still alive I am!

wow so i appoligize for not updating this more! its been a while! Thing was that for the month of july i had little internet access and the time i did have, used it for sending emails to those at home....that way i knew people would be getting updates....but i appoligize for not keeping this more updated!
how to sum up the last 4 weeks....i have no idea...what comes to Mind though is that God is faithful and He will continue to be always. camp was amazing. the first kids camp saw close to 100 kids and it was neat seeing how camps were runned there. for myself, i was involved with sports in the am and i even got to teach american baseball which was sweet, and then swimming in the afternoon. on those hot hot days that we had, swimming in the river was greatly appreciated! teh water was oh so nice! then i was also involved with various camp games and course taking lots and lots of pictures. I found that the Ukrainian-Russian culture is very interesting! Very superstitious...such as females can not sit on any cold surface cause they think it will make you infertile and the baboshkas yell at you to get up if they see you sitting, along with other things...very interesting. it was great connecting with some of the kids and teens as well as some of the leaders. I learned a lot but i know it will take time for me to process it as well...i have not had acutal down time like i know i need since i have gotten here....sensory overload even though it has not always felt like that but i know its there and i will only be able to fully breathe once i am home in a week as of yesterday (which i am looking forward to. even being just back on canadian soil i am looking forward to that).

after camp, spent a few more days in sumy and then we got to take the 5 hour train ride back to kiev where we spent one day with a family from camp getting a tour and taking lots of pictures and all of that. what an amazing city! lots of neat stuff and people and history! I never knew ukraine got hit as hard as it did in the second world war!! it was intense!
One thing I know i am learning is to appreciate more of where I come from, from my past history and dare i say i am even becoming glad and proud to be mennonite?? wow that is an improvment!!!

where am I now? I write this to you from my friends place in stuttgart germany! this is my second full day here and i am waiting for her to get off work in an hour to head out and see more of the city. yesterday was tough cause i just wanted to be home, but better now and acutally enjoying it aswell! |germany is beautiful but like i said, am waiting to fly home monday am at 10>45 well back to london ontario atleast..... i touch down at 1 pm in toronto, toronto time then have to go through customs and catch my final flight down to london ontario for 2 days of debrief and then home on thursday! 6 more sleeps!
yah just an update from the traveling wanderer!
thanks for everything

Camp Update

Camp has been amazing these last few weeks...sorry I have not updated this sooner but have not wanted to spend a whole lot of time updating this...but do not worry, I will when I am out in the Ukraine for sure (2 weeks to the day till take off!!)
How to sum up the last 3 weeks?? First off, I have one more week to go as June 2 will be my last day at camp. But how to sum it up. Basically here was my thinking...."go into camp, serve my 4 weeks and not get attachtced and leave once the month of may is over" Well, here we are 3 weeks later and so much has happend. Now, Camp has become more then just camp-there are people there who have become like family. The connections, the memories, the struggles and everything in between, will be engraved in my heart forever. Going in, a purpose for going was to fill time between school and the Ukraine, since it was hard to find a job for that amount of time (I acutally handed out 7 applications in town and never heard back from any) so deciede that if nothing job wise came up, off to camp I would go, and so that is what I did, not knowing what God would teach me but I felt liek I should be there.

Being outside, working with the kids, sharing GOd's love not through scripture (in this case) but by playing games with the groups that come, by laughing and telling jokes or allowing kids to laugh at you when you purposely do something silly, has all been a real blessing. The relationships in dorm..I pray they will be life long and I think they will be, was alll a real encouragement and blessing as well
I can honestly say I am "bummed" to leave camp in just over a week and leaving camp was NOT suppose to be this hard..but it is and I am thankful and would not trade it for anything....

As to the Ukraine goes, 2 weeks from now I will be in toronto waiting for my next flight over to Frankfurt Germany then on to Kiev Ukraine..I will be arriving in the Ukraine aroudn 3:00 their time (so subtract 8 hours for time here) Mixed feelings I have, excited, scared nervous, etc but trusting GOd through it all

Continue to pray for me: pray for this last week of camp tha tI have, that it will just be a huge blessing and encourgement
Pray for me as I count down days and prepare for take off
Pray for my family who will stay behind (namely my mom) that God will just calm their hearts while I am gone
Pray for Health and saftey while I am out there and travel to and from
Pray that my heart will be opened and my eyes focused on God
Pray that I will be a light out there
Pray for my own Spiritual life and relationship with God

Thanks so much for your support
I have take Zephaniah 3:17 and sort of made it my "own" for this trip.
It reads..
"The LORD your God is with you,he is mighty to save.He will take great delight in you,he will quiet you with his love,he will rejoice over you with singing."

