Summer prayer letter

I actually wrote one already! If you didn't get it by email, here it is. Older prayer letters and the link to join our mailing list are always over on our About us page. -->

The moving plan

Will and I had a good time to talk yesterday, and we came up with a plan to get us to Kherson. We find packing and moving with children underfoot to be incredibly challenging, even though we've done it quite a few times now. They just help a little too much!

So, on Monday (probably) we'll all go to Kherson with just a suitcase. Then, the next day Will will come back here for about a week, to sort and pack (a lot is still in boxes from our last move, which will help some), find a truck to carry it, and then come to the rest of us. It will be a lot of work for Will and a crazy week for all of us, but I think this will work well.

Please pray for us lots, and don't expect to hear from us much at all until we're settled in Kherson. Thanks!

With one of the butterflies he raised

Nature study: mammals

I originally wrote this in September of 2010! And apparently it just sat there as a draft until now. I went looking for it when I wrote yesterday, and decided to publish it now. Better late than never.

With Ambleside Online's schedule, we're focusing on mammals in nature study right now. Our "study" is really mostly just spending lots of time outside and enjoying it. Although, we are stopping to observe and record every week now. So far, here's what we've done:

Week 1: Still getting used to school schedule and had a few days of sickness. No formal nature study.

Week 2: We had one evening just talking about what mammals are, and then painting our favorites (and sticking stickers of them, since Great-Grandma sent such wonderful ones!).

Our favorite mammals

Standing up on the right-hand side: Asya's work; also standing: Jaan's whale; lying down below Asya's: my kitty; next to it: Raia's pretty frame for cat stickers. (Oh, Jaan would want you to know that favorites are not whales. He just thought that he couldn't draw a cat, and he was fascinated by the whale in the book we were flipping through. So, he painted a whale and stuck cats on over it, too.)

Artist at work

This just makes me laugh. Long after the rest of us were done, Raia was still dashing off paintings, and then throwing them over her shoulder as she finished.

That was our first mammal lesson. Next I started thinking about what other mammals we have around here. I thought it would be nice to be able to observe a hedgehog. (Sadly, ours didn't make it through last winter's hibernation. )

Week 3: Well, we went out to our dacha, and the first night I almost stumbled over a hedgehog on my way to the outhouse. Will and I locked it up in the empty chicken coop for the rest of the night. Next day....

Foot prints

Moving the hedgehog on to the paper

The meeting of the mammals

Note the stain on the table

Asya inspects the hedgehog

Dressed for hedgehog study

Week 4: We didn't do much, except enjoy being outside. One evening I did give Jaan and Raia assignments. Jaan was to record "The Things Which My Pet Cat Does" (from The Handbook of Nature Study) and I want to transcribe what he came up with. Raia's job was to design a cover page for the mammal section in our notebook, but she got distracted with just drawing. I'll sure we'll come back around to that again.

Week 5: Rainy, grey weather outside made for a great opportunity to "travel" and learn about an exotic mammal. We watched a great documentary about whales.

Ideas:
make mammal cover page for nature notebook
read beaver book
watch skunk documentary again?
muskrat (talk about it, find old photos, draw, or even go back to Zaporozhye and look for them again)
bats

School planning: nature study

I do well thinking things through by talking or writing about them. Since my AO friends might enjoy "listening," so I'm thinking this out here. I had five school goals that I mentioned before. The first is actually pretty easy. And fun. Nature study is my favorite part of school!

So, I'm off to look at the new-ish nature study rotation.... In September we'll do trees/shrubs/vines. Easy! Especially with a new home that has a yard. (Then in November we'll start studying the night sky. I'll have to do some brainstorming then.) When I'm doing well with nature study, I have a simple running list of topics to cover, like

• definition of the category we're studying, and draw/paint your favorite
• list/draw local species
• start a year-long tree study
• bark rubbings and leaf collecting
• fall tree observations; why do leaves change color?

As I said before, we're good at getting outside. What we dropped, and what I'm wanting to pick up again, is the actual study part of nature study. Many people record their observations outside, and I agree that in real life would be best. We're not to that point yet. So far, we have to try to recreate real life indoors. That means we bring something home in order to observe and draw it. Or sometimes we have to work from photos.

We also don't have individual nature notebooks (yet). What worked before was using separate papers. Then, at the end of the term, we collected them into a binder. I just had to make sure that we had time once a week to work, and that I had a specific place to put the papers, so that I didn't lose them. I think I can do that again now. This year Bogdan should be happy to work with us, and I'll make a priority of setting aside time and space.

