By week 9....
Slowly, but surely, the kids have started coming back to us again. Their parents are once again trusting us and allow them to come over. It was really hard to gather them when we wanted to do some kids activities so a couple of us went around, meeting the parents and talking to them. That has helped them be more open to us. Praise God. Over the last couple weeks we have done some activities with them and they just come over to hang out with us.
It was Tanya's Birthday on July 24th. We tried to make the day as memorable as possible for her.
During this time, we have continued living our typical life- washing dishes in buckets, cooking over the camp fire (we recently got a better stove!), washing hair in bowls (until we got our shower).
Tolya joined our group. We're really grateful for what he's done for us- we finally have a shower! And then some of the other guys made a bathroom for us! We're progressing!
We found a mouse in our house! Gross, but the guys took care of it..
Tanya left our group at the start of August. We all went to see her off at the train. That was another entertaining running after the train experience.
The day we had to drive Tanya to the train station, the van didnt want to start. The guys tried push starting it, but it didnt work until they did something with the engine.
Week 10.
This was an amazing week for us. We've been praying for this village for months and all of a sudden, one evening, a bunch of youth randomly piled into our yard. We were watching a movie that day and after the movie ended we turned on an informational video about drugs. Surprisingly, most of them stayed throughout the video and even came the next day. Ever since then, our house has constant visitors. God is really blessing us! Thank you for all your prayers! Throughout this week we had bonfires almost daily and really got to bond with the youth. Its amazing because they're really interested about God and why we're here.
The girls (Alina, Olga, Nina, Inna) went to the bookstore to help T. Vera who we met when we were walking through the streets. We just helped them dust, clean and iron. One of the other ladies (Oksana) that was present there confessed to us afterwards that she was really scared that we were going to come and tell them what kind of sinners they were and that they needed to repent. They were pleasantly surprised when instead we just waited for them to start asking questions about who we are and why we were here. We were happy to answer all their questions and tell them about God when they themselves became curious about him. We believe that works better than forcing it upon people.
Week 11.
The local church let us borrow thier trampoline, which we set up in our yard and the kids come over daily.
Nina left. She was hoping to prolong her ticket but due to unforseen circumstances, she had to leave earlier than expected.
Victor Lebedev (our teacher from SMBS who's from Washington) came with a couple of guys (Paul, Eddie, Val) to visit us in Ukraine. While he was here, the local church set up an evangelism tent in our village on the school property and we had a church service every evening for 5 days. With their help, we were able to reach a people in our village that we were not able to as much before. The older people that we are friends with that we typically visit one on one really enjoyed the services and we got to meet more youth as well. Victor spoke at the services along with Yevgeniy (from the local church) and Paul, Val and Eddie sang.
Week 12.
After the tent evangelism services have ended they moved the tent onto our property so now its the hang out spot for the youth every night. Its amazing. They come every day, some of them just hang out with us all day long, others come in the evening after work, some even sleep over under the tent if its too late. We have gotten really close to the village youth that comes over all the time. They have really opened up to us and share their life stories. Since there's not much going on the village, alot of them used to go to the bar, but now we're their other, better, alternative. Its amazing to see what God has done in the lives of some of the youth. Yes, they do still struggle with things, but they're definitely changing thier lives around. Some of them have already stopped doing drugs, by the grace of God, and have changed their bad ways. Many of them have told us how they prefer coming to our house, where they know they're welcome, rather than getting drunk at the bar and have people make fun of them. They're really interested in God and ask us many questions late into the night. A couple of them have been forced to choose between us or their old friends and we praise God that they're still with us. One of the boys recently told us that he wants to help his old friends to turn to God like he has once he's completely on his feet. Some of them have started going to the local church with us on Sundays and two girls came up stage to repent and ask Jesus to come into their lives. Praise God. None of this is things that we could've done, all of it is trully God's work.
Misc Pictures-
Dima washed the dishes for us girls to give us a break. He's sweet!
When we got our house, we made an agreement with the daughter of the owner since she lives in Moscow. Last week, randomly she pulls into our driveway and tells us that she's the owner and that we need to leave in two days. We were very surprised but thankfully when Alex went to talk to her later she said she'd allow us to stay if we clean up the property within two days. It was already clean but we proceeded to cut down all the little trees and bushes in our front yard so now our property is completely visible from the street. Since then, more people have started coming over randomly. God works in mysterious ways.
Thank you for all your prayers and support! Please continue praying for us and the people of Avgustinovka!
