Merry Christmas

I found this photo this morning, you can see many of our students and the group home parents singing at the church in Zaporosia for a Christmas program, sure to make Garry miss his students more!

Garry has booked his plane ticket for January 9th, anxious to get back to the village with all the stuff he's collected to help with teaching his classes. He has been getting posters and informational DVD s from farm businesses and even some gifts for the students- like hats. He has not had much luck in finding out the best way to get the students here to Canada for a summer experience to see and maybe even work on farms.

The addition to the boys' house has progressed while we've been gone, as you can see in the photo John Weins sent us this early in December. The builder is using hollow, reinforced concrete-filled styro-foam blocks to form it up, it will be stuccoed on the outside. This will add a large common room and three more bedrooms to this group home, so more boys can live there next school year. More of the work was completed before the snow fell last week. Of course, more money is needed to finish, and that's before we even start the work on finishing the barn for the trade school!

For info on donating follow this link http://canadianresourcesformissions.com/donate/

Field trip to see a farm

The last class Garry taught before leaving for Canada was an all day field trip on Thursday to see a demonstration farm built by the Canadian government.

They went in Victor's van

Banner  on the barn 

plan for the facility

Sveta and  the other students looking at the cows

Inside the freestall barns

Sasha with his foster mom from before the trade school

The students had lunch at the home of the foster parents that one of the students lived with before coming to the trade school. Garry said everyone enjoyed the trip, some of the students we trying their cow evaluation skills on the cows at the farm.

Homemade pizza, salads, Pepsi and juices

  We invited the students for pizza that evening, and most of them made it,  but a couple were busy studying for the next day's classes, so the others brought a couple slices back for them.

Since it was American Thanksgiving Day, I even made pumpkin pie with whipped cream for dessert. They enjoyed learning and playing Uno, the girls want us to bring a deck back for the girls house to play with.

playing UNO

If you are wondering what is happening while we are gone, Masha- or Maria, the translator is teaching English and they are having classes on Finances.