One more thing: AO has also added geography. Most of the topics fit very well into outside work that can be done on a nature walk, so I'll be working those in here, too. Plus, they fit with Asya's Year 0. (I couldn't resist coming back and adding this quote from my friend Jeanne's wonderful blog: "just where physical geography ends and nature-study begins is not easy to say; each helps the other.")

I'm still thinking about how and when we'll do our nature/geography time, but I think I have a plan....

The Search

After almost 3 months of calling and looking, we have a house rented in Kherson! Well, a duplex, anyway, with a separate little yard of our own, something we have dreamed of for years.

Like many other facets of life, this housing search seemed to be about 50% Divine Providence and 50% legwork and dogged persistence. It was a learning process for me... just when you think that you really know just about everything there is about the culture you're living in, you try something different only to discover a completely new and previously unsuspected field of research and study.

                                                    So, I have been learning once again.

First - looking for housing in a larger city in Ukraine becomes more of a challenge the more young children you have.


When I mention that we have children, the first question is "How many?" (FOUR??!!), and the second is "and how old are they?" (TWO to TEN years old??!!)

I literally do not know how many times I tried to convince complete strangers, over the phone, that we aren't a Barbarian Horde or Gypsy Band in miniature. ("What nationality are you?" was the 3rd question...)

I also learned that I got many more serious responses once I went to Kherson and could say "I'm here for a few days, if you have anything at all, I'll come look at it and might even sign the contract and make the down payment." Calling from Dneprorudnoe, I mostly had people offer to find an apartment or just tell me, "You'll never find people that will rent a house to a family with four young children for the price you want... call us back if you want to look at houses from $700-1300 a month."

Even with being in Kherson, it was slow going. The 'good deals' that got published online were snapped up almost immediately, so I spent a lot of time calling through local newspaper ads and contacting local realtors and agencies. At one point, I had at least 4 agencies and 4 freelance realtors searching for houses for me (not to mention the actual home owners or their representatives I was calling.) After I while, I began those conversations with "I'm not sure if I've called you before, so let me remind you, just in case..."

I was in Kherson for 4 full days, not including 1/2 days traveling there and back again. The first "real deal" I was offered was a 3-story unfinished construction project. (At one point it was meant to have been a health complex/hotel.) We were being offered the top floor, which would be 'finished to our specifications." (Using 2-months advance of not-so-low rental payments of $440, not including utilities.) It had sheet rock and windows, but that was about it. I could actually see how it would be very nice... but the rest of the place was something of a mix of a junk warehouse/maze/construction site. The kids would've loved it, but what with the lack of a separate staircase, the completely NON-'kid friendly' setting and the unfinished bathroom and non-functioning 'kitchen' area being down on the construction zone of a 2nd floor; my dear, wise wife said she'd rather not, thank you very much.

The next were 2 twin houses, both empty and unused for 1-2yrs. They reminded me of something you'd see in a decent urban subdivision in Florida. The houses looked HUGE to me... at least 2000 square feet each. They were willing to rent them to us, again, with our down-payment going into doing necessary repairs so we could actually live there. (One place had been completely stripped by the last tenants. They took everything: linoleum, light switches, outlets; heating system - boiler, radiators, and all; toilet, tub, sinks; every scrap of the kitchen furnishings and appliances; all doors, complete with hinges....completely, thoroughly stripped.) However, one place was really out of the way, with bad access to public transport (the 'stripped' house), and the other literally had no yard. It was cemented over and had a huge, DEEP unfinished pool in place of any green space. Both would have been a minimum of $450 per month, not including utilities.
Again, my wonderfully wise wife asked that these be left as a back-up plan if I didn't find anything better.

However, I wasn't coming up with any better options. Well there was one, although it would have been an hour minimum commute on public transport to Agape's office... but by the time I had been to both of the big 'subdivision' houses, that house was rented.

 I agreed to talk to Phyllis again that evening and more than likely discuss details of a contract for one of the huge 'subdivision' houses the next morning, barring any better alternatives. Then it was more phone calls, more re-checking with agencies, following up possible leads, checking ads online and in newspapers.

My wonderful, wise, lovely wife (notice the theme here?) called me that evening. "You know that agent guy whose ads you said to ignore? He just put up an ad for a house in the same area of the city as Agape. Maybe it's worth giving him another try..." I had decided not even to bother this guy anymore. He was prolific in getting ads online, but I had called him numerous times from Dneprorudnoe, and he'd finally just said we weren't going to find a place with four little kids. However, at this point, I'd had so much practice at selling our family as good tenants I figured it couldn't hurt to give it a try.

