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.