The 1st Olympiad: Let the Games Begin!

In July we organized a two-day Olympic-themed program for the kids at their camp. Once again I must remind you that orphanages in Ukraine close for the summer and the kids go to camps spread across the country. There are ten kids from our orphanage that are at this particular camp, plus about 90 other kids all ranging from 5-16 years old. Camps here are generally unstructured, and so they love it when we visit them and bring things to do. Our team consisted of 13 people: Doug, Suzie, Suzie's mom who was visiting from the States, Benjamin and Megan, Lexi, Meisha, Patsy and Kristian who were two Americans from the building team, Maggie (an American that married a Ukrainian), Paulina (a translator), Artyom (more about him later), and another translator named Nadya. There is strength in numbers!

We left early and had lots of plans upon arrival. First we were going to divide the kids into countries. I had flag stickers to keep the kids organized, and then we were going to have kids run the Olympic torch and all the countries were going to do the epic march-in. Doug also wanted to share some Christian analogies. However, the weather had a different idea. As soon as we showed up, down came the rain, thwarting our plans for world domination...I mean, for the Opening Ceremonies. We had to scramble to improvise, and succeeded in getting the kids divided into teams but failed to do much else. Like many occasions at the orphanage, the scene erupted into pure chaos and pandemonium ensued. Fists flew, limbs were lost, and heads exploded, but all in all we managed to get the kids split into groups.

We had three different rotations lined up: Sports, crafts, and Bible discussion. The first day the crafts and Bible discussion group went as planned because they were inside or under shelter, but the sports rotation was crazy. We had planned to do a volleyball match, but since it was raining the orphanage staff wouldn't allow us to do that. Again, we had to improvise! We came up with the human knot (see picture below) and a few other games.

This group was super determined to untangle themselves. I just watched and captured the moment on camera. No knots for me!

Then someone remembered that we had jump ropes in the car, and so the "sports" rotation improved drastically. Some kids jumped by themselves, but other kids wanted to test their skills in our double dutch challenge (made with three jump ropes tied together).

Benjamin finally finds friends his own age to play with.

Seeing double? The twins both jump at the same time together in a shadowy duet of magic.

Benjamin and I did the sport rotation together, and so I can't really report on how the Bible discussion and craft stations went. From what I heard, though, the kids enjoyed the crafts and were engaged in the Bible study. Kristian, the young lady below, shared a testimony with the kids on the second day.

Kristian spending time with a little cutie pie. She was a huge asset to us, even though she only knew the language of love, not Russian or Ukrainian.

There is another camp nearby called "Chemist" that we have a connection with, and they let us stay there for the night. There weren't any campers at the time, and there also wasn't running water or electricity.

Here's a few members of our crew!

Here's our "running water."

and the toilet!

The next day the weather was much better, and so we did the Opening Ceremonies, some skits, and Doug shared a message about Christ. Then the kids divided up again and went to their stations. For sports, I was able to organize some races and relays, and then we played a game called "washing machine." The kids loved it!

The washing machine game. I'm not even going to try and explain it, but it was fun!

At some point during the second day, we had a special treat for the kids. One of the members of out team was Artyom, a Komarivka graduate that Doug has been working with. This young man has been on fire for God, and also happens to like rap. He wrote one about his experience at the orphanage and of Christ's love. He then performed this rap to a beat, and the kids loved it. We always find it difficult to engage the older kids, but when he started, they suddenly appeared out of nowhere. After he performed, I saw him engaged in conversation with several kids, and that was just so encouraging to us. He also shared his testimony at Bible discussion group on the first day (see picture below).

We ended our two-day program by doing the closing ceremony. We handed out medals to the winners of the races and gave out cookies that had flag toothpicks in them (brilliant)!

This is Suzie and I sneakily putting flags in the cookies behind the stage. It sort of worked, though some kids found us. They usually do. We just said that it was a secret and not to tell anyone. You can bet that last 30 seconds!

The last pictures are just of the kids. They are the reason why we're here, and they are so worth it. We loved going to the camp and look forward to many more in the future.