I called him after 9pm. He said "I thought you wanted a NICE place, that's all - sure, you can look at this house!" We agreed to meet the next morning around 9am. By 10:15, I'd signed the contract and paid the down payment.

A man can inherit a house and money from his parents, but only the Lord can give him a sensible wife.  Proverbs 19:14

(Except for the last one, photos are just stock images. The last is actually our new home!)

Day camp

It's hard to even explain how busy we are this week! But, I've really been enjoying my part of it. Now Will's home, too, so the craziness should slow down a little. Again, instead of writing, I'll give you a few photos from the church day camp:

Part of my sweet group

Her little legs don't work, but she's really enjoying camp!

Waiting to get started one morning

Our new home!

Details will have to come later. I don't know much, and I don't have time to write anyway, but here are the photos the rental agent just sent:

The rest are here....

Renting

I've been a little frustrated with renting lately. I've gotten used to the size of this apartment, and Will has made it quite comfortable for us, but the landlord situation is the craziest we've ever had. (And that's saying a lot, because we've dealt with some weird and wonderful landlords!) Recently one of the owners has decided that he's going to sell it, which makes me nervous, after what happened last time. So far, he's shown it twice, and there's a family very interested in buying.

And Will's been very busy searching for a place for us to live in Kherson. When he made a few calls a month ago, it seemed like there were plenty of options. Right now, it doesn't seem like there's much. Also, what there is, isn't available for "huge" families like ours. (Why would people want to rent out big apartments and houses, but not allow children in them?) Will is going to go to Kherson tomorrow to spend a few days looking around, though. Please be praying for him to find something good!

"Funny First"

Every month my sister does a Funny First Day of the month post, listing hilarious things that her girls have said. And her girls are really funny! For example: last month. Our children aren't so funny, I don't think, and I'm not so good at remembering to write down what they do say, but I thought I'd try this month.

Okay, Jaan just gave me one. When I went to Leetra's blog to copy the link for you all, he saw the second photo here, and he asked, "Ooo. Is that an idol?!?"

Traveling to Odessa, around Odessa, and back gave us lots of time in public toilets. Many of those are the hole in the ground kind. Bogdan's response to them is yelling full volume: "ПОПА ТУДА НННННЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕ!" He's not very verbal yet, but he's very expressive. (I was going to let Google help you all with that, but apparently he doesn't understand. Literal translation: "bottom to there nnnooooo!")

Recently, Bogdan was having a very miserable morning. Will asked him why he had a cow in his mouth. Why, you ask? I probably say "он только 'му' да 'му' / А к чему, почему — / Не пойму!" way too often around here. And Will is just weird. Anyway, Bogdan believed him. He spent the rest of the morning talking about the "moo" that was living in his mouth. Then we had corn on the cob. Bogdan got a piece stuck between his teeth, and he was convinced that it was the cow! Now, any time he gets something stuck in his teeth, he wants me to pull the cow out of his mouth. It's probably a good thing he can't talk yet; I can just imagine him asking someone, "Could I please have a toothpick? I need to get a cow out of my mouth."

Bogdan showing us his cow

Not my child, but one of the little guys I worked with at camp: I told him not to throw pebbles at the metal fan near us. When I heard another one hit it, and I asked, "What was that?" He told me that he thought it was a meteorite.

I shared this one on Facebook already. At camp Bogdan really, really fell in love with our friend Jon. A few days after we got home, Bogdan didn't want to go to bed. After a few minutes of screaming "MAMA, PAPA, MAMA," we heard Bogdan say, "Mama - nyet. Papa - nyet. DYADYA!" (what he called Jon). And then he continued to yell for Uncle Jon.

This isn't funny, but I think it's cute. Bogdan's two most recent new words are "Syasya" (Asya) and "psi" (spasibo/thank you).

Camp photos

I uploaded all of our camp photos, in three batches: part 1, part 2, part 3.

And then here are some highlights:

Frogs and toads

Advanced English class

Most of the preschool group that I worked with

Preschoolers ready for their skit

The lovely view (photo by Kimberly)

I want to add more, but I'm out of time now. Later?

School 2013-14

I had been having trouble getting excited about starting school. Jaan and Raia didn't finish whole AO years, and they're in different weeks of their respective years, and Asya's joining us, and.... But then I came back from camp and couldn't stop thinking about our next school year! Now I'm excited. Oh, and I'm wanting to do the brand-new Year 12 myself. (Remember this? On June 8 there: you could say that picture might show some of the birth of Year 12.)

