Pictures - Part IV

Mr. Whissel and his cat.

The beautiful Jen Stone.

Historical Houses.

Our group.

A church.

Sanctuary type place.

Little tiny well.

Water wheel.

Eboya and me.

Catey and Lessa.

Downtown Uzhorrod.

The friendly little black dog. Isn't he cute?

Crossing the street.

Inside the cafe.

Cool place, huh?

Ukraine Trip 2007 - Part IV

Day 6: We made a morning excursion to visit a historic village in Uzhorrod. They have houses from all through the centuries to show how the houses in Ukraine have changed. Some of them have been transported from all around the country. We had a guide and it was pretty interesting. The things they could do with hay is quite incredible. Walking around the city itself is always fun. It's exactly how a European town is portrayed in the movies. There are street dogs everywhere and this year I was able to ignore them most of the time. Being a dog lover it was more difficult the first year. I was doing great until Jen and I spotted this little, black pathetic looking thing. He was so mild and submissive. He let us come right up to him and pet him. He just seemed to be soaking up all of the attention. I didn't want to leave him and wondered what Mom and Dad would say if I brought home another dog. However, Mr. Whissel was keeping a close eye on us and he dragged us away before I had a chance to do anything. After freezing for a while we stopped in at a small cafe that was really crowded. It was a lot like Starbucks but smaller so there was no seating only counter space. I had a hot chocolate and I think it just might have been the best I've ever tasted. Back at Nehemiah we had to don our mud gear again. This time we were visiting a gypsy village pronounced something like Zereechivo. Thankfully we were not crammed into a van but were able to take a bus. I sat next to Lessa watching everything. My mind was pretty distracted that day. This village was even more mudding than the first with a few brown spots that were definitely NOT mud. This mud was different. It suction-cupped to your shoes and you had to work for every step. No wonder they have a pump to wash their shoes before they go into the church. This building was even smaller than the last. Pastor Paul had us praying for healings for different people. My mind was far away where it had no business being and so I spent the rest of our short time there beating myself up for it. It can be pretty depressing watching everyone around you have this great spiritual experience and connecting with all the poeple around them and you can't seem to reign your mind in and concentrate. Walking out of the village I was having a full blown pity party. A couple of the girls were walking with some little kids who had had their pictures taken about a million times. This little blond angel came up beside me so I took her hand and we sloshed our way through the mud. Before we got to the road she stopped beside a house. I figured it was hers and she was going to go in but instead she ran behind the house. I kept walking to the other side thinking that she was going to come around but she was gone. I looked around a little but just like that she had disappeared. In the bus the girls behind me we sobbing and going on about how they had to come back some day and they started praying. What they were doing was what they should have been doing but it was not what I wanted to listen to right then. Lessa had patted the seat beside her for me to sit with her again, so I did. She let me lay my head on her shoulder and close my eyes. I was so mad at myself for being distracted and missing out and not being one of the girls crying my eyes out over the whole thing. I just stayed there for about ten minutes, silent tears running down my face, praying to God. When I sat up Lessa took my hand in hers, snuggled right up to me, and rested her head on me. Sitting there holding her for the next half hour I was so blown away by the fact that she had practically nothing and no one in the world and barely any hope of anything better and yet she was comforting me who had friends, family, possessions, and the chance to do anything I want. Talk about being humbled. Those next thirty minutes were the best ones of the entire trip for me. I would have done the whole thing just for that. That night was pretty much like the previous. We did bead work in the prayer room while indoor games of frisbee and ball were going on. It was a little dangerous just sitting there like a target while I worked on a necklace. Within five minutes I was smacked by three frisbees and a ball. I suppose it was slightly more dangerous later when we were up on the second floor putting the girls to bed. It was hot in the room so we opened the window. The windows there don't have any screens so I hung my legs over the ledge and managed to freak everyone out. It scared them more when Tiana pretended to push me out. lol.

Pictures - Part III

Playing "Down by the banks..."

Soccer!!!

Talk about ultimate frisbee...go Tiana!!

Back: Slava Front: Sasha

"There goes another one!"

Watching Cars.

