Daniel and the Tortillas

One of our many shopping blunders!

An innocent little bag of tortillas?

I think not! Paul Bunyan's coming to town and he's eating with us!

Comments

Freedom in losing

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 matc...

Anya’s operation “The whole story”

Brace yourselves: This blog is 3309 words long. Honestly, I cut a lot of information out and simplified it so much to keep it short. But the story of Anya’s operation is a monster and I wanted to tell it start to finish so that you have one place to come learn about Anya and what she’s been through these past months, as well as what it has taught us about the lives of orphans here. The core problem: Our helplessness to help Anya A few weeks ago a friend from the states wrote me a few emails asking about Anya’s situation. At that point Anya had been in the hospital for almost four weeks … waiting. Her operation was first scheduled for the day after she was checked in, but it kept getting pushed back again and again. It was incredibly frustrating, mainly because no one in Kiev had the authority to check her out of the hospital, and so she had to stay there for four weeks..four very boring weeks. I would have gone crazy. Normally, the par...

Tevye the Milkman's Museum

Tevye is the main character from Fiddler on the Roof and he’s based on a guy who lived not far from Kiev. For a while Doug has been trying to put together a group of people to visit a little museum that is dedicated to him near Boyarka (and when I say "a while," I mean for about 9 years). We heard it wasn't really a museum, just a room set up with some displays and so we weren't expecting much, but we thought, “Hey, when in Ukraine…” So, about 15 Americans, mostly missionaries and teachers, hopped in a few vans on Saturday and took a little trip out of the city. After getting lost a few times, we finally arrived at the public school where the museum is located. Imagine our surprise when we walked into the building to find about 30 kids dressed up in traditional Ukrainian clothing! Once all the Americans were inside, the group started singing us a welcome song! You can watch it below; sorry it’s a little shaky, I was just trying to get the...

The Voices of Ukrainians

Search This Blog