The Voices of Ukrainians

At the beginning of the year, I wrote a story about gift-giving at the orphanage and why I was more and more opposed to it based on the negative impacts. A lady from the US wrote me asking my take on Operation Christmas Child in this situation, because the Operation Christmas child boxes are only supposed to be given out by national groups who have a relationship with the recipients of the boxes. I was mulling this issue even before she wrote. Spending two years away from the States and then being there for four months makes things stand out a bit more starkly, and I think the materialism of Americans stood out more than anything else to me. This past year, though, God has been teaching me quite a bit. My answer is over 2,500 words, but it’s a complicated issue. We Americans always want to give some thing . We did presentations at 24+churches during our furlough last year, and we shared our most pressing need: financial assistance. We need people to partner with Children’s Hope Ukraine...

During our Easter retreat with our church, some of the ladies in our church told me I was like the churches grandpa. Everyone loved, me especially the kids and it was clear that I love them.    I was a little disconcerted that someone would compare me to a grandpa already, but kinda flattered by what they meant.     But then one of the ladies said, “But you never discipline. You should.”   It’s true, I have done almost no disciplining in my time here in Ukraine, but from where I stand, that’s with good reason.   At the orphanage, I’m just one of the group of people who visits once a week.   The director doesn’t even allow us to visit during school hours, so obviously we aren’t people with any authority at the orphanage.   At church and a lot of other situations, I just try to help where I can and stay out of the way the rest of the time.   I believe that discipline should be very intentional, and if you can’t have a discussion with a k...

We just made videos about different aspects of Children's Hope Ukraine.  And in the last video,  the American part of our team answers three basic questions.   What do we do in Ukraine?   What is it like to live in Ukraine?   How has your life in Ukraine helped you learn to trust God more?              

While we were producing these videos, Tanya, the house mom at LifeBoat, was in the hospital with some minor complications leading up to the birth of her second biological son, and so I simply narrated a video with pictures about their home, telling the story of how they took guardianship of their first two kids and worked towards getting their home complete so that they could bring in more children.

We just made a series of videos about Children's Hope Ukraine.  Hopefully later this week it will be up on www.childrenshopeukraine.org , but for now you can watch the first video here.  If you would like to use these videos in your church or small group, etc. please let me know and I can get you all of the videos.  Enjoy.

Three weeks ago at church, Masha sat next to me.   Masha is ten, has Downs Syndrome and is a fantastic hugger.  She just loves hugging.  So I try to always stop and hug her back.  During the service, she came in and sat between me and her dad, for a while she loved on her dad and then she leaned her head on my shoulder, so I leaned my head over onto hers, and she looked up at me with this big smile.  She reached around and gave me a shoulder hug, and then patted my head, and then rubbed my back for a few minutes.  I didn’t move the entire time because it just felt so good.  It was just simple, innocent affection, and it sent tingles up my spine.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about you need more hugs and back scratches. Human contact is so important.  That’s why I try and hug the kids when we go up to the orphanage.  These are just a few stories of some of the hugs I’ve given and gotten this past month, and why hugs are so imp...

Janna and I do one on one English lessons with Marina and Tanya respectively.  We try to do two one-hour lessons a week except for when we aren’t in town. If the girls focus and know their material the lessons would be about 30 minutes. Two weeks ago, we had a really rough lesson.  Tanya stalled for twenty minutes before storming and sitting down sullenly with her head lowered.  She moped the entire time and the whole lesson she didn’t raise her head.  The lesson took three times longer than it should have and in the end I just gave up and let her go before we finished what I had planned for us.  Marina spent the whole lesson with Janna complaining that there was too much work (The lessons that Janna prepares for Marina are always 1 page long).  Janna has been trying to get Marina to master her pronouns and 8 verbs.  This is over the course of almost 20 lessons.  Neither girl had done their homework.  They never have. The next day Janna and...