Coming and going

Garry and the students playing UNO after pizza

Last night (Friday) we invited the students for pizza to mark the end of the first month of school. We have had an interesting two weeks. Nikolai left, because he decided he could not live with the rules after the second week of school. Garry and Maria reminded him that if he left, he could not return, all the boys begged him to stay, but he decided to go anyway. We cannot make them stay in school, if they really want to leave.  Maria was having a really bad day because the two girls were considering leaving also, but had no place to go back to, so they stayed. Yulia, who had been sick that week,  is doing better in class than  Karina now that she is feeling better. The girls seem to be getting over their fear of cows.

We have a new student since last Thursday, Simeon, who had come out with the Agape organization to see the school. We have had another girl and two guys come this week for overnight visits to see the school (one was here for pizza) some may join us, but the guys both seemed to think it was some kind of job, instead of school, until they arrived. Garry drove into Dnepropetroesk to get them. Sasha had to return home to Reni for some official business, so he left with his friend Kolya, since he was going to take him home for a week visit in two weeks when we have fall break, they left yesterday, and missed out on the pizza and UNO game after.

Simeon sweeping down cobwebs in the barn

Garry and I taught dairy farming and English this past week, the group home parents taught the week before and will have their classes again in the coming week. Some of our students are doing well in classes, but a few are not trying hard enough. Hopefully that will improve in the coming weeks. They are showing up on time for class this week after we started handing out candy at 9 am (and not after 9.)

We had a sex ed class presented by someone (in Russian, all classes except ours are presented by Russian speakers, and Maria translates for Garry) from Zaporosia one morning two weeks ago, and are thinking about having an anti-smoking one, to inform them of the dangers and encourage them to quit. Our students include a couple casual smokers, two real smokers, and the one girl who is thinking of coming wants to quit. We do not require them to quit, just to not smoke in or near the houses, classroom or the barns.


We pray that Nikolai will be alright, he should be able to find work unloading at the markets (which he used to do) and he is in better shape after living here for almost two months, first at our house and then the boys group home, where he had problems adjusting to the rules, like curfews and smoking far from the house. He had been living on the street when he came to us and we had gotten his health checked, bought antibiotics to clear up an infection, paid to have the dentist pull his rotten tooth, took him shopping new clothes from the second hand store and given him one of our suitcases that he had asked for- he then sewed up the tear on it to carry his possessions in a couple weeks ago, and he took it with him.
He had been told he couldn't leave for the weekend after missing the first day of school and keeping with an established pattern of not returning on time every time he went to visit his sister (whom he said was getting married for weeks in a row.)  He would phone Maria and tell her that it was because he had been sad about his mother's death, so he got drunk and spent all his money, (or other excuses, like a death in the family which his brother would not know about) and then he would find a job for the day to get the bus back to the village.
 The next week he came into money, bought one of the other boy's cell phones, and when the group home parents asked where he had gotten all the money... he told several stories which didn't check out or make sense, and so Garry and Maria told him he could only stay if he told the truth about where it came from. An hour later he confessed to taking 900 grivna from our house, so he was told could stay but had to work to pay it back, and one week later he left (after working a few extra hours guarding after school until 7 pm at the new barn.) He said he was planning to stay with the family of "his girlfriend" that he said was 12 (one night that week he was wearing a female shirt which he said was hers out), he is 19. So we are thinking that he may have had more problems than we could help him with here, but hope he lands on his feet. Maria got a phone call saying he was starting a job soon, after one asking if he could come back.  His older brother, Valara, is still here at the school and a really bright student who wants to get perfect marks on every test (and we thought he would be a problem.)