Good-Bye for the Summer

A couple of days ago our whole family went to an orphanage. This is the place where our most of our Sunday School children come from. One teacher/caretaker is willing to bring her class of 11 to our church every Sunday, be it in rain or shine. They have to walk 30-35 minutes to get to our church, but they have been faithfully attending this last year. The children are 7-8 years old and come from difficult home situations. Most of them have parents that had their parental rights removed. Some are orphans. The orphanage takes care of about 250 children starting at the school age.

Children from two second-grade classes. Most children from the class that comes to our SS are on our right.
Jamie and our teammate Melinda in front of the bus.

The reason for our trip this week was to say good-bye to the children for the summer. The children of orphanage, ranging from 7 to 17, are being taken to a summer camp on the Black Sea till August 27. Marina, their caretaker, said that the camp has a private beach, they stay in cabins and have all sorts of activities to keep busy. Some of the children looked excited and others looked sad. A couple of children from "our" class were already gone. One went to Italy to stay with her sponsors for a month, after which she will join the rest of her class at the camp. The other child has HIV and was sent to a special camp near Tsurupinsk, a small town across the river that has many, many facilities and orphanages for handicap kids (birth defects, Chernobyl victims and other disabilities).

Nadia and Lena, a high-schooler from the orphanage. She helps our Marina, the caretaker of the second-graders, when they come to our SS.

Right now we are hoping to visit the camp for one day sometime this summer. The camp is about 100 km (about 60 miles) from Kherson so we should be able to do a day trip (it is probably about 1 1/2 to 2 hours one-way ). We were told the camp and the children would welcome the visit.

Peter, one of "our" second-graders

Please pray for us personally and our church as we want to reach out to these children. Our new church building will be just a couple of blocks away from the orphanage. Pray that we would be able to minister to the ones that come already and that we might be able to reach out to more children there.

Vadim and Stasik, two other boys from our group

Meeting Young People

A couple of months ago, I met with a newly married man in our church for fellowship, to speak English with him (part of his job is communicating to sellers in English) and to encourage him. As we talked, and I got to know him, I found out that he plays basketball. I mentioned how I used to play but have not for many years. We decided that we should play once the weather warmed up a bit. Two Saturdays ago was the first opportunity to play. He invited a friend and we met two more people at the court and played for about an hour. We agreed to play the next Saturday and move the time because of the heat to 7 pm.

During the week, I met our soon to be neighbor going up the hill to catch a bus. He is a student at a local technical college and I remembered that he plays on the college team. I asked if he was still playing and whether he would be interested in playing on Saturday. We parted and I was not sure if there was any interest. On Saturday, my friend from church called and said that he would not be able to play and I was not sure if I was going to go. Remembering my invitation to my neighbor, I decided to go, thinking that I would be back in 1/2 hour (it's a 15 minute walk for me to the park). I got there a little early and thought I will at least shoot some hoops and wait a bit. After a couple of minutes, two 1st year students at the technical college came over in flip-flops and asked to shoot. We talked a bit and then my neighbor came. The other two went home to change shoes and then we played 2-on-2 for about 1 1/2 hours. It was good, fun basketball and we agreed to play again. It is my desire that this would be a foot-in-the-door to ministry to college students.

Building Progress

While we have known that we were going to be able to begin building a church building this year since we arrived, it has been a struggle to decide how big of a building, where the worship hall should be, what can we afford. The cost of building materials has sky rocketed and what we thought we could build a year ago is completely out of our reach.

Progress on the foundation and basement

A couple of weeks ago, we settled on a simple yet nice church building and took the concept to an architect. The architect is about done with the drawings, and work on the basement floor has begun. Instead of a full two-story church, it will be 1 1/2 stories with a basement. The sanctuary will be on the main floor with Sunday School rooms in the basement. Above the sanctuary will be space for a church office and storage space. Now that the plan has been settled on, we will press forward as quickly as we can and hopefully be able to have our first worship service their in the fall. The church will be built using a local material, the Crimean stone, which is widely used for construction in this area.