To follow up on our orphanage soccer tournament that took place in April, I was part of a team that took about 60 orphan boys camping for a week. We took 10 kids from 6 orphanages to just outside a small village a few hours north of Odessa. It was one of those villages where when you turn off the main highway, the only traffic you see is a horse & wagon, the occasional 1960’s Soviet car that looks like it’s held together by rubber bands, and old bicycles. It was a unique, ambitious endeavor, something I’m not sure I would have attempted, but thankfully I was not in charge! My good friend Slavic directed it, and I really admire the faith & breadth of his ministry vision.
The kids chopped firewood (no limbs were lost), built rafts for relays, had outdoor survival lessons, had slip & slide and diving contests, a soccer tournament, Bible lessons, paintball with slingshots, and various team quests. Each orphanage had a staff member also there for the week to observe, but most of them were cordial and complimentary. In many ways a week wasn't long enough to create the atmosphere we wanted... it took time to break down the “us vs. the world” mentality that each orphanage had. They were just starting to pray for the first time in their lives and join in the praise songs we sang each night. In other ways however, a week was certainly long enough... my mind was shot from always straining to understand the Russian or Ukrainian that was spoken. The conditions were rustic… we dug our toilets, our only "shower" was a stagnant, muddy, mosquito-infested pond, and we were served hot buckwheat, soup and tea every day in humid 95 degree weather.... but not too bad.
I was in charge of a daily 3-hour sports session, which for these boys meant soccer. Here you don't do sports or hobbies for fun, you take them very seriously, especially soccer. These boys play with such anger and such a propensity to argue that it caught me a little off-guard, even though I'm well aware of that trait in Ukrainian culture. I was the lone ref, & to try to curb these tendencies, the first day I told the kids that for swearing I would award a penalty to the other team. Bad idea... I know some Russian swear words but Russian has so many you can say whole sentences just by cursing. I awarded 3 penalties but all I really did was give the kids another reason to argue with me as they ran up to me claiming someone said this or that. Since the kids often spoke Surgic (Ukrainian-Russian mix) I felt even more tentative with my Russian than usual. So by the end of the day the only factor uniting the kids was mutual disgust with the decision to allow the only American in the camp to be the soccer official. It can be a yell or be yelled at culture. So the next day I abolished the penalty experiment, sat several kids for arguing with me, and made myself get comfortable with grabbing kids arms & speaking very forcefully to them in Russian, even if my grammar was off. Things improved after that and the soccer ended up being a success.Although it was a challenging week, by the end the boys' demeanor had visibly softened, and some said it was the best week of their lives. It was rewarding to see them enjoy themselves so much, and difficult to say goodbye. We pray for open doors into these orphanages as a result of this camp!
