Coureetza! : a mean name and a yummy casserole

The last two weeks have been filled with daily language studies, teaching English lessons, family nights with the orphans, gardening, learning to get around on our own, playing with the neighborhood kids, community prayer and worship, a small neighborhood improvement project, and several key moments with some of the orphans Andy and Jaimee have been discipling.

Amanda and I notice our Russian skills improving from week to week, which is encouraging, but it hasn’t come without tremendous effort! Russian is a difficult language, with very few similarities to the English language. Thank you for your prayers in that regard, because they are truly helping. On the same hand, we are also improvising in our understanding of the English language as a result of teaching it. Don’t laugh but for example, this week I learned that the article “an” precedes nouns that start with a vowel, “an apple.” And “a” precedes nouns that start with a consonant, “a cup.” I always knew one sounded right, but I didn’t know why!

Last week, Amanda and I both ventured further into town by ourselves than we ever had before. I went to the market on my moped and bought minutes for my cell-phone and a rake (for a neighborhood project) using all Russian. I was able to communicate on my own and was only insulted one time (apparently I offended a Russian merchant because I didn’t buy his rake and he called me “coureetza,” which means “chicken”). Amanda went thrift store shopping with a couple new Ukrainian friends and rode the bus back on her own. It may not sound like that big of a deal, but we rarely used public transportation in suburban America, so it is a new experience for us, especially since we are still learning how to get around.

Probably the most exciting news revolves around progress with the youth-disciples. The other day, 18-year-old Vanya asked Jared if he had a job. Another boy, Andre replied back to him, “Vanya… he’s here.” Andre understood that they are our jobs; they’re why we’re in Ukraine! Shortly after that, Vanya had a great conversation with Andy and Jaimee, expressing his desire to start inviting orphans from the Dyetski Dom (Children’s House) to come to our Wednesday family night. He is finally starting to internalize the vision to see other orphans succeed in life, and he wants to be part of it! It’s so exciting to see the disciples start to desire to become leaders.

Also, we have been encouraging several of the youth to get jobs; without work, the kids have little to no money and we wonder where they get money to eat, and how often they do eat. Helping them find good jobs, and teaching them to be on time, save their money, and stick with it is the first step in helping them set goals for their lives. So, this week, they have been making significant progress! After a minimal amount of encouragement, Nastia had a job several days later. And with some more encouraging, Vanya made phone calls in our kitchen and was able to set-up four interviews for the next day. We’re also currently working on helping Andre make connections with some friends who own a restaurant, to see if he could work for them. He’s talented in that area and we would love to see him go to culinary school for a license to be a chef!

I have spent some of my spare time gardening and currently have two tomato plants, eight corn plants, and several heads of lettuce growing. I also began a small neighborhood improvement project. A small, fenced-in, soccer field in our apartment complex was overtaken by weeds and trash. In the last week I have pulled most of the weeds and picked up the trash. I hope to christen the field with a neighborhood game of “futbol,” and several of the neighbor kids have been already been asking me when we are going to play. “Kogda mwi siberayamsa egrat vfutbol?”

Amanda & Jaimee have been spending time figuring out how to cook everyday meals from scratch. Today they even had the opportunity to learn how to make a traditional Ukrainian dish from a friend, Tanya. She taught them how to make “bleenchicky,” a potato pancake-like food, which tastes excellent with sour cream. They also learned how to make a casserole with chicken (coureetza!), potatoes, dried apricots, prunes, onions, and an assortment of various spices.

We have been learning so much in the last couple of weeks and are really enjoying living here. Definitely one of the greatest blessings is having time to spend with our Father on a daily basis in community with Andy and Jaimee. Please let us know if you have any prayer requests. It is difficult to write all of you individually, but we sincerely do want to hear what has been going on in your life. You are not out of sight out of mind! We love you and can’t wait to hear from you!

English Teaching, Women's Day, and other fun stuff...

This last week has been so busy! We started the weekend with some friends our age, who invited us over for tea. Andy and Jaimee met them through local believers, and they are both professional interpreters. (It’s a blessing to have friends who speak English!) We ended up spending all evening with them, discussing theological issues, playing card games, and eating pizza. Of note, it was on our way to their apartment that we saw recycling in Ukraine for first time—there were containers constructed of chicken-wire on the sidewalks for depositing glass and plastic bottles (Yay!!).

