Very Good Day

Hey friends,
Yesterday went by so quickly and so much happened. Its crazy how quick the kids get attached and I have 4 of them who are with me almost all the time, Svieta, Olosha, Sasha and Marica. One of the little girls is named Vicka. She wears her hair on top of her head and has bright blue eyes - so cute! She is usually very shy around me but today she let me hold her!!! One of the Ukrainian boys, Sergay, likes Lindsey and it is hysterical to watch her because she hates the attention, haha! Today at craft time we made visors and decorated them with foam stickers and of course the kids were sticking them all over me and Lindseys face. We looked funny and the kids lovedddd it!

Our group meeting tonight was really interesting.... Group meeting is when we all split into the 6 groups or teams the kids are in and only the leaders meet. Usually its just reviewing the day, serious stuff I mean. With the language barrier its harder to connect with the adults and teenagers but it was different tonight because we were all laughing and joking about each other. I think all of us left the meeting crying cuz we laughed so hard. It was so great to finally connect with them. After all the campers went to bed, we had our Grace meeting and we had a burn victim named Anatoni speak to us. He was burned head to toe, he has no ears, no really a nose, he just had surgery done to get eyelids and he has no hands, all from the fire. He is really hard to look at, at first. He looks like a skeleton, almost. Its hard to imagine what he goes through every day. He made a statement that really blew our minds. He said, "I know that God has complete control over my body and I am fine with anything he wants to do with it. Now I am glad that the fire happened to me because I am better now with God than I was before the fire without God." We all just kind of stared in shock when he said that. He is very humble and is a very smart person. I guess after you spend time with him you don't see the burns anymore, you just see his heart for God..... It is incredible! There should be pictures that you can see on our group blog at http://graceinukraine.wordpress.com/. After Anatoni left, we talked about what we are going to do tomorrow and the whole time all I could think about was "the trip is half over and how am I going to say goodbye?" We have all grown so attached to the kids, its going to be so hard to leave them. Also. it will be hard to say goodbye to Vicki our translator because she, Lindsey and me have grown very very close.

After a full day and evening, Lindsey and me went out at 11:30 to see Vicka. We all sat outside and talked for 2 hours. Its really cool to be able to talk with and connect with her. Before coming here, I didn't think I would bond with my interpreter but I did and it is awesome. One other cute thing that happened today was that Brian taught Dema (a sweet 2 year old boy who looks like a fat sausage) how to say "yah dude". It was soooo adorable!

Today was a very good day and I am very happy :) Love you all so much!
Ashley