Ukraine Trip 2007 - Part III

Day 5: Monday morning I was reunited with some of our translators from last year. Jen, Tiana, and I were put in one group with Valya as our interpretor. I was surprised that she remembered me from last year. I was surprised when anyone remembered me. Ira's sister, Marianna, was also there again. (They look SO much alike.) The boys had Olya who had been there last year as well. Our guests arrived about ten that morning. Our group had a 16-year-old girl named Eboya. You could tell immediately that she was gypsy and very shy. She was so shy that for most of the time she was there we couldn't tell if we were making any difference or if her time at Nehemiah was affecting her at all. To break the ice Valya had us play some games that let us get to know each other. Then we had a big game of "Down by the banks." We discovered that Eboya LOVES sports. You name and she can do it. Katharine and Catey's girl, Lessa, was less reserved and more open and affectionate. The two boys we had were Slava (13) and Sasha (11). They were really small for their age. Sasha looked about 7 but, boy, did they have energy! We took them outside after lunch. There was a tennis court that worked for an enclosed space to play in. There were several games of soccer and frisbee going on at the same time. It was kind of crazy in there. Slava enjoyed sending frisbees out over the fence into the next yard, so Sam Penkacik and Mr. Kempe took turns climbing it to go retrieve them. Having rock climbers with us sure did come in handy. There is a small playground there as well and we spent some time on that but by then it was getting a bit cold. Before dinner we watched Cars. Well, I didn't. I went to lay down for a while because my head was throbbing but everyone else did. It was supposed to be in Ukrainian (Cars was the first professionally translated movie into Ukrainian) but Valodya couldn't get home in time to get it for us. I think the kids could understand most of it anyway. After dinner there we did bead work and played duck, duck, goose in Russian (accompanied by Steve on the drums). Valya also taught us this crazy but fun game called Eatchquake and Shake. You take three people and form a house with two (like in London bridge) with one person in the middle. There is on person who isn't in a house and they have to say earthquake or shake. If they say shake then just the people in the house have to switch house. If they say earthquake then everyone has to change to a new position. The only person left out is the next to call the shots. It can be really hilarious and we played it for the longest time. Around nine we put the kids to bed. It had been a long day and we were all ready for a break. Catey and I stayed up just a little bit late talking that night. :)

Pictures - Part II

Church of the New Testament

The flags we left being used by some of their dancers.

Valodya translating as Pastor Paul preaches.

Fishermen of Uzhorrod.

In the restaurant.

The castle.

View of the city. (Every single day was this grey.)

Catey, Alla, and Katharine. My three lovely ladies.

The largest well I have ever seen. It just kept going down and down and down.....I don't think there was a bottom.

Ukraine Trip 2007 - Part II

Day 3: Saturday was our day of prayer. Whenever a team goes to Eastern Europe the first day is taken solely for prayer and relaxation. It really helps you to recover and get your bearings. I think it might have been my favorite day of the whole week. We had a two hour session in the morning and were joined by Alla and her care-taker Nadia. Alla is the young lady I worked with last year. She got too old for the orphanage and so they sent her home to her mother who is a prostitute. Pastor Paul was able to get her mother to sign release papers and they removed Alla from her home. Now she lives with Nadia who has taken care of several orphans. I was able to give Alla a sketch pad and drawing set. She made us draw so many pictures (not of us are really talented). In the afternoon everyone who had lost luggage got to experience the open clothing market in downtown Uzhorrod. I have never been there so I can't tell you anything about that. I heard it was quite....different. I had a very cool word spoken over me that day and we were able to pray for Alla and Nadia. Through the word I was given I was able to in turn speak over others and give some encouragement. It was something I had really missed. Julia's brother Bogadon was there with Natan in the afternoon and I was able to talk to him for a bit. I was surprised to find out that he remembered me considering I don't remember saying hardly anything to him last year! Before dinner we practiced singing some songs that we were going to do for the orphans at Domboki. Sam Penkacik is incredible with a guitar. We just picked a song and he played it. After a while it didn't sound so bad. (Singing wasn't really our forte either.) We were able to goof off that night with Sam's camera and just get to know each other a little more. For most of the trip we tended to segregate into boys and girls. Most of the kids played spoons that evening and I went down to join the adult conversation. I learned about a book Mary-Jill had made called a cone book. We brain stormed for new ideas. I would attempt to describe this book but that we take about a twenty minute tangent and would be totally irrelevant so if you really want to know ask me.

Day 4: The boys and Mr. Kempe headed off to Perechin for church while we girls and Pastor Paul went to New Testament. I was really excited to see some of the woman use flags that we had left there last year. Our only male translator from the previous year name Victor was at church. In fact he was one of the lead singer for worship. After church he was assigned the task of taking us to lunch and entertaining us for a few hours. We went to this awesome Italian looking restaurant. Inside was all painted like stone with recesses in the wall holding old vases and artifacts. There were murals on the wall and even a little bridge. The no-smoking section was upstairs. All of us ordered Ukrainain pizza. It is much thinner and flakier than ours with little or no tomato sauce. They often put canned corn on their pizza. Mrs. Whissel and I were the only ones brave enough to try, I think. I fould it pretty good but then I loved all of the food in Ukraine. Alla had come to lunch with us and introduced us to a new game. She gave us a word in Ukrainian and we had to go around the circle and each act it out. We all looked ridiculous but she is quite the little actress and had us all in stitches. To keep us busy for a while Victor took us up to see the castle of Uzhorrod. We had tried to visit it last year but it is closed on Mondays. We could only take pictures outside. Up on the wall you can look and see over most of the city and out into the mountains. It also overlooks a historical village/museum. Inside the castle they have displays of wildlife native to Ukraine and old furniture and paintings. We had to rush home to make it in time to change head to the gypsy village. On the transportation end we sort of ran out of room. Somehow we managed to squish 15 people into a 9 passenger van. Katharine and I occupied one seat with Jen on our laps. You can just imagine how the rest of them looked. The man driving our van was named Peter. He's from Scotland but he has adopted around 16 orphans and lives in Ukraine. We went to a large village called Mookachiva (pronunciation). There church was pretty small, just one room, so many of them got up to let us sit. I felt really bad about that. Their music is very up beat and puts you in a good mood just listening to it. Some of the kids did a wordless skit that was quite creative. The cool thing was that it was to a song that we had been practicing the previous day. Alan Cook preached for them. I recognized to men that had been to GOIAM in 2006. Unfortunately I had a major wave of jet-lag during the sermon. It was all I could do to keep my eyes open. It was dark out by the time service was over and they took us next door and fed us juice and cookies since we hadn't eaten since lunch. We weren't supposed to take pictures outside so I don't have any. On the way home Mrs. Urban taught us King of Kings and Lord of Lords in Russian. It sounded really cool.

