Back in the Swing of Things (Part 1)

Well as you all know I have been away in the Ukraine for a few days. We arrived back in Germany on Monday afternoon, but I didn't get back to Freiburg until Tuesday morning. At least the girls arrived back on Monday, the poor guys, after multiple break downs in more than one van, didn't arrive home until sometime Tuesday afternoon. I am really glad to be home! I really missed my Phamily! Dariah wouldn't even come to me when I first got home! But it didn't take long before she forgave me and let me hold her again!

The outreach was great, it is hard to put into words all that happened. I will most likely be posting more than once on this subject. We were in the Ukraine ministering at a boarding school. The kids all had families, so they weren't orphans, but they stay at the school on weekends too. I'm not sure how often they go home, but I don't think it is that often. One of the girls on our team from Hungary went to a boarding school when she was in High School and she said they were only allowed to go home once a month.

Apperantly it is not uncommon for kids to go to boarding schools in Eastern Europe. The school we were at is a very good school, academically, from the graduating class last year all but one went on to University. The kids are between 14 and 18 years old, it is basically the last 3 years of High School.

We arrived on Thursday evening and left again Sunday night. We weren't sure exactly what we'd be doing, but the plan was to offer sports for the students and sort of 'play things by ear' and see how they would work out.

It wound up that the school made 2 hours of mandatory sports on Friday afternoon, from 4-6, and 4 hours on Saturday from 11-1, and again from 4-6. We offered Soccer, Basketball, American Football, Baseball (wiffelball), and Ultimate Frisbee. One person from the team was responsible for each sport; the rest of the team played which ever sport interested them. I was in charge of baseball (since it is the only one I can somewhat play and know the rules for!). Not only did we do these 6 hours of mandatory sports, we would also toss around the football before meals and stuff, and some of the team would play Basketball in the Gym after the evening Bible session for about an hour or so.

I haven't done that much sport since I was in High School, and that was 15 years ago!!!! By Sunday night I could barely move! Every muscle in my body hurt, even some I didn't know I had! It was a blast though! The kids really enjoyed it. It was fun to see those who came out to play because they HAD to, begin to have fun and get in to it. I had amost the same group of girls for Baseball each time. A couple of them really didn't want to play at first but the next day they were actually trying to catch the ball instead of just watching it fall. I'm very glad it was wiffelball, plastic bat and plastic ball, because the bat often went further than the ball!! More than one of us got hit with the bat whether behind home plate or pitching.

On the last day we even had a few little boys from the village join us. They had already checked out all the other sports. They caught on quickly, I think they must have watched a lot of Baseball on TV because the one boy in centerfield would lay down every time a ball came to him and he would throw it from that position to the bases, just like the pros when they make a sliding catch and don't have time to stand up to throw it! It was pretty classic!

I don't have any pictures yet, someone else on out team took all the pictures, so I will hopefully get some soon. I do have a couple that I took with my cell Phone on the last night, when we said goodbye.

There is so much more I want to share but it will have to wait for another time. I was blessed by the trip, probably more than the students were! God is so awesome and faithful in all things!! To be continued...


These are two of the girls who played Baseball everyday (Edina and Soche). I'm sure I spelled the names wrong! They were so sweet!



















These are 3 more girls from the school and 2 from our team. The girl in the blue sweatshirt with the braids (Anita) was our pitcher for Baseball.