Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Pictures up at photobucket.com/mt2ukraine
password is Ukraine 2011
:)

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Home Safely

Got back safely on Saturday night. The team was divided into two groups for traveling because their wasn't space for the whole team on one flight. I was with the smaller team that arrived later Saturday night.

During the last week we were in Kiev and had very little to no Internet access (my reason for not updating the blog - sorry). While there half the team worked at a camp for disabled children and the others were on the "evangelism team" which did different things every day. I was apart of the evangelism group. The first day we were supposed to join a Messianic Jewish congregation for an evangelistic event. There was some miscommunication though and we did realize that the event wouldn't work for our schedule so we had to cancel. Within two hours God brought us a new contact! :) Her name was Era and she attends the Hillsong church plant there in Kiev. We spent an hour praying over the city in the square and went to the Saturday night service at hillsong that night. The next day was Sunday, we went to a small baptist church and were able to do our full program (minus the dramas). There we met the founding directors of the YWAM base we were staying on (they have now moved on the be the directors of YWAM Eastern Europe). We spent Sunday afternoon at the base (which has a beach on a river - great for swimming) swimming with the kids of the founding directors and some kids from the youth group of the church. The rest of the week was spent doing street evangelism, painting a school for Autistic kids, and visiting a Gypsy camp.

The Gypsy camp was eye opening and very similar to the dump I visited last year in the Philippines. Five small tents were set up in a clearing on the outskirts of a dump. The people who lived in these tents (about five families) acted as a family. They shared food and cooked together, etc... Walk down a small path for about ten minutes and there was another small clearing with a "separate" little community and so on. We were able to visit the gypsy camp twice. The first time we had no idea what to expect and ended up doing our program for about 15-20 people who were very friendly and responsive, but never smiled. The second time we went we were prepared to clean up their living area (because it was on the outskirts of the dump there was trash every and not safe for the barefoot and sometimes naked children to play). One of our team members is a cosmetoligist and she cut hair and we painted nails for some of the girls.

Ill try to write more late, still getting back in the swing of things. Ill post my update letter when I get that put together. That will have a good overview of the trip. Ill also try to post pictures.

Thanks for your prayers. God did amazing things and worked in the hearts of the team just as much as He did in the hearts of Ukrainians. :)