Here's some info about our team here in Ukraine and how they tie into the Smile House. For those of you who don't know, the Smile House is a future transition home for orphans graduating the state-run orphan system. It has three floors plus a full size basement. In other words, its massive!
This is our team! The back row is the Stoddard Family. Doug (remember the unicycler of Ukraine? That's him!) is our director. His wife, Suzie, is a 2nd grade teacher at Kyiv Christian Acadamy (KCA), a school for missionary kids. Below is a picture of Doug and Suzie's room!
They have four kids, but only two are living in Ukraine right now. Suzie is a wonderful cook and pictured below is her future kitchen! Though Ukrainians have done must of the labor in this room so far, I did get on my hands and knees and scrubbed the floor....twice! This room has the most work to do right now.
Please refer to the picture of the team above. You'll see Benjamin in the middle back row. He's a hearty lad of 16 and likes soccer, goes to school at KCA, and has a brown and orange room. The work we did to finish this room includes prep and painting (anyone who's painted knows prep takes just as long if not longer than painting), laying the floor, installing baseboard (not quite done), hanging the door, and cleaning the windows (hours of scrubbing and scraping and windex)!
Megan is the youngest and only daughter of the Stoddard's. She's shy, also goes to school at KCA, and likes lime green and teal! The work we did in this room is the same list as above for Ben's room! So beautiful!
In the lower left corner is Meisha. While not with Manna Worldwide, she is still a part of our team! She moved here just a few weeks after us and plans to work with orphans in Komorivka (the orphanage Doug has a relationship with). Right now she is in language school....which is loads of fun!
That's our team! We are working as fast as we can on Smile House! Please pray everything will go smoothly so we can keep moving forward!
Yay Smile House! This building started as a dental clinic (hence the name), but for certain reasons that ministry could not continue as planned and Manna Worldwide came into possession of the building in 2009. The 3rd floor has two apartments: one large apartment for the Stoddard's, as Doug is the overseer of the project, and one small studio for orphans in the last transition into independent living. We are planning to live there temporarily while we finish the rest of the building.
The next picture is the Stoddard's living room! It is a lovely room with many windows (that Lexi and I got to clean) and it has a great view of some fields and trees. Daniel laid the floor (and in fact has laid all the flooring in this apt.), and we both painted.
This next picture is Doug's office, also known as the very first completed room!!!! It just needs a light fixture! This room has a funny smell to it for some reason that we can't figure out. It's not a bad smell; it's just wierd.
Not pictured: the laundry room and bathrooms. They are all painted pink and I didn't think you would like to see them.
Quick side note, our team is hilarious! We have fun together! We laugh a lot! We're planning to dig a tunnel to Poland! We smile and joke around! And we're all different heights!
This is our friend and teammate Lexi. She recieved the Fellowship Award at Dartmouth and just came over to Ukraine for the next nine months. She has been here before and plans to continue serving at the orphanage and village of Komorivka.
That's our team! We are working as fast as we can on Smile House! Please pray everything will go smoothly so we can keep moving forward!
Love the colors - house is looking so good! AH
ReplyDelete