Feb 21
As we’ve mentioned before, we volunteer weekly at a local hospital and spend time with the children in the abandoned infants’ ward. We decided to shoot a little video today to give you a little glimpse of that work. Enjoy!
Back in October Katie and I were able to visit an elementary school close to our house and did a How American’s Celebrate Halloween presentation for the kids. We had a lot of fun, and the kids really enjoyed it. This last week we were invited back again to do a little presentation on Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day isn’t traditionally recognized by Ukraine, but it is becoming more and more popular every year.
Most of the kids remembered us from our visit and were very excited when we would walk into the classrooms. When the teacher asked if the kids remembered our names, they could only ever remember Katie’s. One little boy told Katie, “You make great cookies.” We introduced the kids to some Valentine’s Day vocabulary words and showed them a short slideshow. After that we had them make Valentine’s Day cards (complete with a Roses Are Red poem) and then we made little lollypop flowers.
We had a great day together, and we so enjoyed getting to know the kids from our neighborhood just a little bit better. It looks like we’ll be going back during the first week of March to do something for “International Women’s Day” that is celebrated over here. We also talked with the teacher about coming in to help the kids with their English maybe once a week or so, and she seemed to think that was a good idea. We hope to begin that soon.
And finally, here’s a short video showing some of the kids and the crafts.
It was one year ago today—February 1, 2011—that Katie and I arrived in Kharkov. It was one year ago today when we officially joined the work here and began making this foreign city our home. We knew no one besides our teammates, and this city of a million and a half people felt massive.
Today seems like it should be a pretty big day for us. It’s a mile stone, for sure—an entire year—and it seems like I should be writing about how the time has flown by, and how I can’t believe it’s really been as long as it has.
Wednesday.
It feels like Wednesday. And it feels like I have a lot to do before this weekend and I’m not sure how it’s going to get done. I have to get my English class ready for Saturday. I have to keep moving on the articles for our next magazine. I’ve got Russian homework to finish before tomorrow afternoon, and before I can call it a day today I need to get