Our last day in Ukraine proved to be all that we had hoped for and more. We were able to go into town and hang information about an upcoming camp, play with some little kids, Kyle told them a story about Jesus, and our contact (Igor) and his awesome wife (Luba) spoiled us. Luba made us pizza (most healthy pizza I’ve ever had) and then the next day they brought us a ton of delicious food as a send off! Somewhere in there we also went to a Muslim mosque, saw Igor’s second church, goofed around, got ice cream, received a bracelet that some of the girls at the camp made for me, and barely made it on the train because we had 2 minutes (literally, Igor and the guys from Kiev were helping us and they took off running towards the train) to get on.
So, just under 48 hours later we ended up in Romania =) We took a train from Bahchesaray to Kiev and were way too excited to see the McDonalds in Kiev and hang out there for a few hours (they had air conditioning and all!). From there we got on the best train yet where Casey and Tom had a cabin and the other 4 of us had our own cabin! We crossed over all of the borders (Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania) throughout the night, so that was a fun wake up every few hours to hand over our passports. Our train ended up arriving over 2 hours early. It was awesome that we were early, but we also had a 10 minute heads up to get everything packed and ready to go!
We’re now at Casa Shalom, and I’m pretty sure it’s paradise. We have beds, good food, hot showers, and internet (oh yea, and actually bathrooms…toilets and all!). I don’t think there’s anything more that we could ask for. We arrived Sunday night to the rest of “O” Squad already here and had a wonderful few days with everyone!
This month we’re working with two other teams, Koinonia and Umoja. It’s great to be ministering with other teams and to have the opportunity to get to know them more!
Contrary to what we thought, there’s no orphanage here. We are staying at a place that used to have one though! haha I haven’t looked into it yet, but from what I was told Romania has closed the orphanages and the children were put into foster care. So as expected ministry has changed and probably will continue to do so. Thursday we went to Jubilee and will be working with the women there this month. Jubilee is a home for women that have aged out of orphanages to come and live. It’s a place for them to be accepted and loved. Many of the women are mentally and/or slightly physically disabled and have emotional challenges as well. We will be working with the women, spending time loving on them and showing them the tangible love of God. We will also be helping Jubilee out with any construction, yard work, or other various projects that they have going on. In addition to that, we will also be helping out at Casa Shalom in various ways. One of the main things we will be doing here with working with children at camp. This week there are 6-12 year olds here. We were able to spend a few hours yesterday just playing games with them and getting to know them a little bit. From my understanding we will also be helping with the programs for some of the camps. So yea, a little bit of everything going on here!
Since we do have easily accessible internet here I’ll be trying to update on a much more regular basis this month, then hopefully my posts won’t be as long =)
