Day 6- Very Good

So this morning around 6:30 Bob, Barbara, and I went to a large lake in the center of the city. It may not be considered a large lake, but for being in the center of a major city I found it to be rather large. It is 3 km around which is about 2 miles. Bob and Barbara walked around it while I ran around it. I saw another football stadium, but it was not as large as the other one I have seen. The lake was surrounded with people running, walking, and fishing. It was not packed, but there was a good amount of people there compared to the amount of people I have seen running on the other mornings.



Here I am running around the lake and stopped at a football practice stadium.

Anyway, so after we got back we had breakfast and were out the door for another day of camp in the park. Each day we have been blessed with more children than the day before. However, I have been a little upset that some are not coming back the next day. We are having people not come back and still gaining more people than the day before. For example the girls who called me Uncle Ben the day before were not back today. Yet, many have come all 3 days and so we are starting get really connect with them. Also, today we had our first group of teenagers come and they looked as if they had a blast. Two of them even came to our ESL night class seeking help with their English. Below are some pictures. I will let them tell the story some:


Here I am throwing the Frisbee with Kristina and Peter. Kristina speaks English well and she enjoys throwing the Frisbee. I have helped her a little bit with how to throw it better and she gets it some, but sometimes it goes right behind her.



Pastor Oleg and Bob give some words at the opening of the day. I was sitting back by Sergie who is very polite and also enjoys throwing the Frisbee.




Sergie and Andrew help out two children with a game in which the children put a beach ball between themselves and run. Sergie and Andrew have been a big help in the camp. We appreciated their help very much. Andrew translator for us and Sergie was very good at helping organize the children. The children listened to Sergie and he was great at lining them up and singing songs with them.






I took part in the beach ball relay. Christina was my partner for the race. She spoke a little English, but even though we could not talk well to each other we could communicate through hand motions very well. She seemed to know what was going on well.






At the end of each recreation group we took pictures of the groups. I have two pictures. On the days that I did not help with the Bible story, I helped with recreation. It was great fun.



Since the Bible story was about Jesus feeding the 5000, we play games in which the children did relays with “bread” and fish. Instead of using real bread, we used these bouncy ball things as the bread.



I have mentioned before a girl named Sophia that beat to her own drum. On Wednesday at the close, she sat next to me along with a boy about her size. She kept taking off our hats and changing up our hats. Not really sure why she liked changing our hats, but it kept her from running away to her own little world like she would do often so I let her do it.




Auburn fan at a young age and in Ukraine. He liked my hat probably cause of the great color. After the day camp I went to a café and borrowed someone’s computer to skype with my parents, send a couple of emails, and uploaded pictures onto facebook. Then I had about an hour before we needed to be ready for the ESL class, so I went to a sporting goods store just down the street from where we are staying. The money here is called Hrivas (hr). About 8 hr equals 1 dollar. Most things here have been relatively cheaper than things in the States. Yet, at the Sporting Goods store I noticed that many things equaled about the same price or were more expansive than in the States. So, I did not buy anything and I learned from the missionary that the place I went mainly imported most of their stuff and therefore cost more. After looking around there we headed to the ESL class for the night.


Our ESL classes as a whole were very interesting: The first night we told our names and a little about ourselves. The second night we talked about places we liked to go in our respective countries. On Wednesday we talked about American food and told the group about some of our favorite dishes. We told them that even though some people like to eat fast food often, many people cook locally grown food. The group of Ukrainians that were sitting near me said they we needed to stop talking about food because they were starting to get too hungry. I agreed with them. We continued to talk about the Sermon on the Mount and got into some interesting discussion. Our group decided after the class that it might be best if we did another passage on the last night. I will share about that in the next day’s blog.



After our ESL class on Wednesday night we went to Pastor Oleg’s house for a nice desert. Above is a picture of him with his wife Ira. Their apartment was on the ninth floor and was a nice place. We had some cherry and chocolate cake they called wood under the snow or something like that. We also had a fruit desert.




Pastor Oleg also asked if we wanted some coffee. How about this for international: I am an American, I was drinking Italian coffee, out of a Chinese or Japanese coffee mug, and I was in Ukraine. He warned me that the coffee was strong, but I told him I liked my coffee strong.







After we left Pastor Oleg’s house we headed back to the Bible College in which we were staying. The Bible College is connected to a Church and we saw a group coming out of the church. We asked if we could go inside their church and look around. They said sure and let us go into their sanctuary. It was a very nice church. The group, along with Pastor Oleg, and missionary Tim treated us to some Ukrainian hymns. It was very beautiful and I still can remember a few words from one of the songs. Then we sang a couple of songs in which we sang in English and the others sang in Ukrainian. I have video of one of the songs in Ukrainian.


Thought or lesson of the day: I have been sharing many things about what we have done and seen, but have not been sharing enough about what I have been learning about myself or about Ukraine. So, from here on out I am going to try and have a thought or lesson of the day. One thing I have learned is that doing little things can make a huge impact in children’s lives. This is something I sort of knew before, but really it took me a couple of days to put into action here in Ukraine. I felt a little disconnected from the children the first couple of days because we did not speak the same language. It looked like the children were having fun, but I felt God was leading me to connect with them more. So, I started going up to each one of them and holding up my hand for them to give me a five. If I knew that the child knew English I would say an English phrase to them. However, if I was not sure if the child would understand me I would say something simple in Ukrainian. Sometimes when I said something in Ukrainian the boy or girl would respond in English and it was a great introduction for me to begin speaking with them instead of simply going up to them and asking if they spoke English. So, a word of advice, even if you don’t speak the same language as the children, don’t hesitate to try and communicate with them or show them you care about them.