Camp Friendship-Day Three

our hair fixing station...if you needed to blowdry or straighten your hair, this is where you had to do it

breakfast...see description below...just couldn't do this one

tapping out a daily email to Danny on my blackberry...turns out the emails served as a great record of the trip

the ladies that cleaned swept with these homemade brooms and mopped the floors on their hands and knees.

one of several examples of the beautiful dorm signs the girls made

Deanna teaching the boys what to do on their dorm signs

Eugene, one of our interpreters helping the boys to stay focused

these boys loved the "dum dum" suckers one of their group leaders gave them. They especially liked the blue ones because it turned their tongues blue.

Eugene and Liza entertaining themselves with items from the craft cabinet

we were given two bottles of water a day and we were so hot and sweaty that I drank at least 1 and 1/2 a day.

grape ice cream...yummy

Anton and his wife Ira(not sure if I spelled this right)

the fabulous cookies with raspberry filling

Nastia, also a frequent visitor to our afternoon crafts to make bracelets.

Visiting Yosef and his kittens. Note the new knee pads!

Deanna and I were given these wreaths after the girls performed their festival dance. Perhaps they didn't know we were already married...

Shane and Marilyn with one of the ever present children glued to Shane.

This morning it was showers early as usual. Deanna and I are so used to the routine that we already have our crafts organized and ready to go the night before. This makes the morning much less stressful. We met at the flagpole again this morning. This was the first morning that I had to pull out the poptarts. I just couldn't eat a breakfast that was porridge with a piece of some part of a chicken and chicken broth poured over all of it. Deanna loved it. She said she was happy to have meat. Crafts this morning was a group project for each dorm. They made a "dorm sign" that was supposed to have something written on it about what Jesus means to them and also the names of everyone in the dorm. This project was hysterical. We have three groups that rotate in and each one was the same. The girls (who Deanna worked with) were organized and made pretty paper flowers for their signs. The boys (who I worked with) argued about who would write their name first, which way they would turn it, what they wanted to put on it, etc. By the time they finished arguing and writing, they only had time for a few stickers. It was so funny. The different dorms are filming movies for "Oscar Night" next week. We will miss it, but Deanna helped them make elf hats and a wicked witch hat for Snow White. We have a new helper starting today named Eugene. He was Danny's interpreter last year and he is really just a big kid himself. The kids like him and he appears to like working with the crafts. He helped make the poison apple. We also have an interpreter named Yulia that came to help us starting yesterday. She is very sweet and we need all the help we can get. She sits with me at night and interprets so that Tonya can interpret for Deanna. We have had a lot of rain and lots of thunder today, but the power did not go out. Lunch today was noodles and a meat pie that Deanna said tasted like Boudin. It was too much like meatloaf to me so I didn't eat it. We also had soup with potatoes and little bits of chicken in it. It was good. Afternoon crafts was well populated and they LOVE making bracelets with beads and thread. After crafts, we had an afternoon snack which was a fabulous big fat cookie with raspberry filling. It was delicious! Deanna and I went to the village this afternoon with Kayla and Maria (two summer workers). We also took along Steve, who is the North Monroe youth director, and two interpreters. We went to visit Yosef, a man in the village that Kayla and Maria have been ministering to. He is unable to walk and moves around on his knees. They ordered him knee pads to make it easier for him. He really likes his knee pads. He is also hard of hearing so we had to speak loud. He had two of the cutest kittens! Steve prayed for him before we left. We had hoped to visit a lady that has terrible sores on her legs, but she was not at home. We made it back to camp for supper which was liver patties, buckwheat, and a fried egg! This was the worst meal yet. Bread and butter for me. Actually I ate three pieces of bread and butter and THEN they brought out these fabulous poppyseed rolls. I only ate one, but they were delicious! Worship was interesting tonight. The activities got a little too focused on two Ukrainian traditions called The Festival of Fire and Light and The Festival of Love. Basically, the Festival of Love has to do with how and when young ladies will find their mate. They wear these beautiful wreaths on their heads made of flowers and then float them down the river. If it finds land, they will find a mate soon. If it continues down the river, then it will be awhile. There was just a lot of attention to the festival and the tradition. After the activities, one of the dorm parents spoke about how our lives are to be led by the Lord and not tradition. He brought the focus back spiritually and we closed with a praise song. So tired, but so fulfilled with the job we are doing here. Goodnight!

