Ukraine Day 3

     Last night Jodi, Bronson, Alicia and Cody ventured out on their own and walked down the perfectly safe main road to Papa Vasily and Mama Leeda’s home where the other teammates are staying.   What adventurers we have on this trip.  Not even a translator!  Bronson and Cody kept them safe and they had cell phones.  Bold missionaries for which you can be proud.  They practiced for Tuesday’s morning and afternoon VBS presentations at the park in front of Mama Leena’s to be sure everything was in place. Everyone had their parts assigned. When the team walked back, Bronson went to work with Melissa’s camera and tried to print the pictures of all the children who were at Miniki.  220 Volts can be a real challenge sometimes!

      This morning was a little too early for Alicia who now knows how to make instant coffee.  Ask her to tell you her secret recipe for the fastest instant coffee ever. Addison recovered nicely from stomach discomfort after a long night’s sleep. Today we started again in Studenetza after picking up one of our volunteer translator’s Julia, who has just been accepted and given a full scholarship to the best University in Ukraine. She accepted Christ just one year ago during last year’s mission trip and has grown mightily in the Lord and her translation skills. Upon arrival in Studenetza, the children greeted us in English with Hello and helped us unload the transport.  We setup and continued where we left off, passed out little composition notebooks and actually taught the children some most basic homiletics (how to study the bible).   We used the parachute to play a few games and then played, Ps. 32:8 “you will direct me with your eye” game, otherwise known as circle tag.  Dodge “sin” Ball was also played.  Seems most all had some great fun and learned from games as well.

      The hot day made most ready for lunch and what was served?  Hot soup, which is traditional and was very good, followed by fresh vegetables and pork rice, grapes, bananas, chicken chops, and of course coke products.  By the end of the lunch it was like the scene after the credits in the Avengers movie. Everyone too tired to speak. After a short rest we helped clean up some and were off to the second VBS in Miniki.

 We brought Sasha, a Studenetza deacon in training along with us to drop him off at a maternity hospital where his wife is overdue but c-section has not been done yet. He has two boys at the VBS Camp in Studenetza and one young one too young for VBS and he works full time. Sasha was taking leftovers from our lunch to his wife and another woman there because the hospital does not feed their patients. They were yummy leftovers! He will take a long set of bus rides back to the village. Please pray for this young family in this time of uncertainty!

      Today the Miniki Town hall meeting location doors were open, children were already eagerly awaiting in their seats, with many new faces in the crowd, who were brought by friends and siblings who attended yesterday.  We welcomed the cool air of the auditorium as outside it was approaching 100 degrees. Mothers who sat with their young ones in the very back of the auditorium yesterday, were now sitting in the back rows up front and more parents were sitting along the wall in the back.

      Anna remembered a great song that helped tell the story for today so we began by singing that song as well as some of the planned songs.  Yesterday’s story of creation was today followed by Adam and Eve and how they were banished from the Garden for their sin.   A few children had already memorized John 3:16 and were bold enough to recite holding the microphone in the front of the town hall auditorium where we are meeting. Courageous young people… but prizes also help.

      The crowd was so large we had to split into two groups- older and younger. Crafts included taking yesterday’s popsicle stick framed picture of Jesus knocking at the door and gluing each child’s picture on the back of the frame holding Jesus. The second craft was creating Adam and Eve cloth pins, which was great fun. A belt clip keychain was made also in the shape of a fish.  The reason for no real keychain is the towns are so poor there are no locks on the doors. Meanwhile Vasily was outside with a few inquisitive men almost like at the village gate, except at the village community building, sewing seeds and inviting them and their families to Friday’s gathering.

      Tonight we all had dinner at Vasily and Janes.  Cody provided instruction on the finer points of taste testing cream puffs, and gave us all quite a laugh.  Turns out his taste buds were quite correct which gave us all another good laugh.  You had to be there, so you can ask him to tell about it.

      Laundry still needs to go on the clothesline to dry overnight as it approaches 10:30. Another great adventure tomorrow awaits. In Christ, Mike Kynett