Sharing about our trip in Chapel

This Thursday, our Ukraine team will be sharing about the trip from this past summer. We love when we get to do this. We are so excited to come back to school to share all the things that God did on our trip. He changes us and shows us His power. He leads and guides us every step of the way. Just when we think we may be coming up to a closed door, God shows us that He really wants us to take a step in faith.

He wants us to take a risk and be obedient and in that, be persistent. It is amazing what happens when these three components come together. If you take a risk without being obedient.....disaster. If we are obedient but are not persistent...then we fizzle out. Our pastor has been preaching about this while our church has been examining Saul and David in the Old Testament. I can look back on our trip and see how many times God called us to take a risk. So many things looked impossible and we would wonder if it was a 'no' from God. We would pray about it and know that God was telling us to take a step.

At chapel, we will share many stories of the risks, the obedience, persistence, and the result of the journey. God wants to use us. We just have to be willing.

God wants us to take care of the orphans, so of course He is going to make a way.

We are already planning our next trip for this coming summer. The kids know we will come back if it is at all possible.

Remember you can go to YouTube and search "SACS Ukraine mission trip and find previous trips.

There will hopefully be a new one for Thursday. I've had more technical difficulties than you can imagine. But....I will be persistent and will keep trying to get a new DVD made for Thursday! I can tell you this, if there is a DVD on Thursday, it will be a miracle from God. :) I'm not even joking.

Will you help a child go to camp?

My dear friend, Alyona, who I've known for 7 years, sent out an e-mail from Ukraine that I would like to share with you. Alyona used to be the leader of our mission teams as we served in Ukraine. As Alyona and her husband have become more involved with children's ministries, camps, and the orphans, and as she began helping people with adoptions, and has begun raising a family of her own, her ministries began changing and she could no longer lead our groups. We still go and see her every year and love to sit and visit and hear what God is doing in her life. It is wonderful to see her family grow and are excited that God has blessed her with a little boy (almost 2) and a sweet baby girl. Alyona's husband, Slavik, is very much a leader in the children and camp ministry and loves these kids and serves with all his heart.

Below you will find an e-mail with a short update about what God is doing. You will also find a very easy way that you can help a child go to camp this August. I know we will be doing this. Even if you can give $5.00 or $20.00, I know that God will multiply that gift....as I always say....just as He did with the loaves and fishes. I've seen Him do it time and time again. You will be as blessed as the child who goes to camp.

Dear Friends,

Greetings to all of you who have touched our lives and ministry in so many ways. Many of you have witnessed the work we are doing here in Ukraine and many have supported us through prayers and financial means. We are grateful to God for your partnership in the ministry and are excited to share with the vision God has laid on our hearts.

Our teams have been working throughout the Odessa oblast. Our entire ministry encompasses a clown ministry in hospitals and orphanages, puppet theatre, one day evangelistic programs, kid’s festivals, Kids Games and Family Games, collecting clothing for orphans, day camps, extreme camp for boys, working with the kid’s orphanage at the women’s prison, Sunday Schools in the villages, and visiting orphans in many orphanages to bring hope to the children. We have also distributed Christmas gifts, Valentines, stickers, and other small gifts to the children in partnership with other missionaries.

We would like to share with you that this August we are going to have a camp for the children of Odessa and Odessa region. The theme will be Robin Hood. The children will be coming from mostly non-Christian homes. We also hope to invite many children from villages. These children come from families who are not able to pay for the camp and we would like to ask you to help. Besides them we are inviting at least 20 boys from Fontanka detention school for boys. Those are mostly orphans. Total number of children that we are expecting is 150. Almost half of them won't be able to pay for their ticket.

The camp will be held from Aug 11 – 20 in the beautiful forest where the children will be staying in tents. The price for the camp (including transportation, food, crafts, and all activities) is $60 for one child, just $6 a day.

We are really looking forward to ministering to children through the camp and pray that these 10 days will have a big impact on the children. Please consider how you can help.

Donations can be sent to:

Harvest International PO Box 6690 Ocala, Florida 34478-6690. www.harvestinternational.org

Please note in the memo part of the check Slavik and Alyona Puzanov, Robin Hood camp.

We highly appreciate your interest and support in any way!

Slavik and Alyona

Does your light shine brighter in the darkness or the light?

As we went through this week, day by day, it was obvious to see that our light, which is the light of Jesus, shines much brighter in the darkness than it does in the light. When we are in our Christian school, our families, or in our churches, our light still needs to shine bright, but when we are in the darkness-out in the world-our light shines bright for God. That is what He calls us to do; to be a light in the darkness. We cannot do that without going into the darkness to be that light.

