Here is my catching up on my Journal! I am having some problems again with my blog. It's all in Ukrainian langauge and I know very little of Ukrainian and not very good in Russian! So be patient with me please!
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
For the first time in many a year, I have been become very lax as far as my journal is concerned. It is my goal and desires to become regular at this again, for my own record of my life and for those of you who read this. The end of June was really the last time I wrote in my Journal, but now I want to catch up in a general way and then be much more specific from here on out. So we are going to go back in time!
June 28-July 11 – Black Sea Bible Camp
First from my Sept. 17th Newsletter:
Camp was a real struggle and trial this year. A week before camp began, I sprained my ankle very badly (it is much better now, but not yet completely well). At first, the Drs. even thought it was broken and put me in a cast. That was on a Friday and on Monday, we had the x-rays taken to another Dr. and they confirmed it was only a bad sprain, but they wanted me to keep the cast on to immobilize it. Drs. and friends in the states said I should take it off so I could ice it, etc. So we cut it off on Tuesday. I went to camp without crutches on Friday evening.
We took 43 people to camp with us this summer to a “brand new camp.” Well it was brand new and not completely finished and a very dirty place. We got a real bargain on the price – 600 Grievnas or $120 per person for 13 days. The other cheapest place we could have gone was closer to 1000 Grievnas for the same period of time. Another reason that the place was so cheep was because the food was so little and so poor! Everyone lost weight – I guess that is good! Also, the owner/cook of the camp was very much opposed to our Christian teachings and never failed to take the chance to put us and our faith down whenever she could. We had several confrontations with her that were very difficult, to say the least. We were told that we would have a lot of room to play games with our kids. There were some empty fields near by, but they were all filled with thistles and thorns! Then 2 of our oldest campers, one boy and one girl caused us all kind of problems in not following the rules.
So what good came from camp? Really, many things! We had some great Bible lessons and devotionals! We grew together because of the trials and difficulties. We learned that we could depend on others when we had hard times. We very much enjoyed the Black Sea this year. The weather was hot and the sea was a great temperature. We had no baptisms this year at camp, but we have 2 girls that are much more seriously considering this for their lives. God is good! We will learn and grow from this camp! One thing we learned for sure, is that we definitely will not do camp with those same people again!
Second from my Newsletter of September 20th that I write to my young people here in Kremenchuk:
James 1:2-4 “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
We all face trials many times in our lives. Someone has said we will always either be coming out of trial, in a trial or getting ready to enter a trial! God isn’t interested as much in our happiness as He is in our Holiness! God want us to try all the time to become like Him! He is always there to help us through the trials we are facing in our lives. 2 Peter 2:9 says, “The Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials.” Remember that this life is a life that prepares us to become like Jesus so that we can spend eternity with Him in Heaven!
For those of us that went to our Black Sea Bible Camp this year, we know that we had some real trials and struggles there. Did you grow from those experiences? Did you trust God through them and become more faithful and stronger in Christ? What good things happened while you were there? What did you learn? What do you need to learn from it? I am going to share some pictures with you from camp. Think about the good times we did have. Think about what we learned at camp through our Bible lessons. Think about how we can become better people, how we can become more Christ like through our 13 days at camp.
PRESENT TIME: Hopefully these writing will help to give a good perspective on what camp was like this summer.
July 21-August 4
These 2 weeks I spent with my daughter Janessa, her husband BJ and my grandson Gavin in Grand Island, NE. Janessa worked about 6 hours a day and BJ worked long hours. I got to take of Gavin (2 yrs. 4months) some. We went to some movies, swimming together, to a company picnic in Omaha, NE and finally on the Friday before I left, Janessa, Gavin and I went to the Omaha zoo. Omaha was the city I flew out of the next day.
August 4-11
I spent this time in Arkansas with some friends. We went to a lake for a couple of days, spent a couple of days in Branson, MO, and saw some great shows.
August 11-25
I spent this time with my oldest daughter Jenise, her husband Jon and I met my newest grandson, Malachi (5 months) in San Angelo, TX. Jenise is working on her internship as commercial artists and so I took care of Malachi each weekday for 2 to 3 hours! I was a bit worried about it, as I hadn’t taken care of baby by myself for a long time! But all worked out great – with just a little stress! Jenise and went down to San Antonio, TX for a couple of days, visited my sister Margaret in Kerrville, TX. While in San Antonio, we had a good time at some good restaurants and on Saturday, we spent time on the beautiful river walk and visited the Alamo.
