Family.
So this month has been further evidence of how much God loves us. I have had some great months on the Race but this one is easily making its way to the top of the list. I know I haven’t said much about Ukraine other than the fancy McDonalds and the large family we are staying with so I’ll try to fill in some of the gaps.
Like I said before, we live within walking distance of the Black Sea (which we visit frequently) and are living with a huge family. We have also seen cheese again for the first time in 10 months and haven’t seen rice AT ALL since we’ve been here which is awesome :). Our ministry has mostly been gardening or house cleaning, which has been fun and a nice switch from door-to-door evangelism. We also visit a “Pool of Siloam-esque” clinic/park pretty frequently. The family we live with is super talented and they all can play like every instrament, so when we go, they play and draw people in and we get to talk to them. It has been both hilarious and sketchy. Sarah has been made out with and is usually the first sought out to recieve kisses or invitations to dance and Amber typically draws a crowd of drunk men. It’s always a treat seeing what we’ll get ourselves into :).
gardening
me and tiff cleaning a sicko house
It was cool the other day when we were playing ultimate frisbee with everyone and before we had always split up teams evenly so that meant we were all intermixed together. One of us had an idea to play a USA vs. Ukraine game and when we had finished one of the brothers said we shouldn’t do that anymore because there was no US and Ukraine anymore because we were all one family now (insert heart-touching face). It might’ve been because they lost, but it was still sweet :).
It will be really hard to leave here and it’s wierd to think that this family will continue on with life without us just as every other contact and ministry we’ve been with has done. We’ve done a lot of leaving this year but this one will probably be different. It’s cool to see how God works and is again, super faithful. I was trying hard to get a different contact this month and in the end it didn’t work out and this was the only one left so we got it by default. It has turned out, like I’ve said, amazing and none of us would want to be anywhere else.
Wish all of you guys could be here with us but ya can’t so here are some of our highlights so far:
Making pizza the other night for the whole family (none of us had ever made pizza from scratch and the trial run was for a family of 20) and everyone loved it, going to the beach all the time, jumping off piers, picking fresh, organic cherries, strawberries, potatoes and peas from the fam’s garden (and eating them), playing ultimate frisbee and spoons, helping them finish their pool and getting to be here for the completion of it, being thrown in said pool, going to a salt lake with healing mud, running to the beach with the entire family (with cousins makes over 30 people) to catch the sunset on Andrew and Tricia’s last night, listening to family jam seshes (all the boys beat box really well too which is cool), running along the coast, meeting hilarious old people, eating, jumping in hay stacks, la la laaaa…..
us and some of the older kids
helping with the pool
Black Sea 🙂
healing mud lake
thought i’d throw this in for good measure 🙂
