Shared last night with a team of Youth Leaders in Kiev with a ministry called, “Hope for Orphans.” The group consists of about 20 from a few different churches that are organizing 4 week-long kids and teen camps around Ukraine. It was a refreshing time of laughter, worship and study around God’s life giving Word.
Interestingly, their new headquarters is literally 2 minutes from the church we are attending in Kiev. On weekends the house is full of orphans, and during the week is used for ministry training/planning and our family can use if we want to stay in Kiev. I’m becoming friends with the leader, this is the same ministry that has purchased 20 Hectares 5 minutes from our home in Rzhyschiv for a Christian camp.
They’ve invited our family to join them first of June to Western Ukraine to visit another ministry they have with Gypsies. We’ve been praying for more doors, and more language immersion… nothing like a road trip!
Sviatik is Brent and Tuckers friend who lives next door, when he’s not at our house. His father is well known (in Ukraine) artist/painter. It’s amazing to see how naturally gifted Sviatik is when they all sit down to draw.
The other day the kids were into paints, and within an hour or so, Sviatik had created this little piece on his arm – I want to start a creative ministry on the 2nd floor of the Cafe. These young minds could use their gifts for God – this guy needs to be a make-up artist!
Really been enjoying the Spring weather – although allergies are a killer. The wide open fields, rich deep browns contrasting with the bright blue skies – what a difference from the gray winter blues. When I drive in the country here, I think of my Dad, who’s probably in a tractor himself spring planting.
We have finally the list of shoes and clothes sizes for the kids and are told by the Bank the $ will be arriving (from donations last week) on Monday. We had supplied some initial funds to help the kids but now will be going to an area market this coming week to complete the purchases and deliver them. Thank you again everyone that helped us raise over $2,000! The school is asking for help as the don’t have enough money to complete the renovations. We are going to use a portion of the left over funds raised to purchase some of the electrical needs so they can get at least get power functioning.
Tucker my 12yr old is a gifted young programmer. He’s been training on this MIT program for kids called, “Scratch.” It uses modular programming logic and pre-coded pieces (think legos) to assemble code. He comes up with the coolest little games. I know he’s a programmer because I employ several of them – they are a peculiar breed. Like some of the hard core programmers I know, Tucker has very little concern for asthetics, he just thinks logic and function – here’s an example of a little hockey game he whipped together in a few hrs… terrible graphic he just grabbed from the web, but it works!
Big storm knocked out power on our street for the day. The wire was hanging dangerously low so my neighbor threw a warning branch on the street – This is for my Uncle Blaine, who’s a retired Electric Company engineer. He was horrified by the lack of safety measures here – but as you can see, this branch kept everyone safe for the 12hrs it sat there. 🙂
It is quite a journey your on, surprised you are spending more and more time in kiev as its a horrible drive. Great to see so many young Chrisitians together with one purpose of reaching these orphans, so many heartbreaking situations. Thats really cool about Sviatic ( spudnek:-) with his talent, pretty amazing kid.