The Voices of Ukrainians

Janna and I live only about 5 miles from where most of the violence is taking place, but when we walk to the neighborhood grocery store, you can easily forget that we live in a country in turmoil because everything is going along just like normal.  At church, we’ve spent a lot of time praying about recent events, and about the future of Ukraine.  I can see the concern on everyone’s faces.  But on the other hand, last week when we went to the orphanage, not a single kid or teacher asked about events in Kyiv.  People write us everyday wondering if we are ok, if we are safe, when we are planning on evacuating the country.  But Tuesday night we went over to Second Chance and did English lessons with the girls, ate lasagna and played games.  Life is going along like normal, except that we check the Kyiv Post more regularly than usual.  At least for now, we aren’t in any danger.  But even if things get worse, I don’t want to leave, I want to keep worki...

Please continue to pray for Ukraine as the protests are still going on. At first they were peaceful, but they are turning a little more violent. Its hard to follow all the news, but it seems like 5 people were killed during a clash between protestors and police. This makes my heart heavy. A picture we took last week.

Christmas break ended this Monday (the 13th) for the kids at the orphanage.  Originally, our plan was to  go up on Wednesday and give out our gifts of photo albums, flashlights and some candy.  But at the last minute we changed our plans.  We are going to wait to give out the presents. ******** The week before all the kids came back, I went up to Komarivka with a few friends.  It was still the holiday so there were only about 25-30 kids there.  It was a great time to reconnect with some of the kids that I had missed so much while we were in the US.  Near the end of the day, a youth group came up from a church in Kiev.  They were putting on a Christmas program for the kids.  This program consisted of a few puppet songs (Mom and Dad trained me how to do puppets, so that part was a bit painful to watch because they weren’t very good, but this is beside the point), a little play about an angel finding her way to the stable where Jesus was born...

Hey Friends, After being in the States for 4 months, we're back in Ukraine! We are so excited about this! First, however, we wanted to take a moment and apologize for not keeping the blog updated. We got locked out. Here's the story: many moons ago, blogger asked us if we wanted to further secure our blog. We had the option to have blogger "send a text" if they noticed any suspicious log-in attempts. We thought "sure, that's sounds good because with all the crazies out there, and hackers and stuff, you can't be too safe." So we did that, and then many months later, we arrived in the States and tried to log into our blog account. A box came up and said "you are logging in from new location. Click here so we can send you a text with a code."  The problem was, the text went to our Ukrainian phone, and we had not way to access it. I tried to get around it, but nothing worked. Not that I'm a computer genius or anything.  So, we're sorry...

As you may remember, Anya was able to leave the hospital and be home for the summer. She had a cast on her leg, but it was a light cast and she could walk.  Before we checked her out of the hospital, the doctor said to bring her back a month after she left, which would have been July 4th. If there's one thing we have learned about dealing with the medical system in Ukraine, its that you always call before you do anything. Sure enough, we called just before July 4th and the doctor was sick and wouldn't be back for awhile. We waited, then called again two weeks later. The doctor said to bring her on Monday, which was yesterday, and so we did. Though its frustrating dealing with this crazy system, I am glad this one time that the date got pushed back. The reason is because July 13th was Anya's birthday. It would have been a terrible way to celebrate turning 16. At least this way she was able to be with her family and friends, not some stuffy hospital. Since we didn't see A...

My second trip to South West Ukraine to help a family finish a children’s home for the orphans of Ukraine. The last time I was down in Chernivtsi helping Slavic work on their house, LifeBoat, I asked Slavic what his plans were for the roof.  He sheepishly told me he didn’t have any, he was just going to build the walls to a certain height and hope that every thing came together.  That night I called Janna and asked if it was ok for me to plan another trip so that I could build the roof for Slavic.  I recruited Petro to come with me again. He, like most kids who graduate from the orphanage system, has had a really hard time finding a job, even though he’s a hard worker.  I also got Vova and Dima to come with me.  They are both college students but don’t have any summer work.  They live in a transition home for kids from the orphanage here in Kiev, and their house “mom” told me that it would be a big help to her if I could take any of her boys to help me....

This past Christmas, we gave out photo albums of all the kids in the orphanage in Komarivka.  It took a lot of time to sort through photos for 100 kids, but we did it, and a bunch of the albums had 25 pictures (that was the max).  A lot of people we told us that this was a really good gift, because most of these kids never get any pictures of themselves.  . Sasha, Zhenya and Alina right after they got their photo albums. But something happened with the pictures that we didn’t expect. A couple of weeks ago, Janna had the kids help her make a “We miss you” card for Andre.  Andre used to visit the orphanage with us every week, but now he is working with a different ministry north of Kiev.  A few of the kids really miss him.  While we were working on the card, Artyom brought us a picture of himself that we had given him for Christmas, so that we could give it to Andre.  And he asked us if Andre could send him a picture in return.  Vita showing me ...