Christmas

Before the Soviet revolution people of the Russian Empire considered Christmas as one of the most important date to celebrate. It was also one of the favorite holidays of all people (people of different social levels and diferrent ages). Usually on the evening of the 6th of January there was a special visit to the Gods parents (people who witnessed your baptism), usually most of the people had Gods parents and they took supper ("vecherya") for them and went to their place just to spent some time with them. Also people went to the orthodox church for the church service. And the whole family would gather for the supper on the 7th celebrating birth of Jesus Christ.
There would be a Christmas tree and the gifts for the kids. Some special dishes were cooked especially for that day (sweet wheat cereal with raisins and wallnuts for example, called "kutya"). People would sing carols and also drink a lot of vodka.
All that was before the Revolution, after the communists were in charge of the State they tried to get rid of the christian traditions. One of the way was to replace all of the church holidays with the Socialistic ones. So they made an ephasis on celebrating New Years Eve instead of Christmas. Some people stillcelebrated Christmas though but they didnt do it openly. So as time went by people started to consider 31st of January a very important day. They started to call the Christmas tree a New Year tree and the songs were about the coming of the New Year not the Christmas carols. After the collapse of the USSR people started to celebrate Christmas again doing all the things I mentioned in the beggining of the letter.
Even those people who dont go to the church through the whole year go to the orthodox church on Christmas.

Praise

thank you for your prayers for todays lessons! We had REALLY good time with all three classes (one 11th class and two 10th ones) The teenagers were very open and asked ??? on the topic they eagerly participated in the team games we prepared for them. The topic was dating and sex next week we are going to talk to them more about it and will let you know how it went.
We think that the beggining of the lessons is the highlight of this month!
Sergey and Julia

Thank you for your prayer for the classes that we are teaching. please pray for tomorrow because tomorrow we are teaching 3 classes in one day (two 10th grades and one 11th grade) This week we are talking to all the classes about dating, sex difference between girls and boys etc. I will let you know how it went.
Julia and Sergey

Today we had our first lesson with one of the 2 of the 10th grades.
It went really well. The kids were open and interested to hear what we had to say. We took our laptop with us and showed them a video to illustrate our points. They were very surprised to watch a video right in their classroom. We talked to them about the classes we are going to have with them, played a game and talked about planning your life according to your lifegoals.
Tomorrow we are talking together with the Christian Student Organization to 40 11th graders in one of the high schools in Odessa about girl-boy relationship.
Please pray for us.
Julia and Sergey

Sergey was invited today to speak at the teachers conference. The theme of the conference was "Moral ethics in school", it was a good experience for him to listen to the reports of the teachers. They talked about how to teach the kids about the right moral life and about religion since this subject is officially in the school's schedule. He talked about the work we are doing and they said that they were encouraged and impressed by that.

It was interesting that there was a big debate on the theme of spirituality and what it really is. They didnt come to any particular definition except for the one that "every individual has his own deinition of this term".
Many of the teachers got Sergey's phone number to talk about our work more.

We had a really good youth group this Sat with the Student organization we are partnering with. We talked about sharing your faith on Campus and in school. We think that God is really blessing the youth groups this year and we are praying that it will be even better the next year!

Please pray for us as we are starting our classes this week. Also on Friday we are participating in the Christian Student Organization project held in one of the high schools of Odessa. They are going to have a seminar on boy-girl romantic relationship. So please keep us in you prayers as we are going to interact with the teens this week on various occasions.

We keep on visiting the kids at the orphanage talking to them and just giving them hugs. It's always a joy to see them.
Talk you later,
Julia and Sergey