Znayimstva moya novykh druziv (Meet my new friends)!
My squad and I have made it to Chile and are about to head into ministry after a few long days of traveling, some long flights, a touch of jet lag, and a great two days spent with the squad learning from each other. I have really neglected keeping everyone updated about life in Ukraine, but it is incredible how much one place can mean to me after only living there for one month. In this blog I wanted to introduce some of the incredible people I met and what I learned from them.
So as I said before in a previous blog our ministry this past month was teaching English to adults and students. They were divided up into two weeks: week one being people ages 16+ and week two being students 14-16 years old.
One of my favorite people that I meant while in Ukraine was this incredible woman. Her name is Ira. She was one of our translators and had become a Christian and a member of the church we worked at recently. Ira is more than a translator though, she was a friend that I didn’t even know I needed in my life. She carried a radiant smile with her wherever she went and spoke with full confidence of her dream to go to America to be an actress. Her English is incredible and she lives and speaks fluently through American films and music. This month we were able to pour into her and show her worth as a daughter of God and how she is working so fully for Him while here in Ukraine.
One of my most unexpected friends from English school was Oleg. Oleg is a hunter and a farmer and came to our English class to better his english so he could visit his daughter who is working in Chicago. Oleg had such an incredible work ethic and to hear his heart behind why he wanted to learn just showed how much compassion and love he has for those in his life. At the end of the week when class ended, Oleg told us he had a surprise for our team and read from marked words on his hand, ‘I want to treat you all’. He handed us a huge basket of apples and pears and told us that we were his American children. Going into the week of teaching adults I was not very excited because I didn’t see how we were going to be able to connect with them and there would be this weird barrier because we were much younger than them, trying to impart wisdom. However, Oleg and the rest of the adult class changed that perspective for me.
These girls are something special. Victoria and Nastia started out in my class for the 16+ year olds, but ended up switching into a different class. I was upset at first because I felt like getting to know them was now a missed opportunity. But to my surprise these girls showed up for the second week of classes because they enjoyed the first so much and this time they came to my class and stayed in my class. I got to hear about their passions for art and travel and how we changed their perspectives on Americans. Their friend Evelina spoke so much encouragement to our team. At the end of each week we had to share a snapshot of our testimony and that would be our lesson for the last day. It felt forced and not what we needed to be doing. But after we shared with them the first week, Evelina came up to us and was telling us thank you. She told us about how she had been trying to get her friends to accept Jesus since they were 11 years old, but they had never really had an interest in that lifestyle. She told us that despite having tried for years now, it took meeting us to spark that change within them. She expressed that we had a joy about us that they wanted and they wanted to change their lives and start living for the Lord. These girls totally changed my perspective on whether or not we were impacting people or even sharing Jesus at all. They helped us to realize that Jesus is truly speaking and shining through us even if all the see is the joy we carry. Even if we don’t get to see the fruit of what we are doing here in person, we can be reassured knowing that we are at least planting seeds.
My beautiful team. This was our first month living with just each other and I could not have asked for it any other way. We laughed and cried with each other, prepared meals together, had a Halloween party, and broke down the dreaded fart barrier. They are some of the funniest and most uplifting people I have ever met and I seriously could not imagine journeying through this with anyone else.
