Floorball Wind-Up

I'm way behind on blogging apparently, but better late than never. 

On June 9th there was a shashlik afternoon to wind up the floorball season. There were four other little boys there for ours to play with and there were other wives and girlfriends that I got to meet for the first time, some who spoke English and some who did not. It was a great chance for me to push the limits of my language abilities! 

August is always there for the MEAT.

They had a team meeting about plans for next season - they will continue to practice all summer but there are decisions to be made about which league they want to be part of next season. They're also trying to expand floorball in the city so that there will be more teams of all ages.

After eating and meeting, Steve taught the guys how to play football...or as they call it here, American football, because football is soccer...

The whole crew:

Unfortunately on the way there, we saw the aftermath of an accident. There were two people laid out on the boulevard who were obviously dead and while the cops were there, no other emergency personnel had arrived yet. The couple were not covered up as hundreds of cars filed slowly past. It was horrifying. We were so shaken up and it just made it all more real that we have an extremely important mission to tell others about Christ. 

Berdyansk

From June 11-14 we went to Berdyansk with our small group, which ended up being an extra-small group because Teresa is still in Canada. Again we attempted to invite friends along but various circumstances led to it just being a few of us, which was totally fine. I booked us a "chalet"/cabin out on the spit in the Azov Sea and we drove down altogether. 

After supper the first evening we went for a walk along the spit which is all "resorts"/hotels, cafes and beach. Of course we found ice cream.

We ended up on the beach and walked out on these rocks:

We planned to go through Ephesians altogether one chapter at a time so we had a Bible study together Tuesday morning, had lunch and then headed to the beach.

There's always people walking up and down the beach selling food and drinks (usually weird things like crayfish-looking-things and corn on the cob) and this lady was selling baklava: 

Which is fried dough covered in honey and was amazing!

 After supper and another Bible study session we drove to downtown Berdyansk where they have a whole area of games, rides and cafes. We went on the 50 meter tall Ferris wheel again this year although Steve and August stayed safely on the ground.

Wednesday morning we had our Bible study and then we headed to the water park. Everyone always tells us that we MUST go to the water park in Berdyansk and it was actually pretty awesome. I think they say they have 31 slides but I'm not sure if that includes all of the teeny tiny baby slides too. They do have a ton of huge slides and a lot that you used tubes for, it was really fun.

We had a last evening Bible study session Wednesday evening and enjoyed the sunset over the pond in front of our cabin.

It was a wonderful few days away although I wouldn't exactly say that it was restful or anything! We had planned for it to be but we spent so much time in the sun doing activities that we were all exhausted heading home! It was great to spend extra time together, studying the Bible and enjoying the sea.

*Great story*
On the way to Berdyansk, at Molochansk (about an hour from Zap), I suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to take off the face plate of the CD player in our car! I had put it on to take the CD out to bring with us and then left without taking it off. I immediately prayed about it - that no one would break into our car and steal it while we were gone. I thought about it a few times over the next couple of days but really without any worry. We got back on Thursday and there it was - sitting exactly in place where I had left it! I was so thankful! We park really close to our apartment building and it's very dark there but I never know if that's a good thing or a bad thing - do people not break in because it's too dark? Or will people break in because it's so dark?! However, we've never had problems and I am very thankful to God that this story ended well and no one broke into our car while we were gone! Often when we're gone for a few days we will put our car in a secured lot with a security guard but we didn't even think of doing that this time!

#JustYouth: June

June 2nd was our 4th anniversary for #JY! We planned a lot of fun things and tried new things too - more music and showing lots of funny YouTube videos between games. We played our usual true/false game but with a twist - the five finalists from each round came up to play a game. 

This game was pretty funny - I froze tiny plastic animals into blocks of ice. I made the blocks of ice pretty big, thinking that they would melt a lot from the time I took them out of the freezer at home all the way until the game a couple of hours later buuuuut that didn't exactly happen! They were still massive and took forever for them to melt! I felt pretty bad giving frostbite to all our game participants!

Steve's message was about how God's plans are always better than our own plans for our lives.

After Steve's message we took all of the winners from each game and had one difficult game to give us one final winner. Our friend Liza won so I presented her with the grand prize:

We were really happy with how everything turned out and with the crowd we had this time. We were both exhausted afterwards because of all the prep that went into it but it was totally worth it.

The Rest of May

Dezmond had Final Bell at school on May 25th. We survived year two of school in Ukraine!

There is a huge ceremony with balloons that they let go into the sky, chalk "fire"works, dances and more people than you can imagine.

Steve's soccer team plays every Sunday afternoon. I don't think they win.

August also had his last day of kindergarten.

We had a bit of a conundrum come up this week - as it turns out, we weren't informed about the proper registration procedure for getting August into grade one at Dezmond's school and as of right now....he isn't registered and isn't going. They allow 90 kids per grade and there is a waiting list of an extra 84 children so I guess he's number 85?? We're not exactly sure what to do now but we're praying about it and we know God is in control. We're not sure about other schools either - we don't have relationships with other schools and we're sure that their situations will be the same - they're full and we're out of luck. They've reformed the entire education system and this is the first year that it will be implemented so everyone is confused and unsure about what is happening.

Last Friday we went with Stas to watch him bungee jump off the bridge. Steve and I both thought that he was absolutely insane because, well, this is Ukraine. How old is that rope? Who tied it there? How often does the equipment get checked? Are the people doing it certified? On a scale of one to ten, how likely is it that you will die? Stas was pretty scared and I don't blame him - it was a LONG way down, but after he did it I have to admit that it looked pretty awesome. It was more like a swing than your typical plunge straight now and I've always said that IF I would ever do anything, I'd want to do the swing thing. Don't worry, I'm not going to do it. 

We had the 4th anniversary of #JustYouth last Saturday and I'm still waiting on photos from that. It was a really great event - our numbers were up, our game was awesome (although a TON of work and I was exhausted afterwards!) and everyone got to hear about Jesus, what could be better?