Who would have guessed that out of all the countries I would visit this year the one that would be the hardest to communicate in would be a European nation? Since we arrived here in Ukraine several weeks ago we have stumbled and blundered our way throught the language barrier proving, yet again, that a sense of humour is necessary to survive the World Race.
Our contacts last week were extremely good at feeding us sweets such as “Sask-a-shoon-guy” an incredibly good pastry filled with sweetened condensed milk. We never did master the art of pronouncing the name of the sweet much to the enjoyment of Marina and Vika our native Ukrainian hosts.
So far this month our team is constantly on the move. We spent last week in a smaller city in Eastern Ukraine teaching English, speaking in schools and at Bible studies through ‘Church Without Walls’. We had an amazing time and during our stay there we seen a lot of young people come to church and hear the gospel for the very first time. It was amazing to begin building relationships with the people there but our time was cut short as we moved to our present location here in Odessa.
Odessa is a bustling city, full of creaky buses, outdoor produce markets and flower sellers, with a rustic old charm about it. This week we are continuing our ministry to those who wish to learn English and are conducting nightly clubs at a church as well as lessons in schools. Our host, International Messengers, runs a school for Eastern Europeans who want to become missionaries so we’re in good company here.
At the end of this week our team will travel to a more remote village to continue our ministry with International Messengers there.
Europe has thrown us some surprises – like a complicated alphabet and hard to pronounce words – but it’s also tossed some very amazing people our way and when we leave here for our final country we will be leaving behind friends.
BUT THE RACE ISN’T OVER YET!
Thanks for reading and keep checking back here because there will be more blogs to come. (And hopefully some photos!)
