T.E.A.M. Ukraine is a ministry of the Evangelical Free Church of Canada Mission

Sorry that it has been a while since our last post. We have been studying Russian, painting the porch floor, doing lots of gardening, yard work, digging tulips, setting our chickens free to roam in their own personal park, tuning up an old lawn mower, a wiener roast and birthday party with the students, hanging a fence, burning some more tree branches and moving gravel. Lots going on and sometimes writing a blog is the last thing on our mind. When we arrived here in November, there was a lot of things in our porch and slowly but surely, it has been emptied out and cleaned out. Shannon decided to paint the floor and it looks amazing! She did a great job as she did each half at a time. The paint smell was incredibly strong and we don't have any windows that open, but hopefully we can remedy that at some point. It would also be great to allow some of the summer heat to escape.  New coat of paint and a deep freeze Something we have started to do i...

This past Tuesday, all of the staff from Hope For Each traveled about 30 minutes the other side of Dnipro for our first ever staff retreat. It was a great opportunity to get away for a couple of days to receive some teaching on working with orphans. In the evenings we spent time together and different games were played. The place where we stayed provided breakfast and Teresa did a great job in blessing us with good meals the rest of the time.  Garry and Max  Vika, Max and Yulia's daughter, getting ready for our first supper  Matthew (Max and Yulia's son) For our retreat, we brought in a brother and sister from Dnipro, Jenya and Ira, who taught us much about the life of an orphan and helped us better understand the attitudes and actions that are hard for those of us to understand who were raised in a good family atmosphere.  Jenya  Ira We looked at different stages in the life of an orphan and so much of it depends on WHEN they became orphan...

Easter Monday was a holiday of sorts. No classes for the students, a guest speaker from Youth For Christ, and we had guests for supper. We did yard work until it was time to go to the school to hear Steve share with the students. They played a few games before Steve shared a message about how God loves each one and how we can love Him back. After a few more games, all the ministry personnel had supper (ham, scalloped potatoes and cheesecake) at our house.  Games with the students  More games  Steve sharing with the students   Games after supper on Easter Monday We worked at putting up the fence in the front yard. Scott dug 10 holes and then we made cement and hauled it in the wheel barrow to solidify the posts. Things worked out well - the posts are firmly where they need to be!  Working on our fence  Mixing cement for fence posts  Making sure the posts are straight I scraped half of the porch floor and painted it Friday morning before...