Almost there

Mom and dad great to hear that you made it home safe, we miss you guys so much out here... its not the same with you out... At the African Bible study David and Brian were asking where you guys were and we had to tell them that you had already gone home and they were sad to hear that you had left. As for the rest of the team out here we had a great morning doing some shopping (by we i mean the girls) and then we headed off to the university to meet up with David and Brian (two internation economic African students for those of you that are not mom and dad) and they took us to a house of one of their freinds who has 9 siblings, their mom passed away last year and the oldest sibling (19 years old) was taking care of the kids that were not in a orphanage... then we had the opportunity to share our testomines at the bible studies and we all did an amazing job, especially Natasha... not to much else happened on this end of Europe other than really missing the parents of our team.
Team Ukraine
P.S. i miss you Mike

Mom and Dad made it home!!

Hi (the remaining parts of) Team Ukraine!
It wasn't easy but we made it home, Mike and Lori are back in Vajta !!!!

Here are a few things to consider for your trip home:
1. Take your train ticket.
Yes we know that sounds simple, but it turns out it is not as easy as you may assume. That one slip of paper that has your car and cabin assignment, you know, the one that looks like a ticket, well, it turns out that is not actually a ticket.

I know what you are thinking "if it has the car I am supposed to ride in, and it has the cabin that has been assigned to me, And it has the city I am leaving from And it has the city I am going to, It Must be the ticket". If you follow that line of reasoning, you are (quite obviously) wrong. If it was that easy you would be in America.

It also turns out that no matter how much you explain what happened, it is not going to change things, you still don't have a ticket. (yes, I know what you are thinking... You would pray and let God sort this all out, if you were in this situation, but it turns out, at least for us, even God wasn't buying our excuse).

On the bright side, it is amazing how much you can actually communicate when you don't speak Ukrainian and the train guy doesn't speak English. "you owe me money" seems to do very well in any language without the need for complete comprehension of the language. One of the other things that was nice to see was that they could quote the price in Griven, Euro and Forints. I know God came through because when in complete frustration I opened my wallet, i actually had 20,000ft to give the guy, which is how much he wanted for our two tickets.

2. The second thing you should know is that this ride was much better than the last. it didn't feel like the tropics on the train. It was not hot and humid this time. It was really pretty comfortable. And this ride felt like we were riding in a cattle car. That was a huge improvement over the ride there, where it felt like the train driver was hauling cement.

3. You should also know it is a bit farther walk to the Areana Plaza from Keleti than it looks. (that new mall) We made it but if it wasn't for the 2 cups of Cappuccino Lori had i don't think we would have made it back to the metro.

4. The metro is open. Yes it looks like it is closed. Yes finding the entrance is kind of like a treasure hunt. But keep in mind, you will find it.... sooner or later.
(hint: turn left, go up on the street and look around)

5. Check elvira.hu before leaving. We had to change trains in Sarbogard. The other train was waiting for us to arrive, so it left a bit late from Sarbogard.

6. Call us from Sarbogard and we will come pick you guys up.

7. Jason!!! I miss you.

We look forward to hearing about the African Bible study and the pic-nic. You guys are the Best Outreach Team ever !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We love you guys,
Mike and Lori

PS Lori says we are sure you guys will be as happy to see us as we were to see Gwyn's smiling face when we arrived at the Vajta train station.

and
Here are two pictures you may not have seen yet of Jason. The first explains why he can be hard to find at the grocery store in the grapefruit section. The second is Jason with his son (in a few years).

Bye mom and dad

So today was our last day with Mike and Lori and they have become as parents to everyone on the team, it was super tough seeing them off. The day started off with team devos as usual and then for the first time we had everyone head out as a team (what a blessing that was). We headed down to the economic university again and Tanya (our fearless leader) and Patrica spent about 30 minuets sharing with them about their past working at Wally world and on a campaign trail. After a time of sharing the team broke up and we got to have some one on one time with the students and just hear about the things that drive them. Upon leaving we headed out for a team lunch at an amazing restaurant (sorry cant remember the name) and said good bye to Mike and Lori at that point. Upon leaving the restaurant we met up with a couple of the girls that we met at the high school and the English club on Wed. night and went ice skating with them, what a blast that was... p.s. your shins and calves will hurt after you skate (so says Jason and Tanya)... so we left the skating rink and headed out to get some pizza with the girls (well they had pizza and the girls had coffee drinks). Followed by some good ol fashioned shopping (yeah not a guy thing, but a humble heart helps to follow 6 girls in a store shopping... and some insanity)... so the girls bought a insane amount of chocolate (yeah i am jealous too)... so we finished up shopping and headed back to Marilyn's for some good ol fashioned team bonding... what a great time that was... well its off to bed for this blogger(and the amazing assistance of Tanya and Patrica... who are judging my work and now this is no longer my work but its their work... sad times), night night
Team Ukraine

