Many people that live in an English-speaking country call the country The Ukraine. However, in 1993, just two years after gaining their independence, the Ukrainian government asked to be referred to as just Ukraine. The use of the word "the" is considered to be offensive by some Ukrainians, as they often feel it is disregarding their independence.
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Easter is known as Velykden (The Great Day) and is a day off work in Ukraine. Special Easter services are held in churches and many families celebrate the day with a special Easter meal. Easter meals often include the Paskha (a type of Easter bread) and an egg painted in red.
An Easter basket is filled with pysanky (decorated eggs) and blessed early on Easter Day in many homes. There are various Easter games, including one called “Knocking”. This game involves 2 players who have 1 egg each and try to knock each other’s eggs. The first one to have their egg broken loses the game. Here are some photos of our crew in Ukraine on Easter this year! The spring 2017 camp's theme is going to revolve around "What it means to be a Believer". People all over the world think of Christians with a different context, but one of the overarching one that is expected is that they are the "do gooders", who do not smoke, drink, or "have fun". This is not what it means to be a believer of Jesus. Instead, we are going to show the students what Jesus said that we should do. It is about being a good person, following the commandments, and doing what is right. Christians tend to put their priorities in the world, looking outwardly instead of inwardly, placing their complete faith in His will and follow His plan, giving full control to Him to allow Him to use their skills, talents, and passions to further His plan.
This will be Bethe's fourth trip to Ukraine, as she went in 2014, 2015, 2016. As the result of her trip and God opening the doors, she declared a Russian major at Hofstra University in New York. This is her 7th year of studying the Russian language and she began Ukrainian lessons with one of her professors in Spring 2015. Inevitably, this will increase her ability to communicate with the children and in return they will assist her in her studies of the languages. Bethe is currently a Psychology major, with a Russian and Sociology Minor. She wants to go to graduate school for Student Affairs. This will be Kyle's second trip to Ukraine. He is a mathematical business economics major at Hofstra University. Kyle loves to serve the community, no matter where he is located, from Florida to Connecticut or at school in New York. This trip has only furthered his love of service. Last trip was his first time outside of the country, while it was a scary thought, he felt his calling from God that it was the right move and has not regretted a second of it. This year he will be able to communicate more with the children, and will thus be able to make more of an impact on each other.
John started getting involved in Ukraine to help juvenile detention center with Straight Ahead Ministries. Their mission is to try to assist young men and women in turning their lives around. While John was in Ukraine, he met some missionaries who were trying to get a camp started for an orphanage. John took this opportunity to join them and start the camp in 2005.
John still works in the juvenile detention center and helps facilitate the orphanage visits and camp. Fall retreat
Fall retreat started with a really big disappointment and ended up being one of the best times that we’ve ever had with some of the kids who live in the orphanage. The plan was that we would start out the week with the older kids, and this would let us get to know them better, and would let Kolya and Halya get to know them better so that they would have a better feel for who they should invite to live in Second Chance after the kids finish ninth grade. The second part of the week we planned to spend in the orphanage doing a program for all the kids who don’t have anywhere to go. Leading up to the retreat, the director of the orphanage had been telling us that the kids who are wards of the state would be able to go to the camp without any problem. He would just give permission. We checked with him about this for almost two months, we told him that we could do the camp officially through the central office just in case anything happened (this is standard procedure for another transition home), but the director told us that this was unnecessary … until we showed up with a 14 passenger van and another car to pick up what we thought were going to be 14-20 kids. The last day the director decided that he couldn’t just sign over permission for those kids to come with us because he couldn’t do that without official permission. We’ll talk more about the orphanage director here, but suffice it to say I’m not a fan. In the end we only got 7 kids, for the first part of the week. And only one of them was a girl. Our team was actually bigger than the kids that we had with us. While we were disappointed about the kids that didn’t come, we were able to really pour into the kids who did come and it turned out being a great weekend. Thanks to that time we had with the older kids before spending time in the orphanage, when we moved the crew up to the orphanage, the older kids participated in everything, which is a first. The younger kids also did better all of the days except for the last day where they all seemed to go pretty crazy, but altogether it was one of the best times we’ve had at the orphanage, and the orphanage staff interrupted less than usual. In fact, they seemed fairly grateful that we were there, which is not usually the case. It was also really cool, because we are all getting more confident in our roles, which makes camp go by so much more smoothly. I am getting better with the music (doing music this past spring was fairly painful, but its already worlds different). Kolya is getting more comfortable at initiating with the kids. Meisha led one of the group times, and read a story in Russian. Everyone is improving and its making a big difference. Summer camp When we wrapped up summer camp, everyone had pretty much the same comment. There were plenty of little things that we can do better, but all in all, it was a great camp. Far better than we could have hoped for. The best part of it was that, for years we have been going to the state run camps, or the orphanage and doing programs. We would usually get permission to do a full day program several days in a row only to show up and find out that we could only do a few hours, and we couldn’t even do that all week. It was very frustrating and confining. But doing our own camp, we got to spend the entire day with the kids. We slept in the tents with them. I woke my boys up in the morning by pouncing on them. When Sasha had a break down on the day we asked the question, “Where is God when I feel alone?” I got to sit with him, listen to his story and then just hold him for about 30 minutes while he cried. We all had multiple moments like that where we thought, “This whole week was worth it for this moment.” The kids keep asking about next summer’s camp. I can’t wait. - Janna and Daniel's Blog: http://rossinukraine.blogspot.com/2015_01_01_archive.html I studied the Russian language in high school and was presented the opportunity to spend a year living in Russia after high school to nanny for a Russian missionary family. When the opportunity fell through, I was very disappointed. My Mom noticed this and instantly tried to find something that I could get involved with that was similar. Soon after this, the church brought up the Ukraine team, and explained briefly about what they did. My Mom knew that this could definitely be something I would be interested in. I met with John, the team leader, and joined the team. This was in 2014, just as the war with Russia was beginning. This caused slight fear in I, until my Mom said "she wasn't worried because if this was God's plan and He was putting this so strongly on your heart, then how could she stand between His plan." This set my fears at ease, knowing that I was following my heart. If Ukraine was not in the elevated state that they were in, I am not sure how I would have felt about the trip. The trip absolutely impacted the rest of my life. I vowed to continue to return to be a positive light and influence, giving the children a way to get away from the issues that surround them. I have returned for every spring camp since my first one. During school breaks in Ukrainian orphanages, there isn't much to do and the kids tend to be bored. Orphanages are often open to having Christian groups come in and put on a camp program for the kids (including Bible lessons and other Christian aspects of the program) so that they can allow their workers to take vacations and simultaneously the kids are entertained. So… the door is open!
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