We are having the day camp outside of public school 25 (they number them like New York City does). It is a nice size park as I mentioned in my last post. We started out the camp singing songs in Ukrainian led by the local Pastor Oleg. Then he told the children to ask each member in our group, “What is your name?” Then we responded, “My name is…” We have been trying to help the children with their English (some of them know a good amount and others not so much). They have been trying to help us with Ukrainian and I have picked up a few words and phrases. One thing is the word, “Dobre,” which means good. I noticed that Oleg says the word to the children often and so I have started saying it to them as well to make sure they understand something. I have also learned Ya ka you, which means thank you (these words are not spelled the right way, but if you say them the way I spelled them they are what you say). We have sung many times a Ukrainian song about having Jesus in your heart and our group has been able to pick up on it because of the hand motions and repetition of the chorus. I have an interesting story about the song that occurred the next day. So, after our introductions and opening singing, we moved right on into the bible story for the day.
The bible story for the first day was how Jesus healed Bartiameas, the blind man. Cynthia told the first story and she did a wonderful job. Many of the children responded to her teaching well and our translators helped the children to participate in responding to the story. At the time of the bible study we had a small enough group to keep all the children together in one station. Below is a picture of us listening to the bible story:
The high rise in the background is one of many surrounding the park.
After the bible story, we moved to a shady area of the park for crafts and music. Pastor Oleg said that he wanted us to sing some American songs, so I played guitar and Bob led the singing. We sang “Jesus Loves Me” and “If Your Happy and You Know It”:
I know what you are thinking and yes the little girl up front was my biggest fan (haha j/k)
For the craft time, the children made faces and placed flaps over the faces eyes to represent the blind man being healed. One girl, Sophia, goes off by herself a lot and we often have a hard time to get her to interact with the other children. She does like our missionary, Tim, though. The children were told they could make two faces and she made one for Tim. It is a great picture:
The church we are working with has been a blessing in many ways and one day is each day they have someone bring over snacks for the children. They bring juice, bananas, and cookies (what more could a child ask for when it comes to snacks?). After snacks we played a game called blind man’s bluff. Then we had the children lead each other blindly in a race around our people. The children had to run down, give us a high five and run back to the line leading one person in a blindfold:
The girl in pink has a very pretty name, Olana (I think that is how we would spell it in English it is like Alana with an O). We ended the day camp by singing a few more songs and reviewing with them what we learned in the Bible Story. By the end of the day, more children had poured into our camp and we were very excited about the next day. The park seems to be in a great location for people to pass by and see us.
During lunch, Pastor Oleg told us what he wanted us to do for our ESL class that night. He told us that he wanted to start by our group introducing ourselves and then have all the people in the class introduce themselves (to practice their English). We learned some interesting things about the people in the class. One guy is a stock broker that enjoys Latin dancing. We asked him if he liked to Salsa and he said that dance was too easy, but he liked things like the Rumba. For some reason I found him to be very funny. We asked him if he liked football and he quickly responded No! (I was kind of offended, but hey I guess not everyone likes the greatest sport in the world). The next guy was a computer software engineer. He said that he had taken many English classes, but did not have anyone to practice his English with so he came to our class for that reason. He does really well except on “th” sound and a couple different strange vowel sounds we have. The next girl seemed to be the person who got involved in the class the most, but it was kind of disheartening when she did not show up the next night. However, maybe she was just busy the one night and she will be back tomorrow night. After our introductions we had the Ukrainians read the first part of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5.
Our class reminded me of the Greek and Hebrew classes I have completed in Divinity School. Keeping in mind how much I struggled to read the language in those classes helps me to put myself in the shoes of the people we are helping. We explain to them certain phrases or words that they have a hard time translating. However, we spent a large amount of time the first night discussing the passage on letting your light shine before all men. The girl I mentioned earlier that participated real well asked how to balance letting your light shine before all men and not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing. We told her it was a hard concept to grasp because much of our society teaches opposite to Jesus teachings. Many of us tried to explain the passage to her. I explained that a light does not talk and tell you about the good it is doing. It just lights up the room so that you can see. So, even though it does good and we can see the good it does, we don’t hear the light bragging about its goodness. We are to be the same way. We are to care for others and share the love of Christ, but do it more through our good deeds and actions instead of telling people that they need to love each other and bragging to people about how much “good” we have done. I said it is important to share the Word of God with others, but don’t do good things in order to brag to people that you have done good things. Anyway, overall I thought it was a great day. So much more happened that I am having a hard time writing about. God is great and I am very thankful he has blessed me with such a great opportunity.
Peace be with you,
Ben
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