Julia's 28th Birthday!

This Thursday I celebrated my 28th Bday. It was a good day and Michelle made my favorite apple crysp pie for me so it was my Bday cake..What was my Bday wish?
Sorry but I cannot say!!!!! If I say it it wont come true (this is the Ukrainian superstition) but maybe one day I will tell you!!!!!!!

Sveta

Sveta graduated from the orphanage a couple of years ago. At the time when she was at the orphanage Michelle and I spent a lot of time with her and other girls from her class. We invited the girls to the Inter-Varsity meetings and just were friends with them. A year ago I met Sveta and learned that she was pregnant and her boyfriend broke up with her when he found out that she is pregnant. Michelle, Sergey and I tried to see how we could help her but mostly just prayed for her and for the unborn babe and for the father of the babe to come back to her and take care of her and the babe...
Sveta's daughter Lena is 10 months old now...She has both a mother and a father (when Sveta's ax-boyfriend asked to Sveta to come back he didnt even explain why he did it, he just pleaded for her and for the babe to live with him) Sveta is excpecting a second babe, she is 20 years old now.
Sveta came over and we had a great time cooking and chatting. Even though God did answer our prayers still Sveta needs a lot of encouragement and help. Her husband comes home drunk often (they live in the countryside and it is common for people there to drink alchohol regulary). Please pray that God would use Sergey and I to witness to this young family. Please pray for the new babe who is due this summer!

Saturday Group

Michelle, Sergey and I are ecxited about the new group that we have started together at out place. We want to invite the graduates of the orphanage and older kids who will soon graduate to this home group and try to encourage them and see how we can help them. At one meeting we had Nadya Molohova and her classmate Vera over. I was such a great time together! We are actually open to any kids who would want to come to this youth meeting so we also had my English student Sasha who is the same age as Nadya and Vera and goes to the presbyterian church. We cooked pizza together, watched some thought provoking videos and made collages about ourselves (good that I didnt throw away those old magazines!) We all had a lot of fun and all the girls want to come back to the group after the spring school break is over. Please pray for God to bless our team work and for us to be able to make the group welcoming asnd interesting. Pray that we would be able to get in touch with the orphanage graduates that we lost contact with. Pray that God would use this group in the lives of young people to bring them closer to Himself!

10th and 11th graders

We keep on teaching classes in the 10th and 11th grades at the orphanage. We have been doing it for several months and had many good opportunities to talk to the teenagers about sex, drugs, alchohol, answer their questions (like is it OK to kiss while dating if you go to church and many other ones). It has been a good time of getting to know the kids better and sharing with them the information that will help them in the future.
We still have classes to teach till the end of the school year so please PRAY for us to have wisdom to do it the way that will be most effective. There are MANY kids in Ukraine who take drugs or make unwise decisions (like for a teenage girl to have an abortion). So we really want these teens to have good lives and choose what is healthy and right.

Nadya

On the 10th of March Sergey, Michelle, I and Nadya Molohova from the 10th grade from the orphanage attended a youth christian conference organized by a youth organization called "Rainbow". It was a great day filled with praise and worship and Bible teaching.
It was also challenging to hear about how christians live in other countries. In China christians are still severely persecuted and MANY of them are in jail for their faith (there are about 64 million people in Chinese prisons!) The prisoners work to produce different things like Christmas lights. So the Christmas lights which you put up this Christmas at your place might be produced by your Chinese brother or sister! (look for the sign"made in Ghina")Nadya said that it was a very thought provoking time for her and the next day she eagerly went ot he church with Michelle. She also came to the home group that Michelle, Sergey and I hold on Saturdays.
Please pray that Nadya would contenue to grow in her faith and that we would have wisdom to help her.

Picture of Pasha

Pasha Dimov from 5th grade ran away from the orphanage many times before. This time Sergey and I saw him at the city market dirty sharing some bread with his frinds. He was sniffing glue just before we met him.
He didnt want to go back to the orphanage but our persistance and the promise that if doesnt go back we will take him to the police made him come to the orphanage with Sergey. For some of the kids the freedom of the street life is very appealing and they dont want to live in an orphanage because they are looking for adventure and freedom...freedom to sniff glue and take drugs, freedom not to have to wash yourself and not to wear clean clothes, freedom not to study and to have to listen to the teachers and supervisors who tell them to study well...who can stop them? i think that only the care of a loving family can make them stay where they are safe. We all realize that the orphanage is where they should stay instead of being on the street so why do they leave?