Best Friends



Vanya & Kolya

A Prayerful and Emotional Goodbye

A Time to Say Goodbye

To help prepare Esther for an outing at our church’s small orphanage, every time we go we tell her that we are going to see Kolya. We have only been helping out there for a couple months, but little Esther and Kolya have developed quite a friendship. He is an adorable, curly-haired boy who is also 2 years old and, along with his 4 year old brother Vanya, has been at the orphanage for almost a year. Every time Esther sees him she squeals in delight as he toddles over to her, and for weeks the only intelligible words in her prayers have been, “Mommy, Daya, Nemo (as in Finding Nemo), and Kolya." Of course, she did see the dark side of 2 year old boys with his constant pinching and hair pulling, but that did not seem to dampen their friendship. Kolya also melted our hearts by continually addressing us with the Russian words for uncle and aunt.


This week one of the orphanage workers took me aside and gave me some difficult news. It was one of those exchanges in Russian where I understood every word, but was sure I had missed the overall meaning of what she was saying. There had been a hearing where a judge ruled that the parents of Vanya and Kolya would now have custody over them. The boys were to be taken away the next day. We know little about the parents except that they dropped their sons off at the orphanage nearly a year ago, and we pray it is a good sign that they have requested custody of their sons. We are obviously saddened by the realization that we will likely never see these boys again. What will we tell Esther now as we get ready to go to the orphanage? The real heartbreak though, is for the Ukrainian couple and 3 women workers who lovingly cared for these boys every day. That next morning we watched the tears roll down their faces as they prayed for the 2 boys and hugged them for the last time. These goodbyes happen when you work with at-risk and abandoned children, but they are never something you get used to. So farewell little Kolya, we entrust you to God’s protective and tender care. We did not know you long and you will not remember us, but you made an impact on our family!

Stuck in the Mud

                                                                      

                                                                        

My parents arrived for a visit two days ago, and since we recently got a car, we decided to take them for a fun, relaxing outing.  Five miles away from us there is a liman, a large, shallow body of salt water.  Esther loves to play in it & it's remote enough so that it's usually not crowded, and our dog can run around without a leash.  I drove the car out on to the beach & everyone got out.  Soon the decision was made to move down to a place where the water was more accessible.  The ground felt firm enough, & our car is 4 wheel drive, so I thought I'd be fine driving, but very soon I got very stuck.  The car sunk up to the axle in mud so thick the wheels could not spin.  Dad & I got to work jacking up the car and looking for trash, branches, etc. to put under the wheels.  When we walked one step the ground was firm, but then on the next step we would sink in mud up to our knees.
      There were not many people there, but our plight started to attract some attention.  A man from Siberia, in town for a motorcycle festival, asked for help from the owner of a jeep a few hundred yards down the beach.  We hooked up a tow rope but the car didn't budge.  Fortunately the owner of the car was a local who spoke English since he had worked on a cruise ship from Los Angeles to Hawaii.  He remembered a small sign under some branches on one of the dirt roads to the beach that had the number of a tow truck.  We found the sign and he made the call (I barely knew how to describe where we were in English, let alone Russian). 
              Meanwhile, it was clear we were not moving any time soon so Sarah, my mom, Esther, and our dog had to walk the 5 miles home.  Ordinarily it would be a pretty walk, but with a toddler in the heat of the day, a tad long.  As it turned out, Esther did fine but our poor little dog nearly passed out from heat exhaustion.  He found a mud puddle by the road, laid down in it and refused to move for about 10 minutes.  After 2 hours they made it home. 
             The tow truck was still nowhere in sight, but a man rode up on his bike and took our situation personally.  He covered himself in mud trying jack the car up higher and find ways to give the tires traction.  It was a hopeless cause, but I appreciated his zeal.  He told us the few English words he knew (mostly swear words), and said, "Welcome of Ukraine!"  As we talked we found out that he is a retired bodyguard who lives on $120 a month, loves to talk and is always up for a challenge.  Finally the tow truck arrived, hooked us up to their winch and pulled the car about 20 feet before it was finally free.  In the process however, the tow truck had sunk just enough so that now it was stuck.  I tried to tow him, but that predictably got nowhere.  The driver made a phone call, charged me $50 for the tow and told me it would cost him $100 to get his truck towed.  After 5 hours, I was finally free but he had at least another hour to wait.  "It's the liman, what can you do," he said with a shrug and a smile.  "At least I can work on my tan!" 

Crafts and Banana Bread

Over the past month we've been able to get involved with our church's orphanage. They have 10 kids ranging from ages 2-12. We have quickly grown to love these orphans! Could I adopt them all?!  I guess that's why we moved over here. We always receive many hugs. We have been visiting twice a week where Gabe will tell a Bible story and I will help them with a craft. They love making crafts and will either hang them up in their rooms or will give them to me or Esther. One time, I brought blank puzzles that they could draw on and they all ended up making them for me because it was my birthday. The other day I brought them banana bread muffins, which they have never had before. The oldest boy just kept looking at the muffin as if trying to figure out what it really was. One boy in his prayer thanked God that I made banana bread for them and that it tasted good. They liked it so much that they want me to teach them how to make it! So I translated the recipe in Russian with my language teacher and tomorrow I am taking the two girls with me to buy the ingredients and make it. Hopefully it will turn out well, it should be a fun time.



 







Soccer Competition

Recently we had the opportunity to help put on a soccer tournament for orphanages in the Odessa area. Eight orphanages participated (some travelling as far as 3 hours), and the winner now gets to travel to Kyiv to represent our region in a national competition. It was thrilling to see so many people work together to give these young boys a chance to play organized sports. I enjoyed being on a team that visited 4 of these orphanages in preparation for this event. It was very interesting to mingle with the kids in their own setting & get a glimpse of what life is like for them. Sometimes on these excursions, after we got off the main highway the only traffic we saw was a lone bicycle or horse & wagon. But these kids proved you don’t have to live in the big city to play soccer well… on one occasion they used the muddy conditions of their “home field” advantage to great effect as they thrashed us adults!

For the actual tournament I was assigned to one of the teams to assist them with any questions they had. I was nervous with my language and copied down any soccer terms I could think of to carry in my pocket. When this team realized I was their coordinator, their expression seemed to convey that they were getting a raw deal. For the first half of the day they said very little to me, but by the end of the day they were asking me every question they could think of, from why an American would come to Ukraine when half of Ukraine is trying to get to America, to how many movie stars I’ve met (since Quincy is a popular retreat destination for Hollywood). When one of the boys found out we want to work in orphanages, he got very excited and asked which orphanages. I replied that we’ll go anywhere where the doors are open. His eyes got very big & and said the doors to his orphanage are always open! Now if we can just get the orphanage director to feel the same way….

Success or Surrender

Living in America often gave us the illusion that we controlled more of our life than we really did. That illusion is shattered here, however. In 2 Corinthians 2:1-5, Paul writes about a philosophy of missions and ministry that runs counter to our natural desires… “When I came to you, I did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”

         This is not a way of life that I naturally embrace. I want to come to the people here with excellence of speech and wisdom. I do not want to be here in weakness, fear, or trembling. I want to impress others with persuasive words of human wisdom, and my default mode is to place faith in my own abilities instead of in the power of God. However, I am gradually (and sometimes painfully) realizing that success here will depend far more on faithful and humble dependence than on any talent or ability I may think I have. When our limitations seem overpowering, and our presence here so insignificant, God is at work shifting the center of our confidence from what we think we can control to Him.