I'm thinking of things that I really want to do well in the next year:

• Formal nature study, i.e. nature notebooks (Haven't done well with that since Bogdan reached the age of interference.)
• Morning together time, with memorizing, music and more (Dropped that when we moved to this tiny-kitchen apartment.)
• Handwriting!
• English narrations (Camp showed me that Jaan and Raia can do much more here.)
• More individual work for Jaan and Raia (Definitely need to think of how to get that in.)

I'll write more about each of those points as I can. This focusing in all different directions stuff is hard for me! I need to get ready for camp here, move to another city AND plan our school year. Sigh. But, I'm excited now, and that counts for a lot.

An Agape question

Here is one that we've been asked, that I thought I would share:
Q. "Are you just going to be translating for Agape?"
A. No, not only translating. Really, we don't know too many details of what we'll be doing in Kherson, but the job Will and Alex Fedorchuk talked about might be called English Representative, or something along those lines. Alex said that he would like help in all of the relationship between Agape and the foreign sponsors. Plus, there's translating for the web site and videos and such. And the fun part: visiting local orphanages! We'll see how it all develops, but that's what we know so far.

Do you have more questions? We really do want to dialog about this with anyone who is interested!

A favorite camp photo

Bogdan and Denis

Plans?

In case you're wondering what's next... so are we! Well, not entirely. In fact, in a very unprecedented way, we have a Plan A and a Plan B. (If you know us, you can just fall down with shock right now. And then expect Plan Z to be what really happens.)

Plan A: We'll move to Kherson in August. Soon Will will go to spend a few days there, looking at housing options. If he finds something, we'll move in the next month.

Plan B: The director of Agape is in the states with his family, awaiting the birth of their fifth baby, due in August. When they come back, they want to move into a house. They suggested that we might be able to rent their current apartment after they move out of it. That would mean waiting a little longer before we move.

Blog and photo roundup

Since I still haven't had time to share our camp photos, here are some from other people on the English team. I'll try to add to this list as I find more, too. If you're not on Facebook, I'm sorry; some of these might not be available to you. Even if you are on Facebook, you might not be able to see them, because they belong to other people. Here's the list, though:

• Ellie
• Anna: blog and Facebook
• Kimberly
• John: another post, another, and yet another
• Nathan R. (one of three 16-year-olds named Nathan on the team!)
• Julie
• Zhenya? (Compilation of many people's photos to download.)
• New: Kelli
• New: Kristie
• New: Elizabeth

P.S. to yesterday's post

It's going to take us a while to catch up here. If you're waiting for emails or anything else from us, please be patient. Thank you so much!

Quick camp report

When we got back last night Bogdan kept walking around our cluttered little apartment touching everything and saying "wow." It does feel good to be home!

The thirty-second version of how family English camp went is that it was very wonderful and very exhausting. Will and I taught a whole lot, and all of us made lots of new friends, while spending time with old friends, too.

I'm stealing one of Ellie's photos here, because I haven't even looked through ours yet:

Martha and Marianna

Martha and I taught preschoolers at camp. She befriended little Marianna in our group, and the photo above is just about the story of our whole week after that. We actually had several little ones who wanted to run to their mothers non-stop, but Marianna was the queen of that... at first. The one thing that really did hold their attention all week was the Bible stories. Many times we felt like we were just going crazy, but when we would settle them for the story each day, they were just glued to it. That part was an amazing answer to prayer!

A glimpse of our daily schedule:
7:30 Staff fellowship
7:45-8:45ish Staff meeting (We usually had Bogdan and Jaan with us.)
9:00 Breakfast (wake and dress our girls fast, just before that)
9:45 Morning meeting
10-11:00 Bible time for kids/English reading (Bible study) for adults
11:15-12:00 First English class (huge mental shift for me, from preschool Bible to upper-advanced adult English)
12:15-1:00 Second English class
1:00 Lunch!
2-5:00 Free time and optional activities
5-6:00 More Bible time and craft for kids/English conversation for adults
6:00 Dinner
6:45 Evening activities/Worship/Teaching/Kids story and craft
10:00 Quiet (hah!)
11:00 Bed

It might not look like a packed schedule--see all that "free time"?--but it was! The free time was for campers. As teachers and parents we were planning lessons, trying to get our younger children to nap, spending time with people, and shuffling kids to special activities and going to them ourselves. It was all amazingly intense. The intentional focus on building relationships was the best part, though. Several team members shared that there were many times when they felt like they just couldn't go another step, but God gave them strength; the whole week was like that for me.

