Every year, we give vacation to all our staff for about 10 days during the holidays. Most staff are away visiting family while just want time to rest. Lance and I decided to rest some at home but to also get away and explore a new place. Lance and I have discovered that exploring energizes us and refreshes us. For our new adventure, we decided to explore Krakow, Poland.

Krakow is not far from Ternopil, it took us about 7 hours to drive there, that is including the time at the border. Krakow is a city rich in history and legends. It is the site of Schindler’s Factory and it’s not far from Auschwitz. There is also lots of history dating further back than WWII of course and to learn about it Lance and I went on a walking tour. Two free walking tours to be exact. Volunteer tour guides took people around the city and give a history lesson on the various sights.

The dragon of Krakow, it really does breath fire!

Not only did we learn about the city but Lance and I took time to go to Ikea (we don’t have Ikea in Ukraine,) we saw the Hobbit in English (we can’t see movies in the theater in English in Ukraine,) found an English used book store, and ate some food not found in Ukraine (Indian and Thai!) We spent our evenings reading together and resting.

Lance and I were in Krakow during the festival of the three kings which is all about Epiphany. I was so confused when someone told me that it was Epiphany since we knew Epiphany to be a different date and for a different reason. In the Orthodox church it is to celebrate when Christ was baptized. I forgot that Poland is very Catholic and that Epiphany was an important holiday in the Catholic church. It was fun hearing the churches ring bells and to see people hurrying to church. I love that Epiphany is all about the revelation of God the Son as a human being in Jesus Christ. What an important thing to recognize and celebrate.

Our base has joined forces with the other YWAM bases in Ukraine to help relief efforts in the east. Our base has been at the forefront of the work by hosting families from the east as well as sending supplies and people to help and encourage those there.

Art therapy

We have hosted a number of families to come for a respite at our base. These families are not looking for a new home in the west, but are wanting to remain in the east to help others left behind with out any way to leave. They continue to help others, encourage people, and give aid where aid is needed. We felt it was important to be able to give them a break and fill them up as they have been pouring out to others.

Most recently, we prepared 100 gift bags to give to soldiers. We wanted to send some Christmas cheer to those away from families and loved ones. Each bag was filled with chocolates, candy, a flashlight, a pair of socks, a card, razors, gum, and coffee. Some of our staff went to the east to deliver the gifts and to also give extra warm clothes, Bibles, books, sausages, nuts, oranges and homemade goods. They also brought a coffee maker and plan on making fresh coffee for the men.

The relief work that we have been organizing and participating in was featured on the main YWAM website, you can read about the last trip HERE. If you would like to help financially with the work, you can click HERE and choose Ukraine relief from the drop down menu.

2014 marks the first year that we had a women’s Christmas Tea. One of our staff members used to live in Crimea and has hosted teas before so she was able to lead the way in hosting the first in Ternopil. It was a miracle that it all came together and a miracle that we had room for everyone. We originally planned for 30 ladies, but we had space for 48. Guess how many ladies showed up? Yep, 48 exactly!

All the the ladies on staff, cooked a whole bunch of yummy goodies, I can testify that the ladies on staff know how to bake yummy goodies. There is no doubt about that! We had two tables full of delicious and delectable treats and one table full of tea and hot chocolate.

Yummy food!

We had door prizes galore and many people were surprised at the generosity displayed. I led a time of doing a craft together. Everyone got an orange, some cloves and a ribbon. It was easy for people to push the cloves into the orange to create design of some sort. It was a simple air freshener for the home.

We also had several games that involved people getting up and getting to know other ladies. I led a game where two teams had to race to unwrap a gift while wearing over-sized gloves.

Sharing a message of hope.

Two of our staff members spoke during the evening. Both ladies were able to share of God’s love and forgiveness to a crowd of women whom many had not heard of what God has done for them. It was the perfect way to share the Gospel during this season. There was also some live music to entertain the ladies and the evening ended with a Christmas ornament exchange where everyone got to go home with a new ornament for their tree.

Everyone enjoyed the evening, everyone went home with a fun goody bag and a message of hope for the holidays.

Our base celebrated Christmas together on December 26th. In Ukraine, Christmas is on January 7th so we celebrate early so that everyone can be with their families on the holiday.

Since Lance and I love games and just having fun in general, we have tried to incorporate games in our family nights at the base. Of course there is always a feast and we always feast first.

Working together to decorate a tree… with toilet paper!

After the feasting has finished, we games can commence. Lance led the different games of writing captions for Christmas comics, contest for decorating a mini Christmas tree and a Christmas ornament relay. Everyone participated, kids and adults alike.

After our game extravaganza, the kids had a little Christmas pagent to put on for us. Everyone enjoyed seeing the kids perform, who doesn’t like seeing kids dressed up as sheep?

The evening ended with our own Christmas exchange, we drew names the week before and everyone was prepared to give a gift to their special someone. Of course in order to open the gift you had to guess who gave it to you. We were thankful for the time together and the past year, we are all looking forward to the upcoming year!

Every year we have a Christmas party for English club, every year we have lots of food, every year we have the Christmas gift exchange. Everyone loves to come and have fun. We usually sing some carols, share what we will be doing for the holidays and then have our gift exchange.

It is always fun to see how people react to the gift exchange. We do the classic “steal” the gift game. This is really hard for people to understand and to accept. Some people just can’t bring themselves to take a gift from someone. (One year, for our staff party we did the gift exchange and the only people who stole a gift were the two Americans…) Somehow our English club has managed to get over the usual hesitation of stealing and they really get into the game.

Group shot