Pictures - Part I

Natan has the right idea.

Random church in Budapest I thought was pretty. Taken while riding in a van.

"Happy Gum"......just had to get a picture of that.

Waterfall inside the mall.

Ditto

Ditto again.

Train Station in Budapest.

Ukraine Trip 2007 - Part I

A lot of people have asked me about my trip and there is just so much that it is hard to say it all in one conversation or to even know where to begin. So, I'm going to try to post something about everyday of the trip over the next week or so. We left Thursday, February 22 and returned Saturday, March 3.

Day 1: Making it to Logan Airport was the easy part. Leaving...well, that was a bit harder. We made it through security all right, but we found out that they had some room on a 3:00 flight so they were going to move some of us to that one an hour earlier. However, our regular 4:00 flight got delayed to five and that would have made us miss our flight to Budapest. So, suddenly they were faced with trying to get all of us onto that three o'clock flight. Then we find out that the three o' clock flight is delayed until four. At first they only managed to get all of the boys on the flight. Then they added me, then Catey, and then Mrs. Urban. That was all they had on there when it was time to board. We were all sitting in the plane waiting and waiting when slowly one by one the rest of the girls got on. Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Whissel were at the front of the plane waiting to see if they could get on because it might be too heavy. Everyone made it on except Slavic and Natan. We spent less than ten minutes in the JFK airport so I never actually caught a glimpse of New York City. Oh well, that'll have to wait for another day. Needless to say we were relieved to see Slavic and Natan make the connecting flight to Budapest. It took a while just to get off the ground. We had to wait in line for the runway! One lady on the plane got sick and had to leave so we were forced to wait while they unloaded the luggage to find hers. On international flights it is the law that if you get off your luggage must go with you. Other than uncomfortable chairs and a sketchy tv show, the flight was pretty unevetful. Unfortunately there wasn't much sleep to be had, for the girls anyway. From what I saw the boys had the shut-eye factor pretty under control.

Day 2: Our first sight on waking up was us flying into the sunrise...not a bad way to start the day. We arrived in Budapest around 10:30 in the morning to discover that several people had missing luggage. Catey, Jen, Tiana, and Mr. Kempe were all missing at least their clothes if not their donation suitcase as well. There wasn't much we could do, so when Pastor Paul met up with us we headed out to find Peter. Right next to the train station is supposedly the largest mall in Europe (never expected that to be in Hungary). You had to go underground to enter it and outside the glass doors didn't feel so safe. Inside was incredible. There was a waterfall three stories high with hanging plants and a pool at the bottom right as you enter. We ate lunch there. Not being able to speak a word of Hungarian, Katharine and I went for nice safe Burger King. To order you just point and hand over your money. Just as a side note - Hungarian is about the second hardest language to learn in the world and is related to no other language except perhaps distantly to Finnish. Makes me want to learn it. :) After two hours of wandering around we had only seen about 1/3 of this mall. It was huuuuuge. Funny thing is most of the stores in it were really, really small. The train stations was attatched to the mall so we didn't have far to go. We discovered that in Hungary you have to pay to use the bathrooms and grab your toilet paper BEFORE you go in. Just what you wanted to know, right? We established a guard over our pile of luggage. Alan Cook and Marlow had joined us by now. We had Sam Crook, fresh out of boot camp, and Slavic on each end. Other than one blunt "who are you people?" we were pretty much left alone. Hungary is the most likely place to have things stolen so we have to watch at all times. Everyone had made it onto the train safely and were all settled in when we found out that they had double booked every seat in our car. There were random Ukrainian men coming up to us and letting us know that we were in their seats. Then we found out that the car we were in would be dropped at the border so we had to switch all of our luggage and ourselves while the train was in motion. That was an experience. I actually got about three hours sleep on the train in the oddest position. Getting through the security at the CSOP train station was nearly so nerve racking this time. In fact I wasn't nervous at all. It was more like routine. On the bus ride to Nehemiah House we saw a rather interesting sight. There was a truck on the side of the road and farther up a cow lay on it's side. Not something you see every day. Around 10:30 Friday night we arrived at our destination. There was warm dinner waiting for us and comfortable room. However, we five girls discovered something interesting about the water. It turns off every night between 11 and 1 because of the filter system. Makes brushing your teeth a little difficult. This year our room was on the third floor so it was a hall to get up there. All five of the girls shared one suite of rooms and the boys along with Mr. Kempe were right next to us. Also on our floor were the Whissels and Alan Ross.