July means retreat. Retreat means staying in the village and stayin in the village means relaxation.

Group shot

Every July we have our annual staff retreat. It’s a time to get away, to hide from the busyness of ministry and rest together.

Everyone comes prepared to camp out in tents for two nights/three days. The дача (country cottage) is reserved for fixing food and for a few people to sleep in. We take time to just chat, eat, pray, eat, play games, eat, worship, eat, take walks, and eat some more. There is always good food, always.

Setting up home

Like flies to meat…

Roasting bread on a stick

Sometimes we have some kind of agenda or program. This year, our only agenda was to pray for each other and have some time of devotions. It was simple but refilling.

Worshiping together

Playing Dutch Blitz

Every retreat needs a hammock

Every time I come out to the дача I feel like I’m back at home in the country. You never know what you miss until it’s gone.

Highlights from this year are having four new staff with us at staff retreat, having a hammock, playing with a slack line, having a few bikes, making bread over the fire, and having Lance there was a huge personal highlight!

Resting together

Watching the sunset

If you have been receiving my email updates, you will see picture updates of the building that is in progress. (If you don’t receive my email updates and have always wanted them but didn’t know how to ask… you can click HERE to see last month’s update and then click on ‘subscribe’ in the top left corner to receive next month’s update!)

I always show pictures of the outside of the building since that has been the major part of the construction so far. Recently though, there has been some major progress on the inside and it is much easier to get up and down without remembering what it was like to crawl on a jungle gym.

For the first time today, I got a tour of the whole building! WOW! There is so much space and LOTS of possibilities! I’m super excited to see how everything will look when it is finished!

First floor:

Dining Hall

The kitchen is also on the first floor but I couldn’t get a good photo of it.

Second floor:

There are two classrooms and an office on the second floor with some lounging space.

“… and this is what a conjunctive adverb looks like.” Future statement in the future classroom.

April can’t wait for this classroom to be filled with students!

Potential office

Third floor:

Third floor is mostly all bedrooms. There are 4 showers (2 girls, 2 guys) which I didn’t bother to take a picture of since they are really just dark looking brick closets right now. There are four bedrooms total on the third floor.

Bedroom for the geometrically inclined

Double balconies in the bedroom? Yes, please!

Fourth Floor:

“He leads me into a spacious place…”

Fourth floors is really a glorified attic that will be turned into a living space. A place to relax, hang out, sleep, chat, it’s a multipurpose room! There is also space for another bedroom.

View toward city center (west)

View to the east

Looking to the south

There is also a basement to our new building. I couldn’t get any pictures since there isn’t any lighting there yet. The basement will be used for community events and storage space.

Two funny moments come to my mind from our TESOL time.

Moment #1

This is just an embarrassing moment for me, but it still makes me laugh. Let me introduce you to Doug. This is our TESOL instructor, the same one who taught me back in 2010. He’s a one-of-a-kind teacher.

Doesn’t he look like the kind of guy who deserves a noogie? If you knew him, you would agree. He likes to crack jokes and tease so he really does deserve a noogie.

Well he was being his usual self, teasing me for something or other, doesn’t matter. I’ll just tell you here that I was not in my right mind, I had just returned from a crazy bus ride that lasted all night and I was still reeling from the lack of sleep.

Doug made some smart remark and I simply responded with “Oh I just want to give you a noogie!” At least that’s what I said in my head. What actually came out was not noogie, but wedgie. Two very different things let me tell you. We had a good laugh about that one for quite a while.

Moment #2

Now that I have described Doug a bit you might also sympathize with what happened one day in class. Doug was teaching along, doin his thang. My fellow ruffians, Allison and Joanne, and I had had enough of his jackaboo antics and thought ‘we’ll teach him!’ We stormed the classroom and took over! Mutiny happened in Ternopil!

Yep, this really did happen. We tied him up, duct taped his bearded face, shoved him to the back of the class and took over the classroom. We taught for the rest of the day while he had to just sit there and listen.

The only referendum I have to make to this story is that it was actually Doug’s idea. Yeah, he wanted some fun way to change gears in the teaching and to introduce Allison, Joanne, and I to teaching the class. We taught on what it was like to use English in missions. He talked us into the mutiny idea, but we sure enjoyed doing it though!

Once upon a time, I had the fun privilege of visiting an after school/work tutoring program that runs in the center of the city. A strong king invites people to come and pay to be part of a class for extra English lessons. This is open to kids, fairies, and adults a like! I have been in contact with one teacher and a shepherdess who has asked me a couple of times to come and be a part of her class. My most recent visit involved me and a talking shoe to take part in one of their teacher seminars and afterwards teaching a short lesson in a classroom in a cave.

Speaking to teachers (not in a cave)

I like to use a fun little game called Once Upon a Time when I teach. This is a game that is all about storytelling as you may have gathered. Stories usually sound like the one above, just complete nonsense. (The previous story is true if you take out the randomness.)

Making a storyline

Students have fun learning to create a story based on cards that they drew from a deck. The objective of the game is to weave a tale using storytelling cards you pulled from a deck to arrive at a predetermined ending. These can range from a wide variety of cards, you can have words like strong or weak, king or queen, forest or castle, fairy or giant, ruins or broken… the list goes on. The ending of the story is also chosen from a deck of possible endings. You can have the classic, ‘and the lived happily ever after,’ or ‘the evildoers were thrown into a well and never heard of again,’ or perhaps ‘and he picked up his weapon and went on his way.’ There are many options but you can only arrive at one ending!

Sharing the rough draft

My time at the tutoring program was fun. Students created stories that had magical changing forests, armies of devils, and sleeping beauties. They were very creative and ready to share. I look forward to being able to come and partner with this program in the future!

Working hard on stories

I can’t put any other words to it. How else can you say it?

My days of singledom are numbered!

I’m looking forward to tying the knot.

We’re taking the plunge and I’m changing my name!

Gettin hitched sounds great right now.

Seriously, I will be Mrs. Megan Roberts in a little over six months! Life just can’t get any better, except if maybe I was getting married tomorrow….

I will be marrying Lance Roberts this fall. I can’t wait to start a new journey together with Lance!

P.S. A good friend of both Lance and I offered to take some photos of the two of us around Ternopil. We had a lot of fun running around the parks taking photos! Thanks Masha!