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.
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!