August 25-Sept 7
I traveled to Puyallup, WA to spend the rest of my time in the states with my oldest son Butch, his wife Erin, and my two oldest grand daughters, Hannah (5) and Ella (almost 3). My son Butch is a Chiropractor and worked most of the time. Erin is home with the girls and we did a lot of fun things together, shopped together and just had a good time. Part of the time when Butch was free, we went Salmon fishing and I caught 9 about 5 pounds each. This was a lot of fun! Also we to Seattle one day on the fairy (sp?), and went one afternoon to the mountains which was absolutely beautiful! I hadn’t been in the big mountains for a long time and it was great!
Through all of this travel, I had such a wonderful time with my family! I enjoyed all the things that we did, but mostly, I thoroughly enjoyed just being with my family! It was such a blessing from God and I am so very thankful for it!!!
September 7-9
My return to Kremenchuk took 3 days; because of the flights across the country to NY City, then to Paris for a 10 hour lay over. Finally on Sunday the 9th at about 5pm, I returned to Kremenchuk and my spiritual family here. It is good to be back home!
September 10-23
This has been a time of catching up on many things. I have been working at getting all our classes and activities started up again at schools, Universities and of course our regular activities. Our Tuesday night devotional and our Thursday Bible study were kept on going by James and a couple of Ukrainian guys, Artem and Yura. These 2 young men have grown a great deal and are taking on a real leadership roll that is really needed here and I am very proud of them! We are in the process of starting something new this fall that we are calling “English Club.” It will be strictly an English practice time for University and school age students. We are using this as a way to get to know more people and let them know us. I believe that when people really come to know and be friends with us, we will have a greater opportunity to teach them the gospel. Please be praying for the success of this new effort. We are teaching in 5 schools again this fall and will be working with 3 orphanages again. There is always the challenge of lining up translators. We now have many good translators, it is just being able to line up there schedules with mine/ours! That’s kind of my life in a nutshell up to this point in time.
Wednesday, September 26
The main event of the day was going to the village and visiting classes and setting up classes to start next week. All of our classes at the village this fall will be on Thursdays and Fridays. There is a new big class of 5th graders this year, so that should be fun!
Thursday, September 27
I am putting the finishing touches on English Clubs for 2 schools: 1 and 11 and then for the University level, which we are trying to cover at least 3 intuitions of higher learning. They all start next Wed. Our Bible Study night had just 6 people at it tonight. We are studying Hebrews and it is a good study, but where are the people? I know that as our kids are getting older they are very busy. Our 11th form kids (3) are all taking Univ. prep classes besides their School classes that are night classes that keeps them busy every night during the week and others are working now. So please pray for our growth and success and for us to keep our spirits up with our weekly numbers are down.
Friday, September 28
We made extra trips to School 11 today to finalize everything with the Director and to visit classes to invite kids to next week classes beginning. Then at 2:10, Oksana and I went to the village to study with our 4 11th grade girls there and it went so well! They are so open and excited about the Gospel and we are so thankful to be studying with them. They got out earlier than they thought they would and waited for us for about 40 minutes! At 6 we had a party planned to encourage our young people to invite friends to come so we could get to know them better, but they didn’t come – well we had 10 and had a good time, but no visitors.
Saturday, September 29
We had our 2nd week of Bible Clubs this day. In the morning I did my normal Sat. with Bible Clubs coming up of cleaning, shopping, studying in the morning. Then we had 5 at our Univ. Bible Club and 5 at our Teen Club at 6. Next week, the Church will start church discussion time at 4pm. I get real frustrated with them some times because they asked me what time I wanted us to have it at and I said 3 or 3:30 and they said fine and then set the time at 4! Go figure!
Sunday, September 30
We had a good worship service this morning, with more people there than the last couple of weeks. Then we made sandwiches at my house with 6 of us doing that. Afterwards I made hot tuna sandwiches for us for our lunch! Everyone loves those and I hadn’t made them in a long time. This past week, the city has closed the only bridge across the river (about 1/3 or more of the city lives on the other side of the river) until Dec. 31st. Several of young people live on the other side and it is a major difficulty. One of our young women that I hadn’t had time to be with since I came back was Zhenya. It was a beautiful day, 70, no wind, clear and trees turning, so I offered to drive Zhenya home through another city. Well, it was 92 kilometers (about 50 miles) round trip, but it was a very beautiful trip and gave us time to catch up on things. It was great to spend some time with her too! At 6 we had 12 at our evening services. We have been having about 20, but this was a low number for us. I got home about 8, ate, tried to watch a movie on TV, but was soon asleep. I finally got up and went to bed about 10:30!
