Martial Law

Ukraine is back in international headlines for all the wrong reasons again. In case you forgot, Russia invaded Crimea almost five years ago and is still hunkered down in eastern Ukraine in a very long, on-going war. 

Long story short - a couple of days ago Russia fired at, and overtook three Ukrainian ships and in response the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko declared martial law in several regions of the country, ours included because we border Russia and the Azov Sea. 

Now obviously I'm not trying to make light of the situation, but that Napoleon Dynamite meme above is seriously what pops into my head every time the words "martial law" are said. 

So what does martial law mean for us? After a lot of reading and research, I've determined that we most likely won't be affected. There are three possible ways that I can see us *maybe* being affected: 

1) if we get stopped on the street by law enforcement (which has never, ever happened), we'll have to have our residency documents on us. 

2) Steve and I are traveling to Poltava on Thursday to watch an English soccer game. There will probably be more personnel and barricades at the checkpoints leaving the city, and we could be stopped and questioned, which isn't unusual and has happened before. 

3) There is the possibility of travel restrictions but we'll just keep an eye on the train we booked to Kyiv in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS for our journey home. 

All that being said, martial law sounds scary but in reality it will probably be life as usual. It starts at 9:00 tomorrow morning so I'll let you know! 

Spain Trip

From November 13th to 20th we traveled to Spain to visit G42. We invited Garry and Teresa to come with us and they did, which was really cool. 

We got there really late on the 13th after a long day of traveling and went to class the next morning where we met everyone and reunited with the people we already know. 

At lunch we wandered towards our rental car which was parked near the tourist donkey: 

Except it wasn't parked by the tourist donkey anymore. It was towed :( I guess we need to learn to read Spanish. Thankfully it was easy enough to find and set free, thanks to this lovely police officer (that's our car, locked up behind Steve):

With our wheels back we headed with Garry and Teresa down to the Mediterranean:

Our second morning there we were able to share with the class about who we are and what we do, and what we learned at G42 that sticks with us. It was really cool and what was supposed to be a 30  minute chat turned into an hour and a half conversation ending with prayer for us.

We spent some time with Andy and Caleb:

We went to classes and we climbed the mountain up to the church:

It was fun doing a few more touristy things with Garry and Teresa, like seeing the castle in Fuengirola (the city at the bottom of the mountain, on the sea).

We were also able to meet with Andrew a few times, he and his wife Mo are in the middle:

Our lovely friends Tara and Shanda were always fun to connect with but their time in Spain has come to an end. We missed seeing Shanda by just a couple of weeks but were able to get an afternoon with Tara (beside Garry) in Malaga.

Sunday at Mijouse (one of the intern houses) we were invited to an open mic night. 

My boys opened the night with their sweet dancing skillzzzz and Andy joined them: 

All I heard about all week from my small people was gelato (which they kept confusing with enchilada) but it wasn't THAT warm out! Finally the last day I caved and bought some. 

One last Spanish sunset to finish our trip.

It was a quick trip and we were actually kind of disappointed to be leaving on Tuesday because the teacher for the week was so interesting! Although short, this trip was definitely the thing I needed, that I didn't know I needed before we went, ha ha. Rest, teaching, deep and hard conversations and new revelations from the Lord. 

"#JustYouth" : Nicolaipolia

#JustYouth hasn't been going all that well, so we ditched it for November and instead, went out to Garry and Teresa's place this past Saturday to do a mini #JY for their students. We played games, Steve shared a message and we gave out prizes. 

Garry's translator Nelly translated for Steve:

Teresa made pizzas for everyone and they were gone before I could get a good picture!

I think the students enjoyed having us and we really enjoyed it too.

October Floorball Tournament

The weekend of October 20th Steve had a floorball tournament here in Zap. They won three games and tied one which was better than Steve expected them to do. This was their first tournament with their new uniforms as well which made them look like a pro team.

September

Good mercy where on earth did September go? We blinked and it's halfway through October already!!

We said goodbye to our summer guys, Andy and Caleb on Sept. 3 and they headed back to Spain for the last three months of G42. It was an incredible summer and they were so helpful and fun to have around helping us.

Dez started grade 3 at the same school.

Unfortunately August was unable to enter and after a while we decided that we just don't care, ha ha. I'm homeschooling him according to Canadian grade 1 curriculum and he might end up at a kindergarten again yet. We have a girl come once a week to give him a Russian lesson and for right now everything seems to be working out fine. 

Steve has really been trying to keep up the relationships he made over the summer. 

Unfortunately since school has started it's been harder to connect with these guys. The oldest one, Alex, has moved to Poland to work although all of the guys were able to share a lot with him and from the time he met Steve, Andy and Caleb until the time he went to Poland he had moved from being an atheist to "yes, there's a God, I just don't know what He means to me yet..." It's been a pretty cool thing to see his excitement as all of the guys shared with him at different times. His story is pretty unique in that he's a graduated orphan but already far into his twenties, speaks English really well which is super rare among grad. orphans and is somewhat of a success story as far as he has a job and isn't in prison. He moved out of his apartment to move to Poland so Steve offered to keep some of his things in our apartment so we have a stack in the corner guaranteeing a further relationship in the future, ha ha. 

We went to a wedding on Sept. 8th.  

We used to do our Monday supper clubs with Sasha and she continues to work for New Hope Center. Pasha is a graduated orphan that lived in New Hope's group home for boys and Jessica has known him since he was about nine years old. They both attend our church and we were excited to be there for them on their wedding day.

