Wednesday Evening Beach

Every Wednesday we go to the beach with teenagers in the evening and every Wednesday afternoon there is a significant thunderstorm and rain!! The first week it cleared up and was an absolutely incredible evening for the beach. We had lots of people and even a crew of Garry's showed up from the village: 

Our second week we had the same thunderstormy afternoon but we headed out anyways after the rain stopped. It was beautiful despite the moody skies.

We lasted about an hour and a half and watched the next storm come in and then were forced to wrap it up due to more rain.

This last week there was a really wild thunderstorm and at 2:30 in the afternoon it was as black as night outside. We held out hope that it would clear up like the previous weeks but alas, it did not. We pushed beach time back by an hour but after that hour passed we changed our meeting location to a cafe nearby where you can play games and hang out. It rained for the better part of the evening so it was a total wash.  

It's been quite the rainy July! Last year we had one thunder....not even thunderstorm, but just one lone thunder the entire summer and this year it seems that no day goes by without a shower and a storm! I love storms but the humidity is through the roof and it's making us worry about the plans we make to hang out with teenagers! So far nothing has been completely ruined but we always think twice and check the forecast before planning things! 

English in the Park

Every Monday we've been inviting teenagers to come hang out and speak English in the park. We usually end up playing Taboo which is a great game for learning vocabulary and it's really interactive. 

Our American guys have had the opportunity to have some great, deep conversations with some of the teens that are coming which is great.

#JustYouth: July

#JustYouth was on Saturday and we had Pasha from Molochansk come and sing, along with assistance from Bogdan who is on our #JY team and goes to our church. 

We did a Smoothie Challenge and it was awful, ha ha. We had two people choose smoothie ingredients by pulling them out of a hat and after I blended it up, they had to drink it the fastest to win a prize. I did bigger prizes than usual because I felt so bad!

Steve got Andy to share for 10 minutes and then Steve had a 10 minute message afterwards.

Unfortunately on Sunday and Monday we were all insanely sick (except Dez). We asked our team and other people who had been there on Saturday if they were sick or fine and it seems like most of our team was sick along with a few attendees. We weren't sure if it was the watermelon we served but in the end, it turns out that our MC went home and his wife who wasn't at #JY got sick too - so it was just a virus that took us all down!

Singing in the Park

One of the ways we met people when we came here on Trek was to take a guitar and hit the street. Obviously Steve and I are not guitarists but we always dream of finding friends who play and are willing to play for us. 

Our friend Pasha from Molochansk was coming to sing at #JustYouth on Saturday so we invited him to come Friday and we'd go to the park and sing and he was more than willing to help us out. 

We sang popular songs and a couple of worship songs and we did manage to draw a crowd.

We didn't find many teenagers but the ones we did find we invited to #JY. Often teenagers are pretty wary when they find out that it's in a church and one girl told us that she was atheist, so would she be welcome there? YES. Come and let Jesus change your mind! 

Summer Helpers

Last weekend Steve went to Kyiv to collect three American guys who will be here helping us out for the summer. Two of them - Andrew and Caleb are on practicum from G42 and the other one, Will was at a school in Romania and was looking for some kind of outreach over the summer.

I picked them up at the train station Sunday afternoon and we headed straight to their apartment. Steve saw it when it was still in a destroyed state but now it was all repaired and clean and is quite nice, other than a lingering smoke smell that they have yet to get rid of unfortunately.

Monday afternoon we headed out for groceries, a few housewares, SIM cards for their phones and to do a bit of exploring. Of course we hit up the American Embassy (McDonalds) and headed to the port where the Lenin statue used to stand. There's a great view of the dam and we shared a bit of history of the city.

 On Wednesday we were at church to hang out with Jessica and the grad orphan group. We spotted our first watermelons along the way so of course we had to grab one and it was amazing.