Looking Back Part 11: New Faces, New Places

This is Part 11 of the Looking Back series, previous parts are Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, and Part 10.

Two years ago today was a Friday, and it was a day we visited two new places, and met many new faces. In the morning we went and played games and did crafts with the older children specials needs home (which is orphanage (7) on RR). Guess how many pictures I took there??? ONE. Ya, I took one picture. :P Oh well, I can tell you I had a wonderful time, and I definitely want to work more there in the future! And by the way, Maxim was the only one of the kids on RR who was there at the time, and I did not see him.

In the afternoon we went to the teen dorm, and guess how many pictures I took of the teen there? NONE! Not one. I guess I wan't fond of my camera that day or something. :P I did take some of the bathroom that they were raising money to renovate.

Alright, here are some pictures.

We went to this beautiful orthodox church before we went to the older kids orphanage.

The inside was beautiful but we couldn't use the flash on our camera (we did have permission to take pictures inside, make sure you find out if its ok if you take pictures inside if you go to a church in Ukraine), so none of my pictures inside turned out very well besides these two.

All the gold you see at the top in these pictures?? PURE GOLD. Meanwhile across the street, surrounded by a high fence, are children wasting away and dying for lack of proper care.

The ONLY picture I took at the older kids SN orphanage - my dad and two of the boys

Hanging out and goofing off waiting to go - Josiah and Brooke

Crazy Kid!

The bathrooms at the teen dorm

Over 200 boys and girls share 4 stalls that look like this and the above. With no stall doors, and no privacy. The boys bathroom was closed because it was so much worse, so they were sharing this one.

And 2 sinks

This is what it looked like 2 years ago when I was there. I stole the following from Max's website about what it looks like now. Praise God!

Bathroom Update January 2012

The bathroom renovations are finally complete! Praise the Lord!! We officially opened the new bathroom earlier this month and is such a great blessing to the young people at this dorm. It is a beautiful colour, has all new fixtures, a private shower room and also a hot water heater and a washing machine!

Thank you so much for supporting this project! It has been an incredible experience for the kids. Not only do they now have a new bathroom that they helped build but they’ve also learned how to work as a team and build relationships. Please pray with us that these young people will continue to see God move in their lives.

When we were there, we played card games with the few kids that were there during the summer, brought snacks, and just hung out and got to know each other as best we could with 2 translators between all of us and the language barrier. :) Here is a picture Alice took of Max and Slavic when we were there: