Day of the orphan

Sunday churches in Ukraine celebrated the day of the orphan and our guys were invited to the Central Baptist Church in Dnepro for a special service and meal. Garry, Nelly and Anton went with an overfull van. A few students stayed in the village to milk in the afternoon. I took a few photos before they left Sunday morning ( I spent the weekend nursing a sore throat and earache).

Two or three more guys were a little late and got in the van after they backed out of the driveway.


I heard it was a long service and a nice meal after. Garry borrowed my phone so he could use the Bible app and took a photo in the church.

Birthdays

This school year we are celebrating everyone's birthday. Other year's the students throw their own party, if the they can afford it, but many cannot.

Vika blowing out her candles

 In September Vika had cake at our house and after classes started we now have cake and candles and a present between English (first class of the day with our translator Nelly) and the rest of the day's classes.

Happy birthday Leila

Since everyone has been on a school day so far, we have had cake for Oksana, Lelia and Losha (who asked for non-chocolate cake, it was apple).

Leila's cow present

Losha's birthday

Just for Youth

Last Saturday we took all the students who could go (not milking) and wanted to (Losha has an aversion to crowds) to Just for Youth, a monthly Christian outreach program in the city that we have been attending for three years. At the moment we are hoping to find a few more students, we only have two new and two returning students and seven grads (four girls and three guys).

five students on a couch

 During game time Sasha Borchuk was the brave  first member of our group to volunteer. There was a message followed by food and playing more games- table and ping pong, too.

Coming and going

This week we had three new girls and two guys arrive, some say they are only here for a month, but time will tell. The girls are living at "the girls house" where our new translator Nellya is in charge, after the departure of Luba, who decided to move to western Ukraine last month.

Here are some of the grads and Losha (left) unloading hay
Many of the new guys are putting in hours stacking hay now

We have had two of this year's female grads leave, one more is leaving over the weekend and one guy is looking for job, but still here for the time being. We'll see who is here at the end of the summer. 

Nellya or Nelly in English our new translator/group home person

Two of the mature guys, Losha and Dima; who have finished the first year of our program are moving out of the boys house into one of the apartments to free up spaces there.

At center, Irina, one of the three new girls

We often have students drop in at our house
Here are Julia and Alionya, one of the new girls (blonde)

Here's Ira, (and Garry) who went to live with her mother and siblings
after growing up in the orphanage and two years with us
Garry drove her to her town in the middle of June

Just Youth

One of the things our students look forward to every time they go is the monthly outing to Zaporosia for Just Youth, a youth outreach program run by our Canadian friends Steve and Jo Harder.

I stole   got all these photos from Jo's blog you can check it out here if you'd like to read about what our friends do here in Ukraine. https://thestevejoadventure.blogspot.com

That's our Misha at the far right from February, it was a telephone game where
 they translated from English to Russian and back as they went down the line

They have a different theme every month, and this past week it was Canada Day since the first Saturday of the month was July first!
There is always a short message along with lots of fun activities and often music and food.

Our Masha playing basketball

Sasha is wearing his Hope for Each t-shirt

The students are excited that next month they will get the chance to ride in the new van instead of packing 17 people in old Mercedes. We will use both for big outings and for regular stuff like picking up 5 prospective new students yesterday at the bus station.  They got to ride in the van with seat belts!

New Bees

Removing the frames from a transport box

The stars of the show yesterday were the bees, Victor had ordered some new hives - five queens and their entourages had been delivered and he brought them out from Dnepro yesterday morning. Garry assisted and some of the students and Maria watched as classes had just finished for the day- year really- they just finished a last review of the year's material, For the summer there will only be class on Mondays.

The students stayed pretty far away

Each set of bees had to be removed from their transport box and put into their new home. One set went into the empty box, we lost one hive over the winter. Four went into the nice new boxes that Peter made (and Marcie painted) when he and the rest of the team were here.








One of the students said they got stung, but it may have been an excuse because then they were able to leave and no one yelled. I wasn't dressed up in the bee suits and took the photos about six feet away. Victor only got stung once, and he said it was his fault because he pushed the bee with his finger when it was in the way.

do you see the queen?

Every box got one new frame to build honeycomb on, besides the ones they came in covered with bees. Garry and Victor would try to spot the queen as he pulled them out and then placed them in the new boxes. It took a couple hours to get them all settled into their new homes.

This doubles the number of hives, and we hope to get more this summer, maybe split some hives that are larger, or find a stray hive looking for a home.

New video link and crop class

There is a new video featuring the first year students, it was a little too big to upload here,since its the whole year in 4 minutes so here's a link to the hopeforeach facebook page- don't worry, I think you can see it even if you don't use facebook. click here-  hopeforeach video

For a little piece of what they did today Garry, Maria and the first year students in the field today in a super speed 70 second crop class!

Fun with the students

One thing we like to do is get the students involved with the Canadian work teams, normally this means working with some of the students on the build, which happened this year.











However, we planned a few activities to get to know everyone, like birthday cake and introductions on the first night the team arrived - Kolya was 25 that day-

I'd like to thank some of our donors from Manitoba, like Creative Print-All in Steinbach who generously designed and printed 50 T-shirts for us.













The students (and staff) are thrilled to wear them, as you can see they have our name Hope for Each in both English and Russian.

We also had game night one evening, a big thanks to Janzen's Paint in Steinbach for the wonderful donation of games, the students really enjoyed playing Dutch Blitz, Jenga and Twister that night with some of the team. Really want to thank the young guys from BC who played Dutch Blitz and Roy who held down the UNO table.

 We also joined the students for Saturday evening church at the school building. We sang in English and they sang in Ukrainian and Russian.

After the message Jack lead us all in a song in Russian with a borrowed guitar and the students sang Jesus Loves Me in English.

Old and new shoes together

Another big donation from Manitoba was from Source for Sports in Steinbach who donated athletic shoes again this year, all the students and a couple kids who helped work on the building (it was spring break in the village) got new shoes. A couple of the older students (the grads) are still wearing the ones they received two years ago, but were excited to get new good shoes to wear to the city!

 Thanks to Farrel at La Broquerie Lumber, his donations included the caps that were a big hit with both the girls and guys.