For the first time in many a year, I have been become very lax as far as my journal is concerned. It is my goal and desires to become regular at this again, for my own record of my life and for those of you who read this. The end of June was really the last time I wrote in my Journal, but now I want to catch up in a general way and then be much more specific from here on out. So we are going to go back in time!
June 28-July 11 – Black Sea Bible Camp
First from my Sept. 17th Newsletter:
Camp was a real struggle and trial this year. A week before camp began, I sprained my ankle very badly (it is much better now, but not yet completely well). At first, the Drs. even thought it was broken and put me in a cast. That was on a Friday and on Monday, we had the x-rays taken to another Dr. and they confirmed it was only a bad sprain, but they wanted me to keep the cast on to immobilize it. Drs. and friends in the states said I should take it off so I could ice it, etc. So we cut it off on Tuesday. I went to camp without crutches on Friday evening.
We took 43 people to camp with us this summer to a “brand new camp.” Well it was brand new and not completely finished and a very dirty place. We got a real bargain on the price – 600 Grievnas or $120 per person for 13 days. The other cheapest place we could have gone was closer to 1000 Grievnas for the same period of time. Another reason that the place was so cheep was because the food was so little and so poor! Everyone lost weight – I guess that is good! Also, the owner/cook of the camp was very much opposed to our Christian teachings and never failed to take the chance to put us and our faith down whenever she could. We had several confrontations with her that were very difficult, to say the least. We were told that we would have a lot of room to play games with our kids. There were some empty fields near by, but they were all filled with thistles and thorns! Then 2 of our oldest campers, one boy and one girl caused us all kind of problems in not following the rules.
So what good came from camp? Really, many things! We had some great Bible lessons and devotionals! We grew together because of the trials and difficulties. We learned that we could depend on others when we had hard times. We very much enjoyed the Black Sea this year. The weather was hot and the sea was a great temperature. We had no baptisms this year at camp, but we have 2 girls that are much more seriously considering this for their lives. God is good! We will learn and grow from this camp! One thing we learned for sure, is that we definitely will not do camp with those same people again!
Second from my Newsletter of September 20th that I write to my young people here in Kremenchuk:
James 1:2-4 “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
We all face trials many times in our lives. Someone has said we will always either be coming out of trial, in a trial or getting ready to enter a trial! God isn’t interested as much in our happiness as He is in our Holiness! God want us to try all the time to become like Him! He is always there to help us through the trials we are facing in our lives. 2 Peter 2:9 says, “The Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials.” Remember that this life is a life that prepares us to become like Jesus so that we can spend eternity with Him in Heaven!
For those of us that went to our Black Sea Bible Camp this year, we know that we had some real trials and struggles there. Did you grow from those experiences? Did you trust God through them and become more faithful and stronger in Christ? What good things happened while you were there? What did you learn? What do you need to learn from it? I am going to share some pictures with you from camp. Think about the good times we did have. Think about what we learned at camp through our Bible lessons. Think about how we can become better people, how we can become more Christ like through our 13 days at camp.
PRESENT TIME: Hopefully these writing will help to give a good perspective on what camp was like this summer.
July 21-August 4
These 2 weeks I spent with my daughter Janessa, her husband BJ and my grandson Gavin in Grand Island, NE. Janessa worked about 6 hours a day and BJ worked long hours. I got to take of Gavin (2 yrs. 4months) some. We went to some movies, swimming together, to a company picnic in Omaha, NE and finally on the Friday before I left, Janessa, Gavin and I went to the Omaha zoo. Omaha was the city I flew out of the next day.
August 4-11
I spent this time in Arkansas with some friends. We went to a lake for a couple of days, spent a couple of days in Branson, MO, and saw some great shows.
August 11-25
I spent this time with my oldest daughter Jenise, her husband Jon and I met my newest grandson, Malachi (5 months) in San Angelo, TX. Jenise is working on her internship as commercial artists and so I took care of Malachi each weekday for 2 to 3 hours! I was a bit worried about it, as I hadn’t taken care of baby by myself for a long time! But all worked out great – with just a little stress! Jenise and went down to San Antonio, TX for a couple of days, visited my sister Margaret in Kerrville, TX. While in San Antonio, we had a good time at some good restaurants and on Saturday, we spent time on the beautiful river walk and visited the Alamo.
