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
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