The first week in Ukraine has been an adventure traveling to four diferent villages! After arriving to Odessa, we found out that we were traveling to a village two hours outside of Odessa. We re-packed for just a few days and got to a village of about 2,000 people. The moment we got there, we were taken to Ola’s house to have a feast, the best we’ve had on the race. They threw Holly a birthday party too! Just like family.
Home cooked food fresh from the villagers and her garden: fresh grapes and plums, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, parsley, freshly baked bread and fresh cheese! Delicious 🙂 The hospitality here was amazing. You could tell they loved the Lord by their actions, not their words since they speak Russian, but we shared the same love language, food!
In this first village, we worked with the youth from the village and went hiking in the woods to do some team building, sing songs, played volleyball and ate pig fat cooked on a bonfire, fresh bread, fish and watermelon. I 
shared my testimony and spoke about community living. It was one of my favorite outreaches of the year! (Brian was back in Kiev for a leadership retreat the first week)
shared my testimony and spoke about community living. It was one of my favorite outreaches of the year! (Brian was back in Kiev for a leadership retreat the first week)In the second village we went to give a sermon, play worship and answer questions they had about America. The hot news in Ukraine has been about the Pastor who wanted to burn the Koran on 9-11. Being without television/internet most days, we were hearing this news about America from very remote villages in Ukraine. Word of mouth is most often our fastest source of news.
We traveled back to Odessa, picked up Brian at the train station and headed right back out the same day to a third village about an hour and a half away from Odessa. This village was very diferent from the first two, it was an old military village from World War II. We stayed in their small church with Slovak, a 23 year old missionary who had just started doing missions with them one month earlier.
From this village we traveled with Slovik to a fourth village where we did country gate to country gate ministry for two days. Slovik has been praying for a year about starting a new church in this fourth village, so we were there to help him meet everyone in the village at their homes and see if they wanted a church to meet in their home. We heard many stories about the harsh life they have led there. One babushka (grandmother) was telling me about her childhood during World War II when the Germans invaded her home and made her gather food for them while being forced out or her home with her family. She also told us, with tears in her eyes, how the Germans put her father in a concentration camp where he died. Despite her hardship there, she found her strength in the Lord and was excited for a church to gather in the village that was dying. All of the youth had gone to the city to College and now all that were left were the elderly.
