we picked up Jessica, her friend Caren who is here visiting and Ev Wiens who is here until April and we drove out to Malikaterinivka - a village about 30 minutes from our apartment, south of Zap. It is where Jessica purchased land in November to build a house for orphaned children.

She is in the middle of zoning paperwork and the headache that is doing anything in a foreign country but it's so amazing to see her vision slowly becoming a reality. Her website (House of Compassion) is in the LINKS tab at the side if you're interested in hearing more about what she is going to be doing.

We had a #JustYouth planning potluck/meeting on Saturday and the countdown is on until the next one.

In church this morning the boys got to celebrate their birthdays, which means getting a chocolate bar and being sung to.

Continue to pray for the war happening in Ukraine. We are not close to it here but things have escalated a lot in Avdiivka where our church has been ministering for the past couple of years. Two of our pastors head out there regularly with a van full of supplies and they share stories and pictures in church so keep them in your prayers.

Back At It: #JustYouth February

We're back in Ukraine! After six and a half lovely weeks at home in Canada we're back home.....in Zap. It has been a struggle with a capital S getting over jet lag and after a week I don't think we're quite there yet but what better way to get back into the swing of things than having our monthly #JustYouth event! Here's some pictures from the evening:

Our regular band from Molochansk was back (even though they retired sometime last year):

We played a really funny new game that Steve came up with - Telephone but each person has to translate the phrase along the way - Russian to English to Russian to English and then ending in Russian. It was really hilarious and fun!

They all look so nervous for their turn at translating although I don't blame them! Most of them don't speak English so I empathized with them!

Steve preached on the rich man and Lazarus.

The swarm of people around the coffee and cookie table afterwards:

We never know if there will be 20 people or 100 people, especially when we've been away for a while and haven't done a whole lot of advertising. We were pleasantly surprised with a larger than usual turn out and I was surprised at how few faces I recognized! We have a whole new crowd of people coming around and it's great to be a part of.