Skip to main content

Our TEAM and what we're doing!

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!
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. 
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!
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!
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!
 
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!
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 12, 2011 at 7:33 AM

    Love the colors - house is looking so good! AH

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Ukrainians act during missile strikes

     I have been in Ukraine during many air raid alerts and have been close enough to hear and feel a number of explosions (primarily Russian missile being shot out of the sky), but, strangely, I haven’t actually been around Ukrainians throughout the duration of an air raid until this past week.   I had gone to a small warehouse store where I buy nails for my framing gun.  In the middle of placing my order, everyone’s phones started dinging.  Kyiv was under an air raid alert.  The young man who was helping me just kept working on his computer, but his colleague immediately stood up, looking at her phone and started wondering out loud if we should go to a shelter or if we should stay put.  Within a few seconds another worker came in from outside, and a lady came down the stairs.  They were all on their phones.   “Ballistic missiles.”   said the man “… heading towards the Kyiv area.”  Said the woman who had just come d...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
1 comment
Read more

Anya’s Russian Dad

How war and propaganda have been affecting families across Ukraine, Russia and the world. On February 24 th , 2022, Anya, like millions of Ukrainians, was woken up at 5 o’clock in the morning by the sounds and reverberations of missiles striking in and around Kyiv (where she lived) and all over the country.  She spent that morning rounding up her very large family, including a 13 year old son who was at a sleepover more 30 minutes from their home.  Imagine being separated from one of your children in a situation like that.  They did get all of their family (18 people) together, but it was a lot of work and stress.  While getting everyone together Anya and her family had to pack up not knowing how long they would be gone.   Then, they joined millions of people on the road who were heading West.  It took them 3 days to make a trip that would typically take 7-9 hours.   As Anya sat in the car, she started thinking about her parents.  ...
Post a Comment
Read more