Then, after the time out in the country, camp didn't end there. We continued in Odessa. Without catching a breath, we all came back and jumped into three days of sightseeing and fellowship with the campers on their own turf.

That's probably the absolute minimum that I can share, and still give you a picture of what camp was like. Hopefully I'll have time for more soon. Thank you so much for praying for us while we were there.

Another Ellie photo: the preschool group at skit night

Please keep praying! Pray for the second camp, going on now. Many of the people we got to work with are back at it. Pray for our family; we all came back sick and tired. I actually have a camp planning meeting to go to this afternoon, too, for day camp here. That camp will be August 5-9. And Will won't be taking part in that, because he'll be working on our move to Kherson: more to pray for!

On our way

We're headed to camp. Thank you for your prayers! You probably won't hear from us for about two weeks.

Moving on (Q & A)

You probably know that we're moving someday soon. That's been in the works for a while. When we first came here, a little over five years ago, we thought we might be returning to Russia after the five-year deportation sentence ran out. It ended in February, and as much as we would like to go back--our hearts are still there!--the political climate in Russia is not getting any better, and it's still not practical for us to try to live there again.

We really need to move on from Dneprorudnoe, though. It has been an idyllic place to live. We were probably able to hold out in the rough spiritual climate for so long, at least partly because we've been so physically comfortable and happy. Really, we love it! And we have people here that we love dearly. But, this church is not the place for us, and we have never been able to develop the sense of community and purpose that we need. That's not to say that these five years have been wasted for ministry and personal growth: we've seen both. However, we still need to move.

Where are we headed and when? So far, it's been a slow road. I just looked back through my journal, blog and memory bank, and this is what I found:
July 2011--really decided that we needed to move on inside Ukraine and talked about children/orphan ministry.
June/July 2012--told our churches what we were thinking.
May/June 2013--visited Agape and decided!
There have been other smaller steps and lots of praying in between, but those are the big ones, with about a year in between each. Hopefully, the next step will be faster. Ideally, I would love to move to Kherson in August. Will has already been making calls about housing there, and after camp he should be able to look at options.

What is Agape? (We're working on translating the web site and informational videos. Soon you'll be able to get a whole lot more info there.) Agape is an orphan ministry, based in Kherson and working throughout Ukraine... and expanding into Russia and Georgia too, now! It was founded by a Ukrainian-American couple. Agape works in orphanages, teaching Bible lessons and training Bible teachers; in "adaptation centers" where they help orphanage graduates learn how to live; in camps and more. That's just off the top of my head. For the official rundown of what Agape does, you could watch the intro for the videos.

What will we be doing? Their first suggestion was that we take on house parenting in an adaptation center, like in the video I posted. Because of the stage our family is at, we didn't think we're ready for that. Instead, we'll be doing office work. (Well, mostly Will will be working in the office, but even in the short time that we were there already he and I were able to trade off some with that. Still, my main ministry will be our home and family.) We are already helping with bits and pieces of translation for Agape. Once we move, Will will continue with that and handling English correspondence. We're counting on regularly visiting local orphanages... and we'll probably just help out with whatever needs to be done. That seems to be what we do wherever we are!

How can you pray? Pray for us to find a good place to live in Kherson. Pray for our children to do well with the transition; at this point, they say that they don't want to move. Pray that we'll be able to fit in to Agape well and help them where they have needs.

***

And another question from a few days ago: How can you support Agape's ministry? On the Russian page that answers that question, it says that you can:

• intercede in prayer for Agape workers and children in orphanages;
• send packages;
• pray for Agape's sponsors;
• financially support Agape's projects;
• visit children's homes with a group, to hug even just one child and personally interact with them.

Also, once we move, we will officially be joining Agape and our own financial support will probably be going through the ministry, too. We have a lot of details to work out there, and we need to talk with our own supporters, but that is the direction we're headed.....


Those were probably the very most basic questions about Agape and our move. What else do you want to know? Leave your questions in the comments here or email us (xansaker@gmail.com), and I'll try to put together another question and answer post. That might be after we get back from camp, though.

Agape video

Remember our trip to Kherson? And Agape? While we were there, we got to help with translating their informational videos into English. The project is still ongoing; we're translating more here, and other people are doing the technical parts. The first one of the videos ready now, though! We'll be writing more about Agape soon, but for now, you can find out about one aspect of the ministry in this video:

And if you'd rather watch the original, or if you want more, here you go.