Ukraine Day #8

Day #8 Friday

This was the last full day, we where going to go out to evangelize in kiev and then we had a special banquet in the Ukraine. A lot of the Ukrainian guys wanted to take american girls. I told them to stay away from my american women. They tried to make a deal with me that they will take the American girls and I can take a Ukrainian girl. I wanted to take Kylie, but I didn't want to ask her like everyone does it, because that is no fun. I really didn't know what I was doing. Owen saw me hiding behind a tree and asked me what I was doing, I told him I was going to ask Kylie to the banquet. Then I got him to help me. There was two benches facing each other, so Owen sat on one, and called Kylie to sit across from him. Owen filmed the experience with my camera sticking half way out of his shirt. I wanted it to feel all secret agent like. So I called to her from behind the tree, when she looked back I told her to look forward and pretend she was talking to Owen, while I talked to her. So from behind the tree I asked her to the banquet. Here is a little video below.

For the last day the whole Ukraine W.O.L. B.I. staff and student body with all of us from New York, headed out in a storm of evangelists to Kiev. We split into about two groups of 50 people, one group went somewhere else, and my group went to this like central park place with some monuments and stuff.
Once we arrived I saw 4 kids skating, so I immediately walked over to them and began trying to talk to them. The one guy spoke english pretty good, but the other 3 didn't understand at all. Two different people shared the gospel in Russian with them and I shared it in english with him twice. We had a good time skating together and built a good friendship based on a common interest called skateboarding. I left them with Gospel Tracts and camp promotions, gave them some stickers from SFNJ (New Jersey Skate Ministry) and got a email to stay in contact. There was no conversion, but Christ was shown through skateboarding.

The one in the red spoke english. I had to leave them for a little bit to sing to draw a crowd for the rest of my group to evangelize. I told him he could come over if he wanted to so he did, and stood up next to me where I was singing.

I'm not sure how many accepted Christ, but I heard about a few of them that did. After evangelizing for a couple hours we headed back to the campus to get ready for the banquet.

Waiting for our ladies.

Me and My cute date

I brought the Apricot Jam the babooshka made for us. Luckily one of the girls on our trip was given flowers in Kiev while evangelizing. She gave all us guys a flower to give to our date. I added some custom flowers I picked from outside the window, and taped a Resees Peanut Butter Cup to it.

We had a time of sharing the things we learned from the past week. Their was a lot of thank you's to the Ukrainian students for their friendship and servant hood.

My roommates for the past week.

My closest friends and their dates.

The next morning at 3am we headed out to leave for the airport, most of the students woke up to wish us a final good bye. The week went bye very fast, it felt like we just got there and it was already over, I wish I had another couple weeks there. It was a ton of fun. It was about 3 hour flight to Munich, Germany. I slept the whole way. Then 8 hours from Munich to NYC.

Learning some Japanese on the flight.

We flew right over Iceland where the volcano went off a few weeks earlier, and canceled lots of flights. I am not sure if we could actually see the volcano however the pilot said that some of the clouds we see might be volcanic ash.

Thank you for your prayers and financial support. I am very blessed to have gotten this opportunity. I would go back if I have the chance again, I enjoyed serving there, and learning for the experience. I don't fully know now, but I know God will use the things I experienced to guide me in the future. Thank You everyone, I hope you enjoyed my blog post about the trip.