Spending time with these kids, in their world, has been emotional and draining, but it has been worth every bit of sacrifice of time and energy. Being the hands and feet of Jesus cannot be done without the supernatural power of God Himself. What an awesome opportunity to be used by Him in such an incredible way. We praise Him and give Him all the glory for all that has been done this past week.

God opened the door for us to go to Fontanka every morning. We presented Bible stories about Joseph in the Old Testiment and also stories of Jesus and tied them together with a spiritual message that they could apply to their lives today. Little did we know that these boys knew their Bible stories as well, if not better, than we did. When we had our small group time and showed pictures from the stories, they couldn't wait to describe what was taking place in each scene. Each craft was done with care. Many crafts were given to us as gifts because they wanted to give back and had nothing to give. On the day of the Salvation message every group had several boys receive Jesus in to their hearts. The boys were beaming. Please pray for a boy named Dima who was in Carol's group. At only 12 years old, he feels God cannot forgive him for what he has done. Carol's heart was broken as she was describing to us how he looked as he confessed what he felt from his soul at such a young age. We pray that this week made a difference that gave him some hope that, yes, God can forgive him and that God does love him.

It was a challenge to be able to teach at Camp Viktoria every day, but we did get some stories and small group times in. Some days they had a program and we taught afterwards. One day they went to the Sea, so we went to the Sea to play with them. We also came back in the evenings and went to their disco time and spent time playing ball, making bracelets, doing sidewalk chalk, or just sat and talk. We firmly believe that the "hanging out" time is crucial to building the relationships that help these children trust us and grow to trust and believe in God.

On our Salvation message day, each group had about 8 kids who prayed to receive Jesus as their Savior. WOW! We were so excited! We did not have a lot of teaching time there, yet God still worked in their hearts in a mighty way.

One of our main concerns is that there is not much in the way of follow up with the children. There are some local churches and we are praying that some will get more involved with helping out in that area. Some of our translators do work with the orphans through out the year so they are not left alone the rest of the time. What we would also really love to see is for them to be in a Christian church full time.

We hated saying good-bye to our kids last night. It's always so hard. It breaks our hearts to leave them behind. Hopefully some will be adopted; there is no life for them once they graduate. Just more to pray about! :)

Job 42:2 'I know you can do all things and that no plan of yours can be ruined.' This verse seemed to be the theme of the day. After many of Satan's attacks, God's plan of taking the orphans to church prevailed. Even though our bus driver never showed up and our team had to split up to use public transportation, we finally made it to church. The children loved church and afterwards we treated them to McDonald's. They ate so much and were happy and full by the time we dropped them off back at the camp. Today is our second to last day to minister to the children. We are presenting the gospel today at Fontanka and Viktoria. We need your prayers as we teach about the amazing gift of salvation.

Great weekend!

Saturday was a great day in Odessa. Because we cannot teach on Saturdays and Sundays, we usually do shopping and touring on the weekends. The team went to the very large market for a few hours to buy lots of gifts for a very good price. The translators, as usual, were a very good help in this. Igor, Carol, and I went to visit an old friend, Alyona, and her little baby girl, Maria, and little 2 year old, Mark. We enjoyed our fellowship time of catching up and hearing of all the things that God is doing in the ministries that God has been leading her and her husband to do.

We caught up to the team and bought $200 worth of sheets for the kids at Camp Viktoria. The director asked if we could do this. After lunch we headed to camp and met with the director who was happy to see us. He was very thankful for the sheets and allowed us to come and see the kids. The kids were going to be heading to the park for a pre-planned game so we were not able to teach a lesson but we went with them, played with them and visited with them. Some teachers heard the Word of God from one of our leaders.

Of course the kids loved being loved on and many new kids were there to get to know us. Our new team members made lots and lots of new friends and those of us who have been there many times made lots of new friends as well. It's always awesome to see how God creates strong bonds right away. We know His Word goes deep in their hearts when these close relations are created.

After dinner we went back to camp for their disco time. Of course we can't really talk during this time because of the loud music but it's just a fun time to be silly and play with the kids. Our teen age boys had little boys on their shoulders dancing around and they were loving it. I was able to visit with some older girls whom I have known for at least 7 years. One of them picked me up and twirled me around. She's a big, strong girl and will be going to Korea soon for a boxing championship match. I guess she's pretty good! :)

My personal favorite part of the night was when my little boy, Kostya, who is 14, came to sit by me. We couldn't talk because the music was so loud. He asked if I wanted to go for a walk and OF COURSE I did! We went for a walk and talked and talked. He knows English so we had a great talk and caught up on how our year has gone. I didn't mean to cry but I did; I just miss him so much. He held my hand and said, "please don't cry or I cry too". I tried very hard not to. He's precious.

I forgot to mention that we asked the director if we could take kids to church again. We were allowed to take 12 so we had to give him the names and make a list. We were so excited we were given permission again and prayed that no one would misbehave or runaway.