It just serves as an encouragement for me and I hope it does for you as well!

Leadership and Lessons learned...

So throughout this past year at SBC-there has been a re occuring theme that has kept been brought up to my attention and all. It is something that is fairly new to me at this point and I am still exploring it myself.
What is it?

It is this whole idea of leadership and to define what IS leadership. Growing up, I never thought myself as a leader. There could be a couple reasons for this, but whether they are legit reasons or excuses, not sure. Some of them would include just the group of friends I was in. Great group, but I was not the leader in that group. Although at the same time, not a follower as welll (if that at all makes sense). Perhaps it has to do with having grown up with brothers and having them just naturally being "better" at everything they do. Who knows.

But like I said, this past year at SBC, I have been challenged, and even forced into leadership. One of the re occuring questions I have been getting is "why do I shy away from it?" For example-Caregroup leading, or being the yearbook editor etc, both formal forms of leadership. Honestly, I do not know why I shy away from those-cause its not like I am not capable of doing it (and I am not just saying that to sound cocky...because more then one person has asked me why I am not doing it because they said I am beyound capable of doing it) (and if you followed that train of thought-well done!)

I have found that I love hanging out with people and I never would have thought I would have said that being an introvert-and I know I am still an introvert at heart, but am realizing a lot more extrovert qualities in me. So for example, I get challenged as to why I am not being a CGL since being what it, deals with a lot of people andhanging out-yet I tend to avoid it.... same goes with yearbook-that involves taking pictures (which I love) and working on computer/pictures (which is also fun) so again, doesnt make sense.

It also has to do a bit with stretching myself....I need to be stretched, but am not sure if this way of leadership is a way, at this point, to stretch me...for Example, Ukraine wil be stretching and that is partily the reason for going as well...again just some thoughts...

One thing that I think might contribute with me shying away from it (leadership) is this fear of failing that I have...I am not sure where or how this plays into it but here is a part of the email I wrote...But yah, I think what it comes down to is that I am scared to fail/disappoint. Let me clarify. I think I have put this to big of expecation on myself (or I tend to, also be to over critical of myself) and so when I am "Performing" I have to be able to perform and know I can complete the task well enough. maybe it also has to do with not wanting to disappoint other people.

Its this personal expectation that I have on myself that I think is holding me back. I knwo last summer at camp, I sat down with the camp director and we went over a evaluation thing for field ed at school and part of it was a self eval and a directors eval...he said he had looked at mine and overall-he said he thought I would being to hard on myself, that I had marked myself, the work I had done, to low.

I hope some of this makes sense-for those that know me-perhaps you can shed some light into this as well!

(the pics are a few from camp taken earlier this week!)
Till next time!

Camp

So here I am, 3 days into my Camp (Spring Staff) expereince at Winkler Bible Camp. THese last two days have consisted of lots of Orientation, but its been good. Today we did a lot of yard clean up and all but it was good. I am realizing I love being outside all day instead of inside all day, although I think it is more tiring but still good!
Tomorrow I will be helping out with bikes and horses here at the camp which will also be new and exciting but yet still good!


Ukraine is 1 month and 2 days away! crazy! but sweet. Mixed feelings about it but I lknow God will stretch me and I know it will be good for me!

Just a quick up date from camp!
God Bless

SEND

Here is some information on SEND (The Organization that I will be heading to the Ukraine with) Check out their main site, with this link...http://www.send.org/
and heres their link on specific Ukraine...http://www.send.org/ukraine/index.htm

Heres some info on their social culture:

Social Landscape
Ukraine has almost as many people as France, Italy, or the United Kingdom, but neighboring Russia has three times as many people! During the days of the tsars and the subsequent Soviet era, government policies of land development and "Russification" drastically changed the ethnic make-up of Ukraine. Ukrainians traveled east to "homestead" in Far East Russia, and ethnic Russians were moved into Ukraine in order to weaken Ukrainian nationalist feeling. Today ethnic Ukrainians make up about 73 percent of Ukraine's population.
About 22 percent of the people are ethnic Russians. Other ethnic groups include Jews, Belarusians, Moldovans, Bulgarians, Poles, Hungarians, and Romanians. When Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, Russian was the country's official language. After independence, Ukrainian regained its place as the official language of Ukraine. The Ukrainian alphabet is Cyrillic and similar to, though not identical to, the Russian alphabet. Ukrainian speakers can often understand Russian speakers, and vice versa. Other languages spoken in Ukraine include Polish, Romanian, and Hungarian.