Camp Friendship-Day Two

Shane and Marilyn with one of the ever present children glued to Shane.

the corner where we hung our towels and had cubbies for our stuff

our beds...mine is to the left and deanna's straight ahead.

flagpole and calisthenics

crafts in the cafeteria

marijuana grows freely in the fields outside of camp on the way to the village. They call it the American drug.

the store in the village where they have COLD water in a cooler

the abacus

Shane and Marilyn's house in the village

one of many wells that the village residents draw their water from

Dasha and the goats that graze in the grass between the road

the school

lace curtains are seen in the windows of many of the houses

grazing on fruit from the many trees and bushes

a garden behind someone's house. We saw a lot of these.

a world war II bunker in the side of the hill.

lunch...see description below

steve(left) and jay(right)..the leaders of our group

Deanna and I with Joanne, one of our roomies

Deanna and I with Evelyn, our other roomie

We were up early again today at 6:30 a.m. I think that this will become our norm while we are here. I am not known to be an early bird, but that bright sunshine sure makes it easier. We really enjoy our roommates, Evelyn and Joanne. They have been here many times before and have been so helpful to get us settled in and used to the routine. This was our first morning at the flagpole. Calisthenics are really helpful this early in the morning to stretch out the kinks from sleeping on the hard beds. Unfortunately, my air mattress is rather deflated in the morning. Breakfast was a sweet porridge that had the flavor of flan, but not the texture. Deanna liked it, but I didn't care much for it. Bread and butter for me this morning. Today's craft was painting tote bags. This turned out to be rather messy and the kids LOVED the paint. We had VBS cowboy stamps and stencils for them to use. The most popular color of bags were green and orange among the boys, and pink and yellow among the girls. I was surprised that some of the boys actually chose pink too. Doing crafts in the cafeteria this morning was tough for me because the smell of lunch cooking made me a little sick. As a result, lunch didn't look very appetizing but tasted good. It was a hash made of potato, squash, and bits of meat. We also had a soup with potato in it. This is Ukrainian peasant food and Shane says it's some of the best they have had. Thank goodness! Today has been Sanitation inspection day which is very stressful for Shane and Marilyn, our camp operators and missionaries. Sanitation inspects everything and has very strange rules and expectations. Everything has to be unplugged, very clean and organized and all dorm food hidden away. If the camp doesn't pass inspection, it could be shut down so everyone has to do their part. I spent the afternoon crafts period on the computer with Expedia trying to rebook our flight back to Kiev from Lugansk. Expedia sold us tickets for flights that were too close together. Of course, they claim they are not responsible so the expense becomes our own. Deanna said we had about 40 in afternoon crafts. After crafts, we went to the village with Evelyn, Joanne, Dasha (married to Brian), and Angel (married to Sam). We bought ice cream at the store in the village. It's the only building besides homes, a local bar, and a school. The lady in the store computes with an abacus. She said it is easier for her than a calculator. It was fascinating. We then walked through the village, saw the home Angel and her husband rented last year, and tasted fruit off of every tree and bush we came to. It was a very interesting afternoon. We came back to camp just in time for dinner. Dinner was noodles with a little beef and a salad with cabbage and cucumbers. There were also big rolls with apple butter in them. It was pretty good. The evening message was brought to us by the youth leader of the Birmingham group, Wes. It was a great message. After that, there were acting competitions and then Disco again for the big kids. Our experience here has been very different from Mitch and Danny's of last year's youth camp. We have so many people in crafts, that we are unable to connect to anyone in particular. Most of the relationships we are building are with our interpreters and other camp staff. We have also enjoyed getting to know the North Monroe group better. They have a real heart for ministry in this camp and the young people they have brought are amazing juniors and seniors. Some of the youth have come back from a previous year. Well, the night is getting late and morning comes early.