August 25-Sept 7
I traveled to Puyallup, WA to spend the rest of my time in the states with my oldest son Butch, his wife Erin, and my two oldest grand daughters, Hannah (5) and Ella (almost 3). My son Butch is a Chiropractor and worked most of the time. Erin is home with the girls and we did a lot of fun things together, shopped together and just had a good time. Part of the time when Butch was free, we went Salmon fishing and I caught 9 about 5 pounds each. This was a lot of fun! Also we to Seattle one day on the fairy (sp?), and went one afternoon to the mountains which was absolutely beautiful! I hadn’t been in the big mountains for a long time and it was great!
Through all of this travel, I had such a wonderful time with my family! I enjoyed all the things that we did, but mostly, I thoroughly enjoyed just being with my family! It was such a blessing from God and I am so very thankful for it!!!
September 7-9
My return to Kremenchuk took 3 days; because of the flights across the country to NY City, then to Paris for a 10 hour lay over. Finally on Sunday the 9th at about 5pm, I returned to Kremenchuk and my spiritual family here. It is good to be back home!
September 10-23
This has been a time of catching up on many things. I have been working at getting all our classes and activities started up again at schools, Universities and of course our regular activities. Our Tuesday night devotional and our Thursday Bible study were kept on going by James and a couple of Ukrainian guys, Artem and Yura. These 2 young men have grown a great deal and are taking on a real leadership roll that is really needed here and I am very proud of them! We are in the process of starting something new this fall that we are calling “English Club.” It will be strictly an English practice time for University and school age students. We are using this as a way to get to know more people and let them know us. I believe that when people really come to know and be friends with us, we will have a greater opportunity to teach them the gospel. Please be praying for the success of this new effort. We are teaching in 5 schools again this fall and will be working with 3 orphanages again. There is always the challenge of lining up translators. We now have many good translators, it is just being able to line up there schedules with mine/ours! That’s kind of my life in a nutshell up to this point in time.
Wednesday, September 26
The main event of the day was going to the village and visiting classes and setting up classes to start next week. All of our classes at the village this fall will be on Thursdays and Fridays. There is a new big class of 5th graders this year, so that should be fun!
Thursday, September 27
I am putting the finishing touches on English Clubs for 2 schools: 1 and 11 and then for the University level, which we are trying to cover at least 3 intuitions of higher learning. They all start next Wed. Our Bible Study night had just 6 people at it tonight. We are studying Hebrews and it is a good study, but where are the people? I know that as our kids are getting older they are very busy. Our 11th form kids (3) are all taking Univ. prep classes besides their School classes that are night classes that keeps them busy every night during the week and others are working now. So please pray for our growth and success and for us to keep our spirits up with our weekly numbers are down.
Friday, September 28
We made extra trips to School 11 today to finalize everything with the Director and to visit classes to invite kids to next week classes beginning. Then at 2:10, Oksana and I went to the village to study with our 4 11th grade girls there and it went so well! They are so open and excited about the Gospel and we are so thankful to be studying with them. They got out earlier than they thought they would and waited for us for about 40 minutes! At 6 we had a party planned to encourage our young people to invite friends to come so we could get to know them better, but they didn’t come – well we had 10 and had a good time, but no visitors.
Saturday, September 29
We had our 2nd week of Bible Clubs this day. In the morning I did my normal Sat. with Bible Clubs coming up of cleaning, shopping, studying in the morning. Then we had 5 at our Univ. Bible Club and 5 at our Teen Club at 6. Next week, the Church will start church discussion time at 4pm. I get real frustrated with them some times because they asked me what time I wanted us to have it at and I said 3 or 3:30 and they said fine and then set the time at 4! Go figure!
Sunday, September 30
We had a good worship service this morning, with more people there than the last couple of weeks. Then we made sandwiches at my house with 6 of us doing that. Afterwards I made hot tuna sandwiches for us for our lunch! Everyone loves those and I hadn’t made them in a long time. This past week, the city has closed the only bridge across the river (about 1/3 or more of the city lives on the other side of the river) until Dec. 31st. Several of young people live on the other side and it is a major difficulty. One of our young women that I hadn’t had time to be with since I came back was Zhenya. It was a beautiful day, 70, no wind, clear and trees turning, so I offered to drive Zhenya home through another city. Well, it was 92 kilometers (about 50 miles) round trip, but it was a very beautiful trip and gave us time to catch up on things. It was great to spend some time with her too! At 6 we had 12 at our evening services. We have been having about 20, but this was a low number for us. I got home about 8, ate, tried to watch a movie on TV, but was soon asleep. I finally got up and went to bed about 10:30!
No comments:
Post a Comment