Sumy, Ukraine

Here is some information on Sumy-the region or province of Ukraine where I will most likly be! Sorry about the map quality, but this gives you a general idea of how the province itself, is laid out.
Area - 23,800,000 sq. kmPopulation - 1,384,000

The Sumy oblast was established on January 10, 1939. It includes 7 towns of the oblast subordination and 18 districts, 20 townships of the district subordination, 20 settlements of urban type, 1479 villages. The oblast center is the town of Sumy founded some four centuries ago. The town harmoniously combines antiquity and modernity, it boasts high tech industrial works, unique cathedrals with beautiful fountains, institutions of higher learning, nice recreation areas.The oblast is rich in mineral resources. Among them are oil (30.5% of the total oil reserves of Ukraine), natural gas, peat, also the nonmetallic minerals like phosphates, rock and potash salt, gypsum, lime, marl, glass sand, mineral paints (mainly ochre), construction sands and stone. 165 rivers flow through the oblast with the total length - 5444 km. All of them belong to the Dnipro basin. The "enchanted" Desna, the legendary Seim, Sula and Psel, Vorskla are the biggest rivers of the oblast. The water of these rivers is used for local foundry production, for chemical and textile industries. The forest area accounts for 387 thou. ha. There are different kinds of woods in local forests. Coniferous stands make up 43%, hardwoods - 45%, softwoods - 12%.

Check out the following link for a few pictures of Sumy (my own pictures will come in a few months!!

http://www.tripwolf.com/en/galleries/media/ext/2638576/381021/Ukraine/Sumy?3#top

Check out http://g.web.umkc.edu/gusako/sumy/sumy.html for more pictuers and history on the area!

Thanks for you Prayers and support!

Ukraine

I am going to start using my blog to put updates on here about my adventure this summer. The story is somewhat long, so I am going to upload/copy part of a letter I have written about this summer. Here is goes:
The journey to this point, started this past September at the start of my second here of schooling. Since I am currently working on my global missions B.A, I knew I would need an international practicum before Grad of 2010. Through different emails and different applications, God shut doors to some options and opened windows to others. What led me to SEND and the Ukraine was a casual conversation with my faculty advisor here at school about my practicum. I noticed an advertisement in his office about this partnership with SEND that school has in the Ukraine and knew that a few years back, an Alumni of school also went to the Ukraine through this partnership. This made me curious and I went on to inquire about it. This began a 3 way, email communication between me, my professor and a rep that my professor knew at SEND. One thing led to another and before long I was sitting down over lunch
with the rep from SEND.

Since then, I have learned that I am accepted to serve with SEND. Through a phone conversation with SEND’s Short Term Coordinator, I was able to narrow down a few more details. At this point, the plan for me is to spend my time in the Sumy Province of the Ukraine (which is in the North Eastern part of the country near the Russian border), under the mentorship/leadership of a missionary family already well stationed there and this allow me to get a small taste of missionary life abroad and their daily routine. I will assist SEND in their summer camp ministry, while being a part of their church planting team. I am told that although there are some “church kids” who attend camp, the majority of kids who I will be working with are orphans and youth. The dates that are tentatively planned, are June 15th, 2009-Aug. 3 2009. This would allow me to start with the camp season there and then to see it finished all the way through. In June, I would be involved with the planning and pre prep of the camp work and then during July, I will be a part of the camp staff. Along with that, I will also be doing some pre reading on the country and culture to gain a greater understanding. I will be working along side Professor Ernie Koop (my faculty advisor) here at the school and laying out the academics, or practicum, side of it as well. I am excited for this because it will allow me to gain a small understanding of the culture/area before I even arrive.
The map is a map of Ukraine and Sumy is located top east corner of the country

As you follow my on my journey with God and SEND this summer in the ukraine-pray for protection. Pray for Health. Pray that finances will come in prior to going. Pray for guidence. Pray for Openess and understanding. Pray for fun. Pray for opportunity. Pray that God will be glorified through this!

Thank you