Camp Friendship-Day One

the cafeteria where we ate and did crafts

the playground for the younger kids and the gorgeous flowers

the office building which was also where we slept

younger kids in organized play

these flowers were everywhere around camp...just beautiful

lunch - see description below

benches for gathering and visiting

kids would just come up and hug on us. Don't remember the names of these two

Yanna who loved to have her picture taken

evening worship

Our first day in camp dawned bright and early with a trip to the showers at 6:30 a.m. There are 274 kids in camp and with counselors and interpreters, the total comes to about 400. All of us use the same shower facilities which is a building with about 6 or 8 shower stalls. There is a schedule for the kids so we use it in the early morning. The fact that the sun comes up at 4:00 a.m. makes it rather easy to rise early. The water is heated by coal and doesn't get warm until 6:30 or we might even be in there earlier! Thankfully we have a toilet and sink in our building, but we share it with about 11 other people. It can get pretty stinky but at night I am thankful that it's in the same building. There is a ceremony at the flagpole every morning at 7:30 with announcements and calisthenics. We skipped it this morning to try and figure out where all of our craft supplies were in the extra suitcases that our team hauled with them. Deanna and I had loaded two duffel bags which traveled with us. Our first meal in camp was an oatmeal type of porridge with a fried egg on top. They also drink something that we call coffee/tea and it is just that...coffee and tea mixed together. We don't like it. Every meal also comes with bread and cheese. Butter is served with breakfast and supper but not lunch. I have a feeling I am going to be eating a lot of bread and butter! Deanna's appetite was still a little depressed, but I managed to eat my breakfast. Crafts went well considering we were terribly jetlagged and sleep deprived. We have two interpreters, Tonya and Liza. Tonya is an English teacher in Lugansk and Liza is a 12 year old former camper and this is her first year as an interpreter. We made salvation bracelets with the children and discovered that we would only have the younger groups in the morning and older children in the afternoon. This camp hosts kids from age 5-15 approximately. We have crafts in the cafeteria for about 3 hours each morning. There is no ventilation and the windows don't open. It is pretty warm and humid outside. This should be very interesting. The power went out today delaying lunch until about 2:00. We were starving! We spent the time before lunch sitting outside by a cherry tree waiting to see what kids would come by. They love the sour cherries! We met a little girl named Yanna who loves to have her picture made. There was another little girl named Marina but she said her name was Paige. We don't know the story behind that, but they are cute kids. Lunch today was Borscht. We were told there are three types of Borscht, red, white, and green. We think it's the red borscht. Borscht is cabbage soup and tasted like cabbage soup, but it was really pretty tasty. We spent the afternoon in our room (which has a fan...thank goodness) resting and recuperating from the jet lag. The afternoon crafts time is very relaxed. We only had two boys today named Sasha and Jenya. We hope we have more tomorrow. We basically open up the crafts cabinet and provide them with supplies to be creative. These two really enjoyed making friendship bracelets with beads and embroidery thread. Supper was noodles with some sort of broth with a little bit of meat in it. There were also big, fabulous, sweet rolls. It was pretty good and Deanna finally found her appetite. They make a drink they call compote which is like boiled down juice from fruit. Everything is served warm or hot because they believe if you eat and drink cold things, you will get sick. There is also an underlying flavor of dill in EVERYTHING we have eaten. We have worship at night which begins with music, then a message, and then a break. After break, there is entertainment provided by different cabins. Tonight, Danny's friend Jeff brought the message. Entertainment was fun and after the program, there was Disco! We are exhausted! Thankfully, my roommate Evelyn and I managed to snag leaky blow up mattresses to put on our platforms. We gave our flat mattresses to Deanna and our other roommate, Joanne so they could double up. It's been a long day and time for lights out at 10:30.

Travel to Ukraine

Our day started bright and early 0n the 3rd with a trip to the airport. We were determined to get our boarding passes and make sure we had a seat on our flight to New York where we could catch our international flight. We were successful even though we were chastised again for having paper tickets. They refused to issue our boarding passes for any other portion of the trip, insisting that we would have to check in at the gate in JFK because we had paper tickets. I spent 2 hours on hold in the JFK airport with Expedia trying to figure out how we were going to get from Kiev to Lugansk because it was not a Delta airline and Expedia sold us the tickets. Expedia said Delta was responsible and Delta blamed Expedia which left us in the middle. Our flight from JKF to Kiev was uneventful although long at about 10 hours. We arrived in the morning of the 4th. Once we arrived in Kiev, we were met by Sasha, a beautiful dark skinned (thus her nickname "Dark Sasha"), precious young lady. She would serve as our interpreter because no one speaks English, only Russian. It turned out that we needed her help badly because we had to buy another plane ticket to Lugansk for each of us. The Lugansk airport was unable to even find us in their system despite the fact that we had paper tickets for the flight the day before that we had missed. They said Expedia was responsible and they could not reissue out tickets. We were surprised to find out that we have to pay for our ticket in Ukraine currency (hryvnia) and we had not brought much cash with us because we weren't scheduled to have an opportunity to spend much. A trip to the ATM and scrounging among us produced just enough for our two tickets. We had most of the afternoon to wait on the evening flight and decided to look around Kiev. We ate lunch at McDonalds which turned out to be a bad idea for Deanna. It wasn't long into our walk that we realized that we needed to go back and wait at the airport where we knew we could find decent restrooms. We would also be meeting with our North Monroe group to catch the flight to Lugansk as well as meeting their interpreter, Anton. Everyone arrived safe and sound and went through the boarding process without any problems. Our flight was delayed an hour but we had begun to roll with travel problems at this point. We were met at the Lugansk airport by Shane Duke and a BIG trailer. Traveling to the camp in the dark was interesting and we were met at the camp by a big bunch of staff. We were so exhausted we literally fell into our beds, but not before noticing that our beds were wooden platforms with a thin mattress. This was literally camp and we hoped we were ready for it because in the morning we would hit the ground running.

