Hey Everyone!
Today we talked about heaven. “I am the way the truth and the life. No one gets to the Father but through me”. The kids in our group do not understand a lot but one of our girls, Oksana does. She loves hearing stories and learning. She tells us how God is her Father since she has never had an earthly father. She always has a smile and loves to be with Natalie and me. Today she made the decision to repent of her sins and give her life to Christ. It was incredible to see her happiness. Praise God! That is the goal for all of our campers this week however for those who can’t understand, we find God working in their lives through little things.
There is a boy named Oleg who has severe Down Syndrome. He isn’t very responsive so we have had a hard time with him. Today someone brought him a chair so he could sit down with us (all the seats were taken) and all of a sudden he says “thank you very much” in English! We were so amazed that he responded let alone in English! God has been working in him.
There was also a boy in the group named Sasha. He is from the boys orphanage. He shows no emotion, no verbal communication and he doesn’t even know his name. We have been trying to teach him his name by rewarding him with a hug every time he responds to “Sasha”. We were not having much progress and we thought it was impossible but before the evening service he was walking away from our group so we yelled “Sasha” and he turned around, smiled, ran to us and gave us a hug. It was so incredible and brought us to tears. Nothing is impossible with God!
This evening we had our daily team meeting with Barry Rod. He is so awesome and he asked us challenging questions about the trip, the kids and our relationship with God. Our team grew really close as we spilled our hearts out before each other. We were all in tears by the end of the meeting and it was the coolest experience. Tonight we became a family, not just a team!
All in all, it was a great day! We got our luggage! Everyone is healthy! Please pray for a Yulia, a girl in our group. She does not express any emotion and we are struggling to connect with her. Pray that God will work in her.
We also had fun tonight teaching the Ukrainians to play Ninja. We had a group of 30 playing it and it was so fun!
Love you all,
Ashley
P.S. Oh, today we also started an abstinence program for the kids (like CPR). Most of these kids are never taught about this because many don’t go to school, so here the program is extremely effective. Hopefully it continues to go well.
