Christmas and Family

December 1st. Time to think about the holidays....though I must confess we've already been listening to Christmas music and put up our decorations. Today, I changed the month on our calenders. As I flipped the calendar, I saw all the wonderful photos of our families at Christmas. I couldn't help but look at them longer and my heart just ached to be able to be with family for Christmas. I have truly been blessed with two families: My immediate and my in-law's. We have so many good memories together and there is a sense of peace just being able to "be" together. My 12 neices and nephews are growing up way too fast and I feel that I am missing out. I want Esther to be able to play with her cousins, grandparents, aunties, and uncles. And this year 2 of my nephews, who were adopted from Ghana this summer, will be having their 1st Christmas with my family. As I was contemplating this and longing for my family, thinking it was unfair that I couldn't be with them, I could almost sense God saying, "and what family do these orphans have to spend the holidays with?" I was convicted...here, I have a loving family and my parents are even coming out to visit us after Christmas and these orphans have no one. Most of them have never had anyone. I remembered a conversation that Gabe recently had with a 13yr old oprhan boy. He was talking about how he had a bad day and he just wanted to leave the orphanage. He just wanted to go home. Gabe asked when he had been home last, and he replied, "4 years ago." I realized that I need to be thankful for what I do have instead of focusing on what I am missing. Even though we can't be there for Christmas, I am thankful that my 2 nephews will be able to celebrate the holidays with family, and not alone. I pray that we can love the orphans  we will be with during these holidays like family.

Hiking in the Crimea

Recently I got to be part of a group that took 16 teen orphans camping in the Crimean mountains. Almost nothing went as planned… the group leader didn’t show up, train tickets were purchased for the wrong day to the wrong city, a different orphanage came, and the group was co-ed instead of just boys… yet it’s hard to see how it could have gone better. The orphanage that came was the same one I helped at the soccer tournament in April, and also one of the groups at our summer camp, so I already knew some of the kids.

Our 12 hour train ride began at midnight so I thought I’d be able to sleep. That was wishful thinking however, since the kids were so excited and chattered non-stop. Upon our arrival we met a couple local believers who proved to be excellent guides (I think that part actually was planned), drove for a while on some remote roads and then started hiking. One of the places we came to was an unfinished, Cold-War era fortification built into the side of a hill. It was supposed to be a secret front-line form of defense in case of a USA attack. As the lone American in the group I heard a few good-natured “If I show you this I have to kill you” jokes. One counselor told me very seriously, “Only 3 can know about this place: you, me... and facebook.” There was also a profound moment as we walked up to the fort and considered the enormous amount of money and labor spent in hauling up tons of cement and heavy equipment, only for the funding to run out and the Soviet Union to dissolve. A counselor quoted Psalm 127:1, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” There was a wonderful sense of irony as I thought about this Scripture, so appropriately quoted at the ruins of a site supposed to represent the power of a regime so hostile to the Gospel. Empires rise and fall but God’s Word remains.

As I talked with the kids I got more of a sense of what their lives are like. Their orphanage is in a small village, from which most of them have never travelled far. It only goes up to 9th grade, so at age 15 they are on their own. They spoke of their ever-present boredom but also of the fear of leaving the only place they know. There were numerous chances to talk about faith, and I felt a confidence in my Russian to share about Christ that could only have come from the Holy Spirit. When it was time to say goodbye, a 15 year old girl named Nadia broke down in tears. “Thank you for taking us on this trip. It was the most fun I’ve had in my life and I will never forget it. I miss you already and will pray to God that you all can come and visit us soon.”



Nadia (on the left)









The Heart of a Child

“Do you love your wife?” I started to laugh before I realized that the little girl who asked me the question was serious. I was walking her & her brothers home from a center for at-risk children. “Of course I love my wife,” I replied. She continued to walk pensively beside me, absent-mindedly swinging my hand. “Do you swear and yell at your daughter?” “No,” I answered. I could only wonder what she has experienced in her 6 years that would make her ask these questions. She said nothing more but when we got to her street she gave me a hug & flashed an adorable smile that was missing her two front teeth. Times like these are what keep me coming back to this center to love on these kids.


Another one of my favorite times is at our church orphanage during group prayers. With 12 kids (ages 5-13) it can get long and a little chaotic, as inevitably some of the older boys will feel the need to pinch, kick, or roll their knuckles across the spine of one of the younger kids. But in spite of the length, the sore knees, the squirming, each kid prays their heart out. They fight for the places next to us. Usually the two next to us have their arms around us, and the two next to them are holding our hands. Without fail they all thank God that we came to see them & pray that we will come again soon. They ask God to help them be obedient during the Bible story and craft times. One boy always prays for his mother to go to church and know God although, to our knowledge, she has no involvement in his life. I asked him if she ever visited and he replied no, because she lives too far away. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the village where she lives is only 10 minutes away. But his sincerity in constantly praying for a mother who gave him up and has nothing to do with him always impacts us. I pray we also have hearts like this boy, free of bitterness and full of compassion.

The Foolishness of God

I’ve been reading 1 Corinthians 1 and much of this passage is a contrast between the wisdom of this world, and, as Paul refers to it, the foolishness of God. From verse 18 to the end of the chapter, the word foolishness is mentioned 6 times, and the word wisdom or wise is mentioned 10 times. That phrase seems a little heretical when I first read it, but Paul explains in 1 Cor. 1:25 that “The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” I am realizing this contrast calls for a re-evaluation of what I consider to be wise.


During our first year here, the predominant feeling we experienced was stress. We were always tense, waiting to get yelled at for some cultural infraction or misunderstanding. Whether at the store, post office, or on the street we would constantly be straining to understand everything and inwardly bracing ourselves for a backlash when we didn’t.

There is a hostility and anger that often lurks just beneath the surface in people here, and it is all too easy to draw it out. It’s understandable given what many of these people have lived through, but it takes some getting used to. That anxiety is still present, but as our language & cultural awareness improve it is diminishing.

Now the main emotion I find myself experiencing is foolishness. Our circle of friends is expanding, but we are always very aware that we are foreigners and we don’t fit in. What seemed like such a worthy endeavor on one side of the Atlantic often doesn’t feel so noble over here. I feel foolish when I try to explain to some Americans why we moved here, when obviously there are also orphans in America and we could probably serve more effectively in our own country. I feel foolish when I explain to incredulous Ukrainians why we left a nation many of them wish they could move to. I feel foolish when I think how naïve I was in underestimating the difficulty of establishing a meaningful ministry here.

The reasons that make me feel foolish, however, also make me depend on the Lord to a much greater degree than I otherwise would. I have few words of wisdom to offer to the kids we work with…. my main contribution this week was teaching a 12 year old boy how to tie his shoes. Yet when we left to play outside and he held my hand as a child much younger would do, it reminded me that God doesn’t need some special talent or skill from us in order to accomplish His work. As 1 Corinthians 1:27-29 says, “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things that are mighty…. That no flesh should glory in His presence.” What seems to be foolish to us might have a much greater purpose in our lives.

Camping

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!



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!