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

Yesterday we had our last day of classes at Summer English Institute (SEI) and the graduation followed. It was a very busy three weeks for students, teachers and staff. This was Shannon's second time doing SEI (first time 2 years ago) and Scott's first time.  Youth singing at graduation  Graduation This is an incredibly busy time and it also gets very tiring with not only classes but other events interspersed into the days as well. We drove in every day but one (stayed in a hotel after our SEI closing party) as we have chickens and a garden to look after (we are eating our grapes and watermelon). Each day takes around 45-50 minutes to go from the village to where the classes are held.  First grapes from our vines   First watermelon!  Photo from hotel  Hotel photo  Hotel photo   Hotel photo Despite the fact that you get tired with the passing of each day, this was an amazing opportunity. Most of our teachers flew i...

Life has been busy with Summer English Institute (SEI) in full swing. We entered our second week today and there hasn't been much time for anything else. We are driving in from the village every day and putting on about 105 kms per day. We have four classes each day, Monday through Friday. On Thursday after class, we held a surprise birthday party for Clay. Clay is from Prince Albert, SK and has been coming for at least 10 years. It was great to take some time to celebrate a milestone with Clay and enjoy some great desserts.  Clay's in the green and white Rider shirt celebrating his birthday  SEI staff at Clay's birthday We were then back in the city on Saturday for the Annual SEI Picnic where there was an amazing turnout of present day students and students from past years, along with family members. There was lots of good food and visiting.  Lots of visiting at the picnic  The game of "Spot It" at the picnic  Intense action! ...

Since our last blog, we have been pretty much inside working on SEI (Summer English Institute) and Russian. With the deadline of SEI fast approaching, this has been our primary focus. All of our yard work has come to a standstill until September when we will put a couple paths into our back yard and seed the rest to grass. This would have been a great week to plant grass as we have had three rains producing three quarters of an inch. This is a huge blessing for the crops still growing like the corn and sunflowers. Garry's wheat is pretty much harvested and they have trucks coming in and hauling it to market. Right now the temperatures have cooled off to 26-28 C. The nights are cooling off nicely and that is a blessing as the house can be cooled off. There is more rain in the forecast for Monday and the temperatures are staying in the high 20s for the next 10 days. Hopefully they are right, as we have moved into our classrooms with Monday as our start date. On Friday...

Learning Russian continues to progress even though it seems it is a snail's pace! Ulzana has us each doing different things as I could no longer keep up with Shannon's pace and I felt like I was drowning trying to keep up. I am doing more basic stuff with a lot of repetition. When I work on it for an extended period, I can definitely see the difference that all the repetition makes. Now I just have to keep working at it, although July will be a different pace as Summer English Institute (SEI) is less than two weeks away from beginning. So there is lots going on and there is a short time to get it done, especially with SEI looming close. We both have a good handle on the topic we will teach on, but right now there is a lot of bones, so to speak, and we need to get some flesh on them bones so that SEI can be an enjoyable time of meeting new people and seeing how the teaching can impact their lives. As we continue to work on the yard, we are getting there. There was big pile o...