Day 5- Uncle Ben, Uncle Ben

I mentioned on Day 4 that I started the day off with a run. Day 5 I slept as long as I could before having to get a shower and get ready for breakfast. We have long days and our very tired at night. Today was my day to tell the Bible story. I told the story about the paralytic man and how his friends helped him. I told them about how the house in which Jesus was teaching was full of people and how the paralytic’s friends help him get to Jesus by removing the roof and lowering him in the house on a mat. I told them about how the story is about how Jesus healed the paralytic, but that it was also about how his friends helped him. So, I spoke to them about the importance of helping out your friends and how we ought to be sharing with our friends about Jesus. During the story many of the children raised their hands and told the translator that they already knew the story (Joey, if you are reading this than you are not the only one who does that haha). We told the children that the reason Jesus was able to heal him is because of his faith and because Jesus is God. Then we played two games that related to the story and would hopefully help the children remember the story of Jesus healing.
The first thing we did was we had four children carry another child on a towel and they had to go through the crowd of children to get to Jesus. We told the other children to crowd around me (and Sergie helped play the part of Jesus a couple times too). The ones carrying the towel had to lift their friend on the towel over the children surrounding me and I lowered the sick one into the center of the circle. Bob reminded the children that the way in which Jesus was able to heal the sick man is because he is God. The second game involved again having four people carrying a towel, but this time the children had to put my new friends on their towels:



We found these at the place in which we are staying and the lady said we could use them.



Look how happy they are to be playing…smiling is a universal language.



I look like I am struggling and Yes that guy does have on Chelsea shorts. I was sure to put him on a different team than the guy wearing the Man U shorts.



Smiling does not need a translator 


We sang before snack time. After snack time, when I was picking up trash (one of my jobs) a group of girls wanted to tell me something so I went to get Tanya one of our translators. They requested a song and I told them I would make sure we sing it again. At the end of the day that group of girls started calling me Uncle Ben. I thought maybe it was a reference to the rice, but Tanya told me it was a sign of respect and they children probably were not referring to the rice.
One girl had her birthday today and so her mom had sent a cake for the children to enjoy. We sang happy birthday to her and the Pastor gave her a gift that his church received from operation shoe box. I just learned that he has about 50 of them and plans to give them all out to the children before the week is over.



We sang a song where everyone will point at you and ask you if you love Jesus in your heart in Ukraine…I tried to respond but did not do well. But, I am determined to learn the song along with a couple of others. Here is a picture of a couple of the children singing that song:




Then we played more games. We played four corners (a personal favorite of mine, but I did not pick it out). Then we played a game about getting the trash out of your house. It is also played in four corners, but a different object to the game. Below is a picture of it



Yes our missionary did wear an Alabama shirt and one child had on a AC Milan jersey. I gave Tim a hard time about his shirt, but I did not tell the child that Inter was better this year.

At the end of the day I reviewed the bible story with the children and we handed out pictures for them to take home with them that had the bible passage on it. Just an interesting side note one translator helped me tell the story and another translator helped me review the story with the children. We are hoping not only to share God’s Word with the children, but to also share it with the translators and other adults that might be around.

I was the smart one who slept through lunch. After lunch we went a to a bakery Sasha worked out. Sasha is one of Oleg’s friends and he drove us from Kiev to Ivano-Frankivsk. He told us on the way the other day that he worked at a bakery and we told him that we wanted to visit. So, we did that today. It was neat seeing all the countryside. They asked me at the ESL class how I liked the countryside and I told them I prefer cities. They called me a “Bug” since I liked the city. I had never heard that before and at first thought they were calling me a “Bag”. Anyway, at Sasha’s bakery we saw where they made the bread and he told us to eat as much as we wanted. I said earlier that I was the smart one for the day (of course the women in my group would disagree that I am the smart one but that is besides the point) because everyone else was full from lunch and did not eat as much bread as I did. Sasha introduced us to his wife who runs the bakery.




Sasha telling us about the bakery


Here I am telling about how much I like bread (brothers remember Chicken and roll?)



The bakery sells a good amount of their bread to local people in their village. Notice in the background I am chomping down on some great bread. Thanks Sasha!!

Then Pastor Oleg took us a few minutes down the road to where he grew up and then Sasha took us to his church. The church was started in 1932. It was taken over by the communist after WWII, but the church continued to worship anyway (the church is the people not the building). In 1987 the church got its building back and since then has added on to it. Below are some pictures of it:






After we left the church we met up with Sasha and his wife at a Café for a “snack”. I use the term loosely because it was a huge snack. It was called chrochecker (something like that). Pastor Oleg described it as a large donut with meat in the center of it. At the café we sat in a Gazebo. After we ate the Ukrainians with us sang us a couple of Ukrainian hymns and we returned the favoring singing “How Great Thou Art” and “Peace like a River”. They joined in on our songs and sang in Ukrainian because they recognized the tune.
We went straight to our ESL class…we continued talking about the Sermon on the Mount and told them about the United States…we answered questions they had about the States and told them about our favorite places….I told them about two of my favorite places Disney World in Orlando! (inside joke I will have to tell people later if they ask) and Amelia Island, Florida. I told them why I liked those two places. One culture thing I noticed was when people left what they said and how they asked us if they could leave. One guy spoke very little English and I heard him talking to Missionary Tim about something. Tim kept saying, “Really it’s fine don’t worry about it.” We came to find out that he was apologizing that he had to leave early and was asking permission if he could leave. We said that if he needed to get somewhere than he could go and did not really need our permission. On his way out he had the Pastor tell us thank you very much for letting him come and that he hopes to see us again soon. Another girl had to leave early and she had much the same exit. We could definitely learn manners from some of the Ukrainians. I leave you with a picture from our ESL class (the class is also helping me speak better English because as you well know I tend to confuse people with my own English haha)




Peace be with you,
Ben