Blog Entries for October 8-12

So, I have either forgotten to post the entries or haven't had internets. Here are some entries from the past couple days, though. :D

Blog Entry for October 8, 2010

This week, we had a guy named Al Akimoff come and talk to us. He was phenomenal! I haven’t taken so many notes on a lecture for a really long time. I learned quite a lot. He has a super fun speaking style: tell a bunch of amazing, miraculous stories and then draw excellent conclusions (remind you of parables, hmm?) He has had many adventures and spoke of the crazy amazing outreaches of Brother Andrew and Corrie ten Boom.

But he and his wife Carolyn left today. They’re going to Latvia, I believe. They will be missed.

Since the conference, we also were hosting the DTS team from Ternopil, Ukraine, so our DTS had been doubled this and last week. Some left today and more are leaving tomorrow. They were a bunch of fun. Last night, Allison, from their team, and I lead worship. We had Marta on bass guitar and singing in Ukrainian and Russian and Senya was on the drums. We played for over an hour, and it was AMAZING. I lost my voice in the middle of it, though. It was weird. It has happened in youth group before, but I don’t know why. Maybe I was singing in a strange way that made my vocal chords rebel.

So, that was a fabulous experience. I learned a lot through that. I’m learning in other areas, too. Like, on Wednesday, we walked around our “island” and evangelized. I was pretty skeptical of the whole thing and didn’t feel very comfortable about walking up to people and telling them the gospel. It didn’t feel very personal and kind of seemed to be ineffective, especially since I had to be translated. But, it was good. Three people came to Christ. That was pretty cool, but I was still kind of wishing that it would have happened a little bit differently. I would rather we have an event and develop relationships rather than just have a brief ten minute conversation. I think it would be more effective and more helpful to people. I’m sure we’ll do stuff like that, but this time, I just kind of felt like I was out campaigning for another politician…only in a Jesus-y kind of way. But, yeah. I learned some stuff.

My group of three people only talked to three people while we were evangelizing. The first person was a girl in her late twenties, I’m guessing. She was agnostic and pretty postmodern in view. It was great. I wish I could have sat and talked to her for an hour or two, but I couldn’t. *needs to learn Russian* The second and third people we met were two babushkas (grandmas). The one was mostly silent while the other cried her eyes out and poured her heart out to us. She told us that her son had recently died and that she felt like she was alone. She also said that she new the entire gospel of Matthew by heart, but in the end, she was angry at God and didn’t really want to pray or anything. She let us pray and comfort her, though. And I promised to come visit her some time. (I think she lives pretty close to me. I’ll have to get the address translated.)

What I learned (and Mr. Akimoff said this, too) is that people need relationships. Just throwing religion in someone’s face is ridiculous. A relationship is what is needed anyway. Most people don’t connect with a random person who comes up to them with a pamphlet. More people are influenced by friends and people whom they trust. Those kind of relationships are very highly valued, and why shouldn’t it be a sort of evangelism? That’s how the Church works and that’s the whole essence of being a Christian anyway: having a relationship with God and loving Him and loving people.

So, yeah. Missions rant there. And now I’m ready for some sleep. There isn’t any heat in this apartment building quite yet, so I’m bundling up: tights, legwarmers, socks, tank top, giant t-shirt of doom, and a hoodie. All is happy, and today is Friday. I will sleep well AND sleep in. Yay! Six o’clock AM, I will NOT be seeing you today. HAH.

Blog Entry for October 9, 2010

Yay! Saturday! For breakfast I made scrambled eggs on bread and cheese. The bread, cheese, and eggs is a typical Ukrainian breakfast, only they aren’t quite familiar with this scrambled egg. Marsa (I’m still not sure how to spell her name) came up and pointed to my eggs and said, “Amerikanka?” She wanted American eggs, too.

So, now I’m listening to some Billy Joel and drinking some chai. (Not real chai, mind you. The Russian word for tea IS chai.) Today shall be relaxing, for sure.

Blog Entry for October 12, 2010

The apartment is quite crazy right now. We have all of the DTS girls except Ksenya and Jessica here to make supper for thirteen people. We invited our leaders to come over and have a meal with all of us girls. It’s quite interesting that we’re cooking here considering that we have a cutting board the size of a flip-flop and one dull knife. And along with the cheese grater and a couple pots, there’s not much more to offer by way of culinary utensils. Ah well. It’ll turn out fine.

We have a new speaker for the week. His name is Sergei something or other. Apparently he’s pretty famous around these parts. I don’t know, that’s just what I’m told. He does speak very well. He is pretty funny and has excellent things to say about having a relationship with God.

It’s warm today! Not short sleeved shirt weather of course. But I could walk around with only three shirts, tights and jeans and two pairs of socks! Heh…I’m not really being sarcastic. It is warmer, I promise. I didn’t have to wear leg warmers or my jacket! *nods* Things are looking up!—sort of. The awesome thing is that in four days they’ll turn our heat on in the apartment building. Woohoo!

