For a girl who wants to possibly have writing as a profession one day, I certainly am not very timely on my updates. I suppose I should work on that…
So, you know that this month has been FEMinistry. If you didn't know that, click here to read my blog about it. What this month has also been is one of my favorite ministries: college campuses!
For the last three weeks, we have been partnered with the Kiev chapter of CCX, pronounced "ess ess ha" in Ukrainian, a Christian organization that hosts English speaking events on college campuses all over the country. In Kiev, CCX has weekly English clubs at Shevchenko and Linguistics universities and Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (KPI), along with a movie night every Friday at Dragomanov University.
In addition to attending all the universities' clubs and the movie night, we have also been attending classes at the four universities to share about our travels and answer any questions they have about our experiences in other cultures. The students have been wonderfully receptive and interested in all that we have to say, which has been such a blessing. There aren't many things worse than talking in front of a room of people and watching half of them sleep.
CCX also throws parties and organizes hangouts for its students regularly, so we've been able to take part in that, too. The first weekend we were here the students planned a house warming party for us at our apartment-and brought us authentic Ukrainian food!-and the second weekend we threw a "world nations" party at the CCX office where we each dressed to represent a country and brought authentic cultural food-we had dishes from Ukraine, America, India, China, and Japan; it was a feast! At the end of the evening, many of our female students asked to be wrapped in saris, which we had brought for decoration, so we spent the last 30 minutes dressing them as Indian princesses. This was definitely one of my favorite nights!
Beyond schedules, classes, clubs, and whatever else CCX has been able to throw at us this month, mainly our ministry has boiled down to socializing and making friends, which are two of my favorite things in life so it's been pretty grand. We spend a lot of our free time with students outside of planned activities shopping, eating out together, grabbing coffee, or just touring the city. On Thursday we're getting dolled up and going with about 10 girls from the universities to the ballet Sparticus!
One thing that has been really unique about this month compared to the rest of the Race is how "normal" our lives feel; we wear normal clothes and fix our hair, eat similar to how we would at home, and spend a lot of time like we would in the states as well, especially if our job was in college ministry. It almost feels like real life, as opposed to "Race life". AND we go to an English speaking church!!
I've loved how natural our ministry has been here. It's so great that we meet people and just get to love them like Jesus would, getting to know them and showing them that even if we're only here for a short time that we really do care about their lives and what they have to say.
We've shared a lot about how the Lord called each of us to the Race and feeling that there was something more out there for us than a 9-5 job, about the incredible ways that we've seen God move while we've been abroad, and how it was worth it to sacrifice a year with our family and friends to serve Him. I've been praying and will continue to pray that, even if it's only into one life or into one heart, that somehow Jesus used us to shine light this month here in Kiev. Pray with me 🙂