Ukraine 2010-Mission Trip

Deanna Minson, my pastor's wife and friend, was given a "mission trip" as a Christmas gift from her husband Mitch, our pastor. He asked if I would like to accompany her and I found myself preparing for my first overseas mission trip myself. We would be attending a small kids camp and doing a vacation bible school program with North Monroe Baptist Church and a church from Birmingham, Alabama. Deanna and I were in charge of crafts. Our mission trip to a tiny village in Ukraine outside of Lugansk started off with more difficulty than we could have imagined. We were to board a flight in Monroe, LA and fly to Memphis, Tennessee to catch our international flight. When we arrived at the airport, we learned that the flight we were to catch had been delayed several hours coming from Atlanta. This would mean that we would miss our international connection. After a lengthy conversation with Delta Airlines by phone, we were told that if we could make it to Memphis an hour before the flight, we would be able to retain our itinerary. Danny made arrangements to use the Terral Riverservice plane and we arrived at the airport over an hour before the flight. We were so excited until we stood in the ticket line for 30 minutes and then were chastised for having paper tickets that were issued to us by Expedia. In addition to that, we were told that we were 9 minutes too late to check our luggage for an international flight even though the flight wasn't leaving for another hour. We then stood in line at a different counter for 2 hours while Delta tried to figure out the paper ticket problem and rebook our flights for the next day. We knew that the last leg of our flight, from Kiev to Lugansk, would be an issue because it was not a Delta airline and Expedia refused to try to help us with the change in the tickets. Delta put us up in a hotel for the night and gave us vouchers for a light meal. Deanna got sick in the night and we never really determined if it was nerves or a stomach bug that had been going around Lake Providence before we left. Regardless, it was a pretty sleepless night for both of us.

Home from London and Paris

It's been a week since we returned from our fantastic trip. The jet lag is just about gone and we have all returned to our routine everyday lives. I am thankful that we were able to maintain the blog on our trip because it now serves as a reminder of everything we did. It all seemed to go by in a blur and now we can sit back and enjoy the memories. I can honestly say that I thoroughly enjoyed traveling with my family. My niece has grown into a beautiful, mature young lady with dreams of her own. There wasn't any bickering or complaining from anyone. We looked forward to every day and every moment and even when our feet felt like they were going to fall off, we somehow managed to take another step. My mom felt her age on this trip, but it didn't slow her down. While we were in London, she must have looked her age, because every time we got on the tube, men and women would get up to give her a seat. She must have looked a lot younger in Paris because noone moved to give up their seat on the metro! Yes we noticed the differences between the people of London and the people of Paris, but that is what makes them unique. My sister introduced us to all kinds of people I never would have even said hello to and I became even more comfortable navigating myself around in a foreign country or two.

We found out, after returning home, that London removes their trashcans periodically when they suspect potential bomb activity. Apparently trash cans are a favorite spot to put a bomb! Paris must not have that issue or maybe that's why all the trash cans in Paris are actually trash bags. Also the Degas ballerina is in the Crime and Punishment exhibit simply because Degas was a student of the belief that a person's inner criminal self could be discovered by studying the construction of their skull. He often incorporated some of his theories into his sculpture. Actually we think the museum wanted a little more money and just stuck it in there because it is so popular.

Our trip may be just a memory now, but as the memory fades, I believe that the relationships we renewed through our journey will remain strong.

Until the next journey....