I thought that maybe I’d show you some stuff that I did for my assignments this week and last week. Here are a couple pictures:

Last week we had to write a letter to God, and we had to be creative. Here’s what I made:

This week we had to answer a bunch of questions, and if we wanted we could do something that reflected what we learned from last week’s lectures. I just made a page of reminders:

Granted, it’s not the best thing or most original thing ever, but it is something, and I enjoyed doing it. :D

Blog Entry for October 2, 2010

We just got back from the YWAM Jubilee Celebration: a conference to celebrate the 50 years of YWAM. It was quite awesome. We went to a place called a sanatorium. It’s really hard to explain what a sanatorium is because we don’t have them in the US. But, basically it’s a camp with dorm-like buildings. There are swing-sets and playgrounds and a soccer field. Loren and Carol(?) Cunningham, the founders of YWAM spoke quite a bit, but we also got to hear from the YWAM base leaders from all over Eastern Europe. It was very exciting to hear what all is getting done in other nations. Mr. Cunningham also spoke about the future of YWAM. There was some awesome technological stuff that YWAM has. Apparently YWAM is on the same level as the US military when it comes to technology. Impressive, eh? He talked about this one video conferencing system that is specific to YWAM. Using this system, people from all over the world work together to make a movie. It could be filmed in the US, directed in Australia, and edited in South Africa. It’s really quite incredible.

So, everything was completely awesome, but most of us were exhausted. We had a hard time staying awake during some the long sessions, but it was all good.

The worship services were wonderful! The singers would alternate between Russian and English and the lyrics were in both languages. It reminded me of Costa Rica a bit, when we sang in both Spanish and English. It’s super cool when you can hear many voices and different languages worship the same God. It makes me happy. :D

There were a couple downsides. There were horrible squatty-potties. Ick. I can’t stand the things. But, ah well. I’ll just have to get used to it. Apparently when we’re on outreach, it’s the only toilet we’ll be able to access. But let me tell you, we were quite thankful when we got back to the apartment. We actually came in and sighed, “We’re home!” It’s neat.

It was also very cold. We hadn’t quite prepared for the chilliness. The weather required a jacket, but we all just took hoodies. Bad plan. But we had hot tea all the time, and Lance brought us nice warm sleeping bags, so it was good.

I got to talk to a lady who is running the YWAM Hope here in Kyiv. (YWAM Hope is an orphanage ministry). She and her husband were from Germany, so that was cool. We talked about the spirituality in Germany. It’s very postmodern, and the church has not grown very much there. THAT made me sad. But this whole conference has been showing me stuff like that. There are SO many needs, but there is progress! And that’s awesome. There just needs to be people to go.

So, yeah. I have a bunch of friends. :D They’re great. Yesterday, I walked around with Petya and Nikolay. They are pretttty great. Petya doesn’t speak much English, but he know a bit. Nikolay is usually the translator. He’s from Kyrgyzstan and, like Svinge, which is actually spelled Sevinch :D, he speaks multiple languages very well. On the way to the sanatorium, Sevinch, Nikolay, and I played word games. I won all the time because I knew more words in English, but they still did pretty well.

Pretty much the entire DTS group is becoming great friends already. We’re made of mostly Ukrainians, but there are four Americans: Jessica, Erin, me, and Mr. Ed. Ed is 48 and is the only other American who can’t speak much Russian. AND it just so happens that it was him and me who got lost when we all played the “run around the city and answer some questions about places you see” game. Heh…yeah. I COULDN’T FIND THAT BLASTED ROAD. Maps can be deceiving, you know? :D From Ukraine, we have Oksana, Elvira (Eilla), Ksenya, Marsa, Marta, Petya, Ruslan, and Rustam. Then Sevinch and Nikolay are from other countries. Our leaders are from a variety of countries, too. Andrew and Oksana Ford are from Australia (Australian accents, ftw!) and Ukraine. Lance is from Oregon, and Kate is from Michigan. Tanya is from Russia and Senya is from Ukraine. And they are all awesome. :D

So, little Oksana is here now. She doesn’t really understand everything I type. ;) But she is AWESOME. I love my Oksana. :D (She just squealed and gave me a hug. Haha!)

But, yeah, so there are some awesome relationships and I’m learning a bunch. So, obviously, this is awesome. I wake up every morning at 6:00 or 6:30 and walk a mile or so to get to the base. While we were at the camp thing I just walked around the camp. It’s gorgeous here. And I’m kind of falling in love with Kyiv. Even when we get lost, it’s a great city. It’s so different, but a good sort of different. On the side of the road, people sell food from their gardens or farms. There are stray dogs EVERYWHERE, but they’re all nice. Sah-bah-ka. That’s dog. :D I can read more, too! Yay! Now if only I can understand what some of those words mean…

Alright. I better go work on that homework…lol. Procrastination is THE BEST.

…And the homework is coming along. Let me tell you, this is the best homework EVER. It’s all creative artsy stuff if you so choose to do it that way…so….Yay!! This makes for happy Arielles. :D So, yeah, I’ll show you all my projects when I’m finished. They shall be B-E-A-utiful!

I also started laundry today. Heh…yay, right? So, we have laundry detergent and a bathtub. That’s how we do it. I almost feel like a regular pioneer woman (this said while typing on a Macbook. Oh, the irony!) And it’s getting late and I’m getting ridiculous (and I love the fact that the clock says 0:18 right now.)

Tomorrow is church! I’ll be going to the international church that is in English and serves tea and cookies. The worship is phenomenal and the sermon related extremely well to things we talked about in DTS. So, yay! Good night, everybody! I hope you enjoyed this extraordinarily long post.

So, yeah...that was a couple days ago. I'll get something better soon!