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

If you have not heard of Jack Hart, you are missing out. He is one of kind and is incredibly talented. He is a great example of someone using their gifts and talents for God. I will just say that Jack was nominated for an Emmy for his work with David Copperfield and also worked on set designs for TV shows such as Super Password, Family Feud, and the Price is Right.

Jack has fun at English club

All that to say, he is a pretty cool guy who is willing to come all the way to Ukraine to teach and share the Gospel message with people. He stayed with us for about two weeks and he had an incredibly busy schedule. I just was not sure how to write up the time he spent with us. So I will just give a quick rundown of the few weeks that Jack was with us.

At the teacher seminar

The first week that Jack was with us, he spent some time doing art therapy with a few families that were staying at the YWAM base from the east. At the end of the week he taught in a teaching seminar for teachers of English. It was a great time for him to share with public school teachers and encourage them in their work.

When we all work together, we can create a beautiful rainbow.

He also helped with a family seminar where families from the community were invited to come together for a learning experience. He spent time with our staff, leading a staff training time. It is always great to have all the staff together to learn and have fun.

In between all the major events that Jack did, he squeezed in time to share in the public schools as well as several different orphanages. No one tired of seeing him do some tricks and “wow”d us with his slight of hand. One of the last things we did together was to have a family night at the base. This is when all the staff come together with their families for just some fellowship and fun. This time we had a Christmas craft night. People made snowflakes, cards, ornaments, and decorated cookies. And of course Jack gave a little show for the kids. Everyone had fun!

Since it has been such a busy year, Lance and I have hardly had a vacation. We managed to squeeze in a few days in mid November to make a trip to Lviv. Lviv is a beautiful city full of sites to see.

Here are a few pictures from on our way to Lviv.

And a few from in Lviv.

We were there right as fall was ending and winter was starting.

At Lychakiv Cemetery

The Lychakiv Cemetery is stunning in the fall

We had a great time away resting, and seeing some sights that we had never seen before. Lviv is a city that we often go to since it has the nearest airport. We have seen many of the normal tourist sights but there were a few we have never managed to go to. We also wanted to see a few castles on the way to Lviv but they were closed when we came.

Instead of telling you about what we did for a staff training time, I thought it would be more interesting to share what we learned.

Mary Jean Powers came to Ternopil for a week in which three days were set aside for staff training. She also spent time with our leadership team and with just Lance and I. The thoughts I will share with you are from our staff training time.

~We should be active blessers, blessing people should be normal and natural

~Things that God wants to use the most is where Satan attacks the most.

~Distractions take us away from people, hope and what God has for us.

~You need a strategy of how to keep your purpose and blessing.

~You won’t be able to disciple others until you are practicing spiritual disciplines.

~God has called us to be interdependent. Philippians 2:1-13

~Don’t just ask “What time is it?” We should follow the Greek word ‘kairos’ meaning “What is it time for?”

~Exodus 20:8 commands us to remember the Sabbath, and Sabbath is a day of rest.

~The Chinese word for “busy” contains the symbols for “heart” and “kill”

~To serve God is to do what he asks, not necessarily doing good things

~Jesus walked everywhere, he didn’t hurry, he didn’t run. Heaven is not in a hurry.

~Genesis 2:1-3 The first day that Adam was alive, was a day of rest. God gave him a day of rest before he “earned” it!

~If we forget to rest, we can forget who we are, we forget our families, we forget to be curious, to explore, to play, and how to have fun.

~It’s not honorable to exhaust the home of the Holy Spirit

~Honoring the Sabbath is to lay to rest the previous week and not drag it into next week

If you are interested in Mary Jean’s work and ministry, you can check her out at: Get The Word Out!

While everyone else was dressing up and collecting candy in the states, we celebrated Thanksgiving. Sometime ago, we decided to pick a new day for a day of Thanksgiving. This was for two reasons, at one point there were more Canadian staff than American and Canadians have Thanksgiving in the beginning of October. We needed a day somewhere in the middle of the two Thanksgivings. The second reason was, we thought it was funny to choose one holiday unique to a particular nation and have everyone celebrate it despite where they were from. The American holiday of Thanksgiving didn’t have much meaning to anyone else besides Americans. When we created a new day and made it all about being thankful, it had a new meaning and everyone could really get into the holiday. As a base, we chose the last Friday in October to be our day of thanks and this year that happened to be Halloween which is not celebrated at all here.

Besides the feast of food, we introduced some new games. We hung apples from string and had an eating contest. The kids loved it and even some adults got into it. This was the first time that we had played games during a family night. We had pumpkin bowling where we had to roll a small pumpkin down into squares with point values. This was a fun time filler for everyone. We played another game before we moved into sharing what we were thankful for.

Now we did not just stand up and share what we were thankful for, everyone does that. We had everyone sit in table groups and within their groups, share what they were thankful for and then come up with a creative way to present what the group was thankful for. We had some great presentations! We had a group rap, we had some creative readings and a few skits. Everyone enjoyed the process of sharing and laughing with one another.

Singing a rap

Dramatic reading

The evening ended with a dessert contest. When I originally announced the contest, I told people that the dessert had to have pumpkin in it. A few people had big eyes and worried looks on their faces and I suddenly remembered that pumpkin is not a common food in Ukraine and most people don’t know how to cook with it. I reworked the required ingredients to include pumpkin or apple. After all the scared faces and worried responses, I was the only one to submit an apple dessert entry!

The judges were very full by the end of the night!

We randomly selected two judges who had a nibble of each. There were seven entries; two pies, a pumpkin chiffon cheesecake, two types of cupcakes, some tarts and my apple pie. Since there were two judges, there were two winners. The pumpkin chiffon and one of the pumpkin pies won! There was a plethora of dessert options for everyone to choose from!