Day 8- Please, Please…one more…People!

So, today I had the very important job of handing out silly bands. Each day at recreation time, Barbara would give the children silly bands. Well Friday was her day to teach the Bible Story, so she left me in charge of the important task. Luckily there was a large stack of them left or I would have been in major trouble. I did not take any pictures of the recreation time this day because there was a lot of water involved and I did not want to get my camera wet. In the Bible Story we were talking about Jesus calmed the storm. The first game we played was a version of freeze tag where those that are it spray others with water bottles. If you got sprayed you had to freeze and wait for someone to tag you. After that game the plan was to let the children pick a game or two that we had played earlier in the week that they liked. However, Andrew, one of our translators, said that we should play more games with water. He enjoyed the fact that each day our games had something to do with the Bible Story of the day. So he and Sergie, another local guy that helps a lot, came up with some games dealing with water for the children to play. It was great that the two of the stepped up because it showed that our group was there to help them reach out to the children and they were doing a fine job of it.
At the end of each game I would hand out a silly band to each child. Many would beg for more than one and because I knew I had plenty for everyone I would often give them more than one. Some of them would say, “Pink” or “Yellow” meaning what color they wanted me to give them. A couple of little girls asked one of the older girls how to say their word for Purple in our language. The older girl told them, but instead of saying purple they said, “People”. It was very funny and we all had a good laugh about it. I knew that they were trying to say purple, so I gave them a purple one and said, “Purple.” At the end of the day, I still had several silly bands left. So, I went around to the ones that I knew did not have many and asked them if they wanted more. Well it seems like every time I turned around there was this same little girl asking me for another one. I would point to her arm and say that she already had some and that I needed to give more to the other children (even though I am sure every child had many by the end of the week). Yet, this little girl would look up at me with these sad little eyes and say, “Please, please,…one more.” It was the kind of face that was hard to say no to. So, I would give her another one. At one point she came up to me and I was standing next to a girl that spoke English well. I said, “Look how many this girl has. Yet, she gets to me by being so sweet and saying please.” I don’t think the little girl could understand what I was saying completely, but she knew what I was saying and just started laughing. She continued to come up to me and ask me for more laughing now and saying please. It was great.
At the end of the camp we had a time in which the Pastor asked if any of the children wanted to say something to our group. Many of the children raised their hands and they said the nicest things to us. They thanked us for teaching them about Jesus, playing games with them, teaching them how to do some new crafts, singing songs with them, and caring for them. It was very sweet and we felt blessed to be there with them. We reminded them that we came because Jesus loves us and because Jesus loves them. We came because we wanted to share the love that Jesus gave to us by loving them. We said our goodbyes to the children and got more pictures with them.



Yana, the girl in the back with her tongue out, had a Boston hat. She speaks English well so I told her about how people from Boston have a different accent then people from Alabama.


He kept coming up to me saying, “Sponge bob” and then he would give me a high five. It was very funny.


This is Arturo. He is supporting the English national jersey. He was also very funny and his happiness was very contagious.


Martha (they say it more like Marta). She, Yana, and Lilly wrote each member of our group a thank you note. They were sweet notes. Martha also had to put up with my bad jokes every now and then. Sometimes I bet she wished she did not speak any English ha ha.


Sergie! He also had a very contagious happiness and was also very good at serving others.


Julia, Olana, and (not sure how to spell her name in English). They were very sad to leave and wanted a picture with me before they left. I later ran into Olana and the other girl at the plaza. They were in this parade/fashion show thing. It was neat to see.



This guy was great. He and I would play jokes on each other


Kristina. She liked to say “very good.” She speaks some English and is very sweet.

So, after we said our sad goodbyes to the children, we went to a supermarket. It was interesting because on the outside it looks like a really big Wal Mart. But, then when you go inside there is actually a small mall with little shops (similar to shops you seen in our malls) and then you have the Wal Mart type supermarket. There we got some water and I got some Kola (Coke). When we got there, Tanya, one of our translators, was excited because she said she was going to get some ice. Well when we were checking out, we found out that what she was talking about was similar to yogurt on a cone. So, I got some of that too and it was very good. However, it did cause me not to be too hungry for our lunch when we got back to the Bible College.
After lunch, Bob, Barbara, and I met up again with Sasha for some more touring around Ivano-Frankivsk. We headed back towards the same place we were the day before and Bob’s friend saw us. She asked Bob if he wanted to buy a quilt from her and get a picture with her. Anyway, you kind of had to be there to understand how funny it was. We found a store called Eurosport and I found some cool footballs in there. But, I did not get one. We went by a couple more Catholic or Orthodox churches, but did not find anymore singing groups. One of the saddest places we visited was a place in which the Nazis took the Jews during WWII and would line them up and kill them. The area now has a little park. Sasha also took us to what is known as the town center.

This is one of the main landmarks for Ivano. It is on magnets or postcards you get from the city. We also saw the main government building in the town.



Here I am in front of the main government building. It was a large building. We headed back to the main plaza area and ran into some more of our friends. We were eating ice cream and we saw another girl from our ESL class. Then when we were talking to her, we ran into Yana and Lilly. While I was talking to Yana and Lilly we ran into the two girls I mentioned above that were in the fashion show/parade. Here is a picture of some of the girls.


They gathered at the plaza fountain and then I ran into them at a couple of other places around the city later.





Lilly lives in Ivano- Frankivsk and has never heard about the clapping thing that I mentioned in the last post. I told her and Yana about it and so first Yana tried it. Then when she heard the whistle sound she got these big eyes and started laughing. Then Lilly tried the clap and said she did not hear it. However, I told her to try again and she said she heard it and we all got a good laugh out of it.

After touring the city one last time, we went to a Friday night service at Pastor Oleg’s church. We sang a few songs and then Tim preached a sermon. Then the church presented each member of our group with a gift and we got a picture of our group with the church. After church we went out to an Italian place in order to eat pizza and to thank our translators for helping with the day camp. We had brought over gifts from Alabama to give to them. They were definitely more than translators. They helped not only by translating what we said, but they also were very good at playing with the children, lining them up, keeping them quiet when necessary, and many other great things. We could not have done the camp without their huge help.


Thought or lesson from the day:

In the Bible Story time today, Barbara also taught the children about the plan of salvation and how they could give their lives to Jesus. Yet, she did not have a long invitation time in which she had the children come forward, but instead had the children raise their hands if they prayed the prayer for the first time. She encouraged the children if they prayed the prayer for the first time that they should ask their parents to take them to Pastor Oleg’s church and that they should meet with Pastor Oleg about their decision. We try to give the children the message that we want them to learn more and more about Jesus after we left. That we hoped they would give their lives to Jesus Christ. The lesson I learned from this is a reminder that we were not there to “save” the children from horrible conditions. We were not there to tell the children that they need to come to the United States. We were there to work with a local church and to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the children. We were there to teach the children about Jesus, about love, and about the miracles Jesus performed and is performing today. We were there to share with a church, a group of people that already were working for the Lord and help them reach out to the children and families in their area. At the end of the week, we were there to push ourselves out of the way and hopefully allow for Pastor Oleg and his church to further share the Gospel with their community. We wanted the camp to be about helping the local church reach out to these children, but we also did not want the children to forget us. So, Bob worked very hard all week taking pictures of each child and adult that came to the camp. He printed the pictures out with the child’s name on it, the words of John 3:16, our group picture on it, and an invitation to attend the church where Pastor Oleg preaches.