Sunday, the 8th, was Women’s Day, and Jaimee and I woke up to flowers and chocolates from our wonderful husbands! Later, we participated in worship services with a local church, which all of our kids were eager to join us for. In fact, several of them called Andy about six times double checking that we were meeting them at McDonald’s so we could all walk to the worship service together. We’re so blessed that the kids have a desire to come with us on Sundays; they’ve never been asked to come, they just want to. In fact, on Wednesday night, Vanya told us that his goal is to feel like he feels during worship services all the time. While our kids are rough around the edges, they want to know God more personally and desire genuine relationships, they just don’t quite know how to obtain either. Even Nastya, who came to worship service this week with the distinct smell of booze on her breath, impatiently waits for us at McDonald’s every Sunday.

Monday is our Sabbath—we take the day to rest and be rejuvenated in the Lord. And since this Monday was the day observed for Women’s Day, Jaimee and I were invited to a ladies’ luncheon at the home of a local believer. This was my first introduction to “sala.” I saw this unusual looking dish on the table and asked our friend Tanya what it was. She replied with a laugh, “If I tell you, you won’t eat it!” She was right. “Sala” is seasoned pig fat, with the skin left on. I didn’t even try it—suddenly I realized the value of a kosher meal! Aside from the sala, the rest of the afternoon was lovely. These ladies are so great—they’re filled with JOY! Even with a huge language barrier, they’re more than happy to welcome me into their circle and laugh with me about my terrible Russian accent and their broken English. When there are no words, a smile and sign language will get you a long way!

Wednesday night we had our second family night of the year and Jared made it a big hit with a bilingual game of charades! It was actually a good way to help us with our Russian! How do you say “human contortionist?” We had an awesome time, and after all the craziness, got an opportunity to sit down with our four main disciples and talk with them about how they want to grow spiritually. (One of our bilingual friends, Tanya, interpreted for us.) This conversation was a blessing, not only because Tanya was there to help, but also because we have been seeking the Lord about how to effectively help these kids grow in their relationship with God. They are all new believers, and they’re bombarded everyday with the temptations of sex, materialism, drugs, and alcohol. While they can’t be protected from everything and need healing in some huge ways, we believe they will grow in the freedom of Christ, and we are praying for the wisdom to help guide them there.

Finally, we had our first English lesson today, and it went great! We had three students today, and they all worked hard. Their desire to learn makes teaching that much easier! We’re taking an approach of submersion, meaning we’re trying to use as little Russian as possible to communicate. They did an awesome job, and by the end of the lesson we had them all pronouncing “th” like pros (The “th” sound doesn’t exist in Russian or Ukrainian). Andy & Jaimee had some ESL books & materials donated, so we’re using those to teach the kids. We even have workbooks for them to do homework! It feels good to be on the giving rather than receiving end of homework!

Watch Amanda teach English at the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd0kQGJB7G8

Thank you for reading our blogs and for all your previous feedback! We value your prayers and encouragement. Please seek the Lord with us for wisdom on how to help the kids grow spiritually. The language barrier limits our conversation, but we know that God is bigger than our Russian vocabulary! “May the grace of our Lord Jesus, the Liberating King, infuse your life with His Spirit, brothers and sisters!” (Galatians 6:18)

If you want to watch more videos of life in Ukraine, you can visit our YouTube page at the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/user/TeamWhite

Our First Family Night

Wednesdays nights here in Sevastopol are family nights. By 5:30 the first kid is shouting to us from outside the window, asking to be let in. They trickle in, and by 6 pm we have seven Ukrainian teenagers around our kitchen table scarfing down Jaimee's awesome spaghetti off of yellow plastic plates. I can't understand but a few words of what anyone's saying, but between a couple of people who speak a little Russian and a little English, we can all communicate well enough. Besides, who needs translators to tickle, to wrestle, to surf the internet, and to take silly pictures? Teens are teens no matter what country they live in!

