If a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words....

Here's some things that happened in January. If I ever write about them, and I hope I do, I'll update this post with links.

I welcomed the New Years in with all of the Kharkov church members.

I didn't go to sleep at all that night so that I would be able to leave early in the morning to call my family at midnight their time.

Continued to visit the Baby Hospital

A view from their ward room.

Here is a picture of Little Pauvel and I.

He is one of my favourite babies!

Welcomed the Hindman Family Back to Ukraine

Attended an English Club weekly at the University

Shared Fellowship with our English assembly.

Of course we like to spell "Fellowship" as F-O-O-D

Began meeting with a Woman's Bible study lead by Lucy

Went to an Orphanage in Kremenchuk

Several of the students I know from the Bible Institute in Donetsk also went.

We sang lots of songs with these kids. It was very cool learning how to sing some of my favourite Children's Bible songs in Russian/Ukrainian.

Continued running an English group with Cody

Took pictures of an awesome fountain

The lights change colours!

Carried on my LST studies with Nadia

Went to the Square to see all the Christmas decorations in the snow with friends.

As you can see, January was a full month with lots happening, just little time to write about it.

The NewsLetter from December.

So it's time to get this puppy back up to date.

Lets start off with my December newsletter to sum up all you missed that month.

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Autumn seems to be prolonging it’s end here in Ukraine. The brightly coloured leaves have all gone, but the little snow we have had will not stay on the ground. It is like being in a state of limbo between seasons.

I have not ever seen actual seasons change before due to living in Arizona. We just didn’t have a real winter or fall there. And I had expected the coming of winter to be another story all together. I figured that it would snow one day and then it would be snowy from then on! Unfortunately for me, this is not the case. The snow has fallen 3 times now, but each time it has melted away within the span of a day. I hope that winter will move in soon before Spring comes to take it’s turn.

The the early parts of this month we took a trip down to the sea-side town of Mariupol. There is a nice church there of about 50 Ukrainians. Many American missionaries have worked with this congregation in the past, but now the church cares for itself and is lead by the local men. They really have an impressive building that they have renovated for their purposes. It was once an old school house; they have left several of the classrooms unchanged but they have changed others to become a fellowship hall, a large kitchen, a baptistery, and a living space for visiting peoples complete with a common room and two bed rooms.

Now the purpose for our trip to Mariupol was to attend the wedding of a young man the other AIMers and I met in Donetsk where he attends the Bible school. This same young man was a little boy when Brandon Price(one of the missionaries here) did his AIM field time there in Mariupol. This was an interesting perspective to see some of the results of a similar worker’s time. Ten years later and all the different parts and pieces of that field are still together.

Recently I have begun a ‘Let-Start-Talking’ follow up with a lady named Nadia. Currently we are reading through the book of Luke using the LST book. She had started the lesson book in the Summer, but only completed the first half. Naturally, we picked up where she had left off. For those who do not know, LST is a program where Christians may go to foreign country to teach English using the Bible. All the text comes straight from the Bible and the lessons are free. This causes a number of people to be reading the Bible who not be otherwise. The lesson becomes essentially a Bible study. This is found to be an effective tool around the world, and shows promise here in Ukraine. The mission team here have recently found out that we are to expect two more teams this Summer! Please pray for the success of this program!

Also, in the middle of this month I got to celebrate my 20th birthday! I had dinner with my team an coordinators. Afterward we spent some time together watching some of our favorite Disney movies.

This year I had the unique experience of celebrating Christmas three times! I will even get to have two more celebration days before January is half over. The first day was a Party that we, the mission team, threw for the people who meet in our weekly English study groups. We decorated cookies and made fancy ornaments out of paper and played some games together. The next day was Christmas eve when the whole team got together to have a Christmas dinner gift exchange among ourselves. Because there are so many people on the team we just did white elephant gifts. Christmas morning found all of us AIMers at the apartment of Brandon and Katie Price where we ate waffles and opened the gifts that our families sent us. Now we have ahead of us New Years, which is celebrated similarly to Christmas here due to the removal of religious holidays during the Soviet era. We will have a big party for this with the church members. This is especially exciting since it will be planned primarily by the Ukrainians, instead of by Americans! And finally, although little celebrated, we have the Orthdox Christmas day. Ukrainians who do celebrate Christmas do so on the Orthdox date since that is the most common and historical brand of Christianity found in Ukraine.