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!