Igor celebrated his birthday this month and we went to his birthday party. He's my boys' favourite person so they each made him a card and were very excited for him to open them:

Steve played in a floorball tournament in Kyiv the weekend of Sept. 21st to 23rd. It was a stand alone tournament and doesn't affect their standings throughout the year, thank goodness because they did terrible, ha ha. Their next tournament is here in Zap next weekend and hopefully they'll fare better. They're also in charge of organizing everything so Steve will be away most of the weekend but at least he'll get to sleep in his own bed at night and won't have to take the train anywhere! 

Steve started teaching English in a new school this fall after reconnecting with a teenager named Nikita over the summer. He used to come around to our English clubs and to #JustYouth but we hadn't seen him in a while. He came around out of the blue this summer and really hit it off with Andy and kept coming around. He asked his English teacher at school if Steve could come and he's been a few times now with different classes. 

We've been wanting our church to attempt a potluck lunch for ohhhhh five years, ha ha but we were always told that potlucks just don't work here, and it didn't take us very long to learn that nope, they DO NOT WORK, ha ha (the first five people eat everything and the last fifty don't get anything). However, they finally attempted it to celebrate Thanksgiving at the end of September. Me being somewhat extra in my food prep decided to make mini burgers:

I should have made 100 of them though because they were gone almost before the tray hit the table, ha ha. But it worked! There was enough food for everyone from beginning to end and it was a really good time of fellowship.

On that note, keep New Hope church in your prayers. What started as deciding on new pastors and leadership has turned into a huge discussion about all sorts of issues and problems among the church leadership and the further along it gets, the less it feels like our church is going to survive all of it. The pastor team and pastors from sister MB churches in other cities have been having meetings and this next weekend the European director of MB Mission is coming for more meetings to sort everything out. We're wondering how we can help and how we can be the most effective in this situation but so far it's looked like a lot of prayer. Steve has had one on one meetings with the pastors he's the closest to but now they have stepped down from their roles as pastors in the church so it's been interesting.

We are headed to Spain in November with Garry and Teresa! It's really late in the year but we're excited to be in some classes, to visit with Andrew as well as to see Andy and Caleb again and meet the whole class that's there currently. I've been feeling a little mentally done with Ukraine lately. I know that's terrible but we've been here for the longest stretch of time we've ever been here without leaving and I can just tell that I need a bit of space from the culture in order to truly love it again. We're also excited that Garry and Teresa are coming with us and we think it'll be really fun for them to see the place we talk about so often.

We're out of Tim's coffee but I have a tin of hot chocolate left.....but we booked our tickets home from December 11 until January 31st so we can refresh our stock soon!

#JustYouth October: Costume Party and Penny Carnival

We had our October #JY event last weekend (October 7th) and it was our annual costume party and penny carnival. It's the biggest one of the year that requires the most planning and prep work and for the second year in a row it was our biggest flop of the year, ha ha. I guess the first Saturday of October is also Day of the City (Zap's birthday celebration) so we lose a lot of people to that. Also it feels like teenagers just don't seem to be interested in what we're doing at #JY anymore which kind of sucks but at the same time, maybe it's time to scrap it and bring in something new.

Anyways, August decided that we should be a King, Queen and Knights and I'm always happy to go a little overboard with my costume designing, ha ha. 

We had an impromptu break-dance showdown which was fun.

This was Olya's last time as our translator. Our friend Alyona is willing to take over if we continue #JY.

Steve shared a message on Kings and then we got to the penny carnival games. 

We've already given up our November date for a wedding that will happen in our church and Pasha from Molochansk already called asking if he could come sing for December but I guess we'll let him know if we're continuing! Please pray for our decision. It's been great seeing how long this ministry has actually gone on for but over the last year we've really seen a decrease in numbers and we're wondering what to do next or how to make it more exciting to draw more teenagers back to where there's a 100% guarantee that they're going to hear the Gospel. That's the one thing that has never changed and will never change about #JustYouth or about any ministry we're doing - it's just more fun when people actually show up to hear it!

#JustYouth: September Park Party

We usually do an end of summer beach party for #JY but last year it rained and this year we decided to mix it up a bit and just play games in a park. 

We bought an enormous thick piece of plastic to play slippery hockey again - the last one was six meters by 4 meters and now this time we went 6 meters by 10 meters! 

We brought our cornhole and Caleb (left) showed all the newbies how to play:

Garry came with their crew from the village and brought their cornhole so that we could have two running at once:

Andre and Andy:

Floorball sticks have holes in the blade so it was discovered that with all the soap they made beautiful massive bubbles!

Unfortunately there were injuries this time. Andre and Phillipe both had huge gashes in their feet but we're still not sure how they happened because there were no rips in the tarp. They must have stepped on twigs when they went off the tarp to get the ball. Thankfully we have a first aid kit in our car and an Igor to play doctor:

As usual we sat down, handed out cookies and drinks and Steve shared a message with Alyona as translator:

We definitely drew a crowd - lots of people interested in the hockey and a few lurkers listening in to Steve's message which was cool. It also served as one last big party for Andy and Caleb to invite the people they met over the summer and say goodbye which is INSANE that the summer is over!

Our next #JY is our costume party/carnival so I'm already planning costumes and games for that! A lot of people have been asking about it, it's definitely a yearly favourite!