Sunday morning came. The bus did not come. We had a few choices. We could just go to the church that was near by and give up since we had been waiting and waiting and we could consider this a closed door. We would be late for church since it was an hour away. But, there was no way we were going to disappoint those kids and not show up. So, Igor came up with a plan that he and Carol would take a city bus and pick the kids up and meet up with us at church. Two other translators would take the rest of us on another city bus or two and go straight to church. We were right on time and the kids were about 5 or 10 minutes late. God is so good! The service was wonderful and the kids 14 and under even got to go to a Sunday School class, which they loved.

We took them to McDonalds afterwards and my friend, Vova, who is now 21, met us after church. He also met us at the mall on Saturday. I've known Vova since he was 14 years old. McDonalds was a lot of fun and the kids ate so much.

We spent part of our day shopping and touring Odessa since we could not go to the orphanages on Sunday. Sunday evening we went to Igor's church to play Volleyball with his youth group and had a praise and worship/fellowship time. They always invite us to do this when we are in town.

Please pray for us as we can feel satan attacking. There is a battle raging and we can feel it. It's exhausting. We are putting on the full armor of God; He is so much more powerful than any attack the enemy can put on us, but it's still no fun being attacked. We're tired, it's over 100 degrees every day and we are on the go all the time. This morning it's very cool but it won't last long. Igor will talk to the director of Fontanka in just a little while this morning to see if we can teach there this morning. We can teach for sure but the time may change. It may be tonight but we will find out. We know God is in control and His plan is perfect.

Please also pray that we will be able to teach at Camp Viktoria. We never know before we get there whether or not we will be allowed to teach. It always depends on if there is another program there or not. Last year, even though there were other programs scheduled, God opened the door for us to be able to teach every day and many kids accepted Jesus. He is more powerful than any schedule.

Thank you for your prayers!

Leaving the village

Exciting news:

"On our way back to Odessa. Had a wonderful time of ministry and great fun connecting and playing with the children. Many trusted Jesus for forgiveness of their sins. We said one last prayer together as we circled around the orphans. No dry eyes as we said special goodbyes. The director gave us a blessing and they all want us to come back next year! Tomorrow we will visit Camp Viktoria; pray that we will easily connect with the children and that we will be able to present our program."

The above update was sent by Carol.....

In the mean time...Pam (mwoa) got to Ukraine safe and sound today. I flew in to Odessa and found my friends, Viktor and Artyr waiting for me in the airport. It was so great seeing them again. Artyr took the bus to his home and Viktor took me to his house since the team wasn't there yet. Viktor's wife made a delicious meal full of fresh vegetables, meat, salads, bread, and Ukrainian dishes. It was the best food I've had in 2 days. We ate outside in their beautiful back yard. Diana has planted several fruit trees that have grown so much since the last time I've been there. She has also added a fish pond with a little fountain. So nice and relaxing. I was so spoiled after being on that plane for so long.

After a long nap, Viktor took me to the Kindergarden where I met up with the team. I was so happy to see of all them and my "son", Igor! We all caught up, ate dinner, and then went to the store to buy water, exchange money, and buy chocolate.

When we returned we had an awesome praise and worship time. After singing, and thanking God for all He's done, we had a share time. I especially enjoyed the share time because I got to catch up on a lot of what I missed.

It sounds like there was a lot of opposition about our team going to the village even once they got the ok to go. Igor had to call Kiev and get things worked out. It wasn't easy but he worked out everything.

Some of the stories were how the director's heart has really softened towards our group coming. She has been pretty stern in the past but she gave a little speech on how much she appreciated them being there and how much the kids love them.

One person from our team bought 3 bikes for the orphans. Needless to say, they were overjoyed with this gift! The director said it has been their dream to have bikes.

Many kids shared stories of how "their kid" came to Christ. They shared about how deeply in love the kids were with them and visa versa.

One shared how he and his teenager, who hung out with last year too, just sat and locked eyes and talked back and forth, barely noticing that the translator was translating every word they were saying.

God is moving. Many seeds were planted and much fruit was harvested. How exciting to be a part of it; especially for those who came for the first time.

Tomorrow is Saturday and Carol and I will go visit a friend, Alyona, who had a baby about 2 months ago. The rest of the group will go to a huge market where you can buy anything and everything for a very good price. We will meet them there. At 4, we will go to Camp Viktoria, then dinner, then back to Camp for Disco, if all goes well.

We may have the opportunity to teach tomorrow at Camp but we do not know yet. Please pray for God to open this door.

Oh, I found out when I got here that my son, Trent had been sick with fever this past week. Possibly strep. Please pray that no one else gets sick and that we all stay healthy and strong. The moms on the trip took great care of him and he's doing great now.