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
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