Exhausted

Its so amazing that after 4 days our team continues to draw closer and closer to each other as the days pass. We started today off with a team breakfast which included french toast, bacon, ham, oranges and a variety of drinks for 10 people. As we started our day Mike and Tim continued to work on the site for the Ternopile Calvary Chapel... it looks amazing... http://golgofa.com.ua/... the rest of us went out and taught English at the high school again, this time 3 different classes, and we left exhausted but saw much fruit from the time we spent with the kids, they didn't want to say goodbye to us. After spending some time with Oksana we headed off to the english club where we meet up with a lot of the students that we had seen through out the week and we just spent a hour and a half hanging out with them playing Uno, showed them pictures of our families and bible college and had them ask us question. This was such a sweet time with the kids, they wanted to hang out with us one more time so they invited us to go ice skating with the tomorrow... After this we headed off to the mall to grab dinner and get some shopping done for the rest of the week... a exhausting day but a super fruitful day.
Team Ukraine

English Club anyone???

What a awesome and powerful God we serve. Today we had the blessing of going to a local economic university and speak with 16 kids in one of the classes. It started off with Tanya and Patrica talking for about 15 minuets each and then we broke off into groups of 2 or 3 students per each team member. We had a hour to talk with the students, no preset guidelines as to what to talk about, just talk for one hour... not as tough as you think it would be, these kids knew a great deal of English, it was a lot of fun talking with them. After that we journeyed over to a local missions traning school where all the kids have a heart for Muslim countries and we had the opportunity to spend one and a half hours talking with these kids... unlike the first school these kids did not know English, well didnt know it well enough to hold a conservation so we broke off into individual teachers and spent time talking with these kids and helping them to try and get a basic grasp on how to speak english. After one and a half hours our time was up and we were exhausted. Upon leaving we headed back to Tim and Christina for an amazing spaghetti dinner... All the while the team was out Mike and Tim stayed back at the apartments to work on getting the Calvary Chapel Ternopil Website up... Thats all we have for now, pray all is well with everyone out there.
Team Ukraine

Patrica's heart- Working with the students who are training at the mission's school for those called to serve in Central Asia was such an overwhelming experience. These men an women come from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kasakstan, and Ukraine. Those coming from Central Asia have experienced so much persecution already for their faith and yet their only desire is that those in their countries would come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. One pastor from Uzbekistan has watched over 100 people from his fellowship be arrested by the police for their involvement in the church. Their church has been locked up and they have been ordered to disperse. He asked for prayer for protection for his wife and 4 month old baby that he has yet to meet as they are in Uzbekistan while he studies in Ukraine. Another woman asked for prayer as she heads back in to her region of Uzbekistan where the police often molest and rape women who have turned from their Muslim religion and have put their trust in Christ.

Seeing their unbelievable strength in heading back into their countries knowing the danger and persecution was very humbling! While we were there to bless them, they blessed our hearts just to hear their testimonies and listen to all that God is doing in their lives. Despite the language barrier, these brothers and sisters have been imprinted on my heart!

God is good

What a encouraging first day. We started the day off as a team in prayer (what a difference prayer makes). After praying and having a team devo we went out to the streets for some good ol fashioned street evangelism. We broke up in to two teams of three, each team had incredibly good fortunes when they were out, the team of Tanya, Jason and Anaya (our translator) had the opportunity to share the gospel with a older gentlmen that had a very works based view on who Jesus was, where as the team of Patrica, Natasha, and Tim (the missionary we are working with) got the chance to talk with two 17 year olds and invite them to dinner and eventually to the English club.
After spending some time at the English club we went to a local High school / Middle School where we had the opportunity to run 2 different English classes, and they were both huge successes. The principle of the school came in and watched for a little bit and said to the teacher "they were like sunshine" referring to us as he was watching the children interact with us, as he had never seen them smile so much. After spending some time talking with Oksana (the teacher of the English class) we got invited to come back on Wed. and do three classes and the door is now open for the team that is permentantly here to go to the school and do English classes.
After this we had the opportunity to go out to dinner at a authentic Ukraine style resturant and we had the most amazing food... God blessed our daily tremendously. Praise Him for all that He has done and all that He is going to do.
Team Ukraine

We made it

After 20 hours of traveling from the Castle in Vajta to Ternopil, Ukraine we made it safely. We had a few interesting encounters on our way such as 2 hours of having the trains switched around and bounced off of one another like they were playing bumper cars with each other. So why is it that they are called sleeping cars, you really don't sleep in the car, its more like you kind of lay there and wonder why you are not asleep. We had the opportunity to meet up with Marylin and Tim yesterday (the two that we are meeting up with out here in Ternopil) over a wonder Mexican style meal, where we discussed the events that we are going to be taking a part of this week as a team.