From the moment Nastia walked in and threw her arms around Jaimee, then Andy, and then me, I fell in love with her. She is clearly one of the more troubled girls, and begs for attention through drinking, smoking, and the stories she tells. She is eager to learn English—every time someone says something in English she demands that Andy interprets for her. I am excited to develop a relationship with her, to begin teaching her English, and to show her the grace and freedom of her heavenly Father.

One of the boys, Vanya, seemed to take a special liking to Jared. Vanya’s accent is so thick that even other Ukrainians have a hard time understanding him; in fact, he can barely say Jared’s name. But Vanya didn’t need anyone to understand his Russian to get Jared to wrestle with him! Some friendly punches and noogies are just what bonded Jared & Vanya last night. In fact, the 11 year old girl from across the hall, Anya, was excited to get in on the wrestling action too. She was jumping on Jared like she was a monkey in a tree!

Most importantly, as we watched Andy & Jaimee interact with the kids they’ve been discipling for the last 18 months, we realized how hungry the orphans are for family, for mothers and fathers, even for discipline. We’re here to hang out with them, to give them a safe and homey environment, to take them to the pharmacy to get cold medicine, to walk them to the bus stop, to be their family—to show them the love of Christ! Jared and I are eager to see the ways in which God has for us to minister to these kids. Also, the more we get to know them the more motivated we become to help Andy and Jaimee work on projects such as transitional housing, summer camps, and starting a youth center. Thank you for being a part of this journey we’re on to love the orphans of Ukraine! We need each of you, your prayers, and your encouragement more than ever!

In Sevastopol!

Well, we finally made it to Sevastopol, Ukraine and are loving it! The past week has been filled with lots of traveling, language learning, taxi cabs, marshrutkas, meeting new people, Ukrainian food, Ukrainian versions of American food, moped rides, apartment searching, jet lag, sleep, lots of laughter, and even more prayer! All of our travels went well, and we made it without any delays. We got lots of sleep on the flight from New York to Kiev, and our flight on the Ukrainian air carrier, AeroSvit, from Kiev to Simferopol was safer and smoother than we expected. We picked our baggage up from an outdoor baggage claim with its conveyor belt covered with snow, then crammed into a large van with Andy and Jaimee and a total of 8 large bags and 8 carrier-on bags.
The first two night in Ukraine we stayed in Simferopol, which is in the heart of the Crimean Peninsula, with Andy and Jaimee's good friend Tanya. Tanya lives in a soviet style house (one sink in the whole house, no dish washer, sporadic hot water, and no kitchen) with a spunky old babushka. We soon learned that sour cream (smyetana) is added to everything and that the local meal of choice is borsch. The borsch that Tanya made for us was quite delicious, and was made of potatoes, shredded cabbage, beet root, and an assortment of spices.
After staying in Simferopol for two nights we took another taxi-van to Sevastopol, where Andy and Jaimee operate their outreach to local orphans. We stayed for two nights in a decent apartment/hotel while looking for an apartment. After struggling to get the local apartment agency to give us more than one or two listings at a time, and after checking out several apartments that were not worth their price in Grivnas or American Dollars, God blessed us with a great apartment in a nice location. While it does not have the luxuries of a standard apartment in the United States it is spacious and clean. We have since been meeting the orphans Andy and Jaimee have "adopted," learning how to get around on the local public transportation system, learning Russian, catching up on sleep, getting used to the new food, and trying to understand the culture.
The City of Sevastopol is a tapestry of graffiti on every wall, cement telephone poles, Russian and Ukrainian Sailors, crazy taxi-cab drivers, colorful city markets, strolling vodka drinkers, national monuments, traffic circles, soviet style apartment buildings, and thousands of God's beautiful people walking the streets. We are so excited to be here. Our hearts are growing in the love of God, our understanding of the world is changing, our friendships are being strengthened, and we are excited about life. Being here has only increased our desire to learn Russian, and we are experiencing new things on a daily basis. We are looking forward to developing relationships with the orphans and beginning to implements and pursue ideas that will help provide hope for the 100,000 orphans of Ukraine!
Thank you everyone for your continued prayer and support! Please send us any prayer request you may have, post comments on our blog, and feel free to ask us about anything that may peak your curiosity about Ukraine! We will be posting more pictures and updates later this week - stay tuned!