The Voices of Ukrainians

The last day of our summer camp, I told the kids about my first tennis game in high school.   It was a game that skill-wise I should have won, but I was so nervous and afraid of messing up that I totally blew the game.   It was only after I was one game away from losing the match that I relaxed and just played, after all, in my mind I had already lost, there was no stress.    And then I started winning.   But after winning four games in a row, I thought, “Wow, I might actually win this game.”   Then the stress returned … and I lost.   I focused on that time in the game where I had pretty much lost, but the game just wasn’t over yet.   There was an awesome freedom that comes when you know you’ve lost and you just get to play.   You can experiment, and if you mess up; who cares you’ve already lost.   If you do good, it feels good and you can enjoy it without worrying if it’s good enough.   Life is a lot like that tennis match.   I have spent a lot of my life thinking to myself,

Wanna know the kids who live in a transition home?  This is the first of two videos about Safe Haven and the kids who live there and have lived there.  We are so honored to be a part of this ministry.  Enjoy!   To help support Safe Haven you can click here .

Wanna know what our camps are like.  Check out our new video.   Let me know if you'd like to use these videos in your church, VBS or small group.  New video about Safe Haven coming this month.

We made a video about our ministry for our home church in Durango and then we were able to Skype into the service.  I had a few people request that I post the video, so I am doing that here.

Howdy! I just wanted to share some more pictures from our wild west cowboy party. Here they are!  These are Safe Haven and Second Chance families with our American team.    

Last night, we skyped in with our home church.  They had asked us to make a video sermon about faith and our ministry, and then we skyped with them and had a little question and answer time.  We had talked with a few people about doing this before, but this was the first time that we had actually done it.  It was really cool. But unless you are in the zone, its easy for questions to catch you off guard.  This is what happened last night when Kinzi (spelling?) asked us what our greatest fears were and how did we overcome them.  Now that I've had a chance to think about the question, I decided that I would answer it here, and if Kinzi happens to read this, that would be great. I've been blessed that my entire life, seems to have been preparing me for my life here in Ukraine, except for that fact that I didn't study Russian in high school (which is nuts because I was one of the very few kids who actually had the opportunity to study Russian, but noooo I had to study French w

This post is late, but I wanted to share it anyway. Several weeks ago, just after I got back from the States, we invited the family at Second Chance over for a special Christmas dinner. We wanted to treat them to an American-style holiday complete with food, Christmas music, pretty decorations, and of course presents and stockings. For dinner we had chicken broccoli alfredo with a fresh garden salad and white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies for dessert, accompanied by hot chocolate and Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory toffee.  It was rather splendid. Here are the pictures: Katya, Marina, Ira, Janna Kolya, Katya, Ira, Janna Nose picker one and two Digging for gold Katya, Ira, Halya, and baby David Knee glasses old grandpas "back in my day, we walked fifteen miles to school barefoot...."     Thanks Ross family for sending the glasses. We didn't have very much fun with them, as you can see from the pictures, but maybe next ti

2014 highs Fall retreat             Fall retreat started with a really big disappointment and ended up being one of the best times that we’ve ever had with some of the kids who live in the orphanage.   The plan was that we would start out the week with the older kids, and this would let us get to know them better, and would let Kolya and Halya get to know them better so that they would have a better feel for who they should invite to live in Second Chance after the kids finish ninth grade.   The second part of the week we planned to spend in the orphanage doing a program for all the kids who don’t have anywhere to go.   Leading up to the retreat, the director of the orphanage had been telling us that the kids who are wards of the state would be able to go to the camp without any problem.   He would just give permission.   We checked with him about this for almost two months,   we told him that we could do the camp officially through the central office just in case anything happe