Teen Challenge Ukraine - Shorter Version

Bringing Teen Challenge to Kiev

Here's a video that I created for Teen Challenge as they are starting a brand new center here in Kiev. God is calling some of my best friends in Ukraine, Mickey and Elya Jordan, to begin this work. Support them if you can...great people doing God's work...

The Snow Falls...

I hear that it has been a record breaking winter in some states…record snowfall and cold temperatures. Well, winter here in Ukraine has been just about the opposite. It has been relatively warm, hovering around 0 degrees C. We’ll go below freezing for a few days, but then it gets warm again. The coldest that it has gotten was shortly after New Year when we hit -15 C (5 F). Yeah, that just happened to be the week that my brothers came for a visit and we were tromping around the city everyday. But right as I enjoy my morning coffee, the fat snowflakes are falling in a white haze as I gaze out of the 15th story window of the apt. that I’m staying in. The park below is white with only the trunks of the tall pines appearing black in comparison. The normally visible neighboring buildings are being hidden behind a soft, white veil of undulating opacity.

If only we would have had more snow this year. Without it, Kiev in the winter is gray, mushy, muddy and depressing. The is very little contrast between the gray, black, and dark brown coats of the pedestrians and the grays, blacks and browns of the rest of the city. Snow brings a welcome blanket of disguise to the flaws of the city. In the right amounts, a good snowfall can be a short lived panacea for the cynicism that living here can impose. My British friend, Jon, writes about this well in his Travel Journal. You should read his accounts of living in Kiev. He is a great writer and he captures the ethos of the city in word and in photo.

Upon pondering why it is that my journaling and blogging comes and goes in spurts, realized that I am a relationship-centric person, and if a friend beckons all else in my life is put on hold. So in my mind it goes, “Gotta write an update today. But Mickey wants to meet for coffee and that means hours of deep and meaningful conversation. That’s obviously more important. Update writing will be tomorrow. Absolutely. Unless someone else needs to talk…” This might be lame, but it is certainly true. The first step is admitting you have a problem, right? So I have turned off my phone and turned on my laptop and today is the first day of the rest of my life… Here’s to hoping that it doesn’t take that long to get this update out…

God0100101Bless01010011

Ok, it's been a month since my last post and that is unacceptable. I could feed you lots of excuses about youtube and our network not liking each other and the slowness of the Ukrnet we have here in Kiev...but I hope that this robo-God-card will ease the pain. It's celebration time cause I can finally upload videos again!!! I have lots of videos from this last month... more to follow...

Absurdly British

Simply absurd.

Ru's Rant

Here is a an email I received from my Zimbabwean friend, Ru. She is a Med. student here in Kiev and lives in a dorm with many other foreigners...

Ok...so in this beautiful troubled country i live they have a problem, technically they have many but what country doesn't right? but ...today (Saturday) in Kiev there is this big protest march,"this tis is a problem because..? " u ask...its a white supremacy/neo Nazi (oh how fast people and children forget what it was like during the war) march...freedom of speech and all of that withstanding...these marches here undoubtedly end up in a "lets hurt some foreigners" rampage in the same fashion as an old school mob hunt, and there in lies the problem. 2 weeks ago, the same thing happened and they stabbed 3 Chinese girls and killed a boy/man from Bangladesh...no one in the world hears about these things...its one of Ukraine's many secrets.People here, foreigners included don't know about it...Ukrainians who don't have foreign friends they care about don't know about it.Its frustrating because i don't know what the solution to these kinda things is.There is a solution for sure, coz like my mama says where there is problem there is a solution, if there is no solution then there is no problem..i just don't know know what it is ...yet :)

So anyway,it just makes my soul sad...so i don't know...pray for us here and the country and these misguided,blind,ignorant basically lost people

if u want to check out their website about the march its : http://www.march.h.com.ua/

ok...and im done with my little rant and rave, i just had to get it out there...

I took a breath...

Some friends and I got a chance to get out of the city this last Saturday. We were helping our friend Luda to move some belongings to her parents' house in her village. We went about 30 miles and entered a completely different world. It was like taking a few steps back in time. Our friend Luda grew up in this small village and it seemed like everyone we saw was her cousin or aunt or some other relative. There were great expanses of open land...it took me by suprise...there is nothing like this in Kiev. Some of it farmed, a lot of it open and rolling. There was a stray cow or goat here and there dotted throughout the town.

I had become so used to city life here in Kiev that I had forgotten what it was like to get out into open spaces with few to no people around. I was able to breathe deeply for the first time in a while.


There were animals galore at Luda's uncle's house. Rabbits, ducks, chickens, a couple of dogs running around with his 6 children. It remined me of my childhood. Grass to tromp through, trees to climb, hammocks to rock in, brothers and sisters to play with, kids flying off branches and rope swings... all in the cool air of a late summer afternoon. It was fun to talk to the kids and have them show off their pets and toys and yard. It's fun to talk to kids in russian. They also practiced their english words and we taught them a couple of new words.


I learned that this village, named after the Luda's family, was the very first village to accept the relocated Chernobyl victims. The Ukrainian government gave the families plots of land and houses and resettled them here, 60 miles South of Chernobyl. Luda was telling us how small the village was before the government started giving away the land to the uprooted families.

Luda's family is building a house here. They have been working on it for a number of years and complete it in parts...as they can afford to do so. The government limits the amount of sq. footage a house can be by taxation, so most of these houses are not very wide, but end up being about 3 stories with a basement. This is how they can skirt the taxation b/c it is based soley upon the 2 dimensional area of the house and not the actual sq. footage. Ukraine is illogical and wierd at times. But because the houses are skinny and tall, they have a sort of charm to them that ranch homes don't have.

Everybody here farms. Even if the house owners live in Kiev, they always come back to farm the land. Ukrainians love their own fresh grown vegtables. I respect them for that. It reminds me of how my Grandaddy was...with his plot of land and fresh tomatoes, beans, watermelons, and scuppernogs.

With fall approaching, the neighbors often recruit friends and family to come over and help them farm potatoes, or harvest pumpkins or do the unfinished summer renovations. Some parts of Kiev are so drab and dreary because of all the gray, concrete high rises. But this village was amazingly colorful in comparison. The houses can look a little shanty and makeshift, but just about all of them has fresh coats of whitewash and paint on them as well as on their fences. The gardens weren't the neat and tidy british type, but rather the collective outworking of colors from patches of scattered seeds. No nice, neat rows of flowers and plants but rather patches of color exploding behind green chain-link fences and tractor tires. I loved it. My soul loved it. It took a deep breath.

Breakdancin'...at last..

I've been trying to upload this video since I got back from Berlin 2 weeks ago but I was having trouble with youtube. But alas, I finallly got her up and running. I saw these guys the day after our conference ended and we had some time to explore Berlin before our train left. These guys surely give the Kiev guys a run for their money. Especially the helmet guy...he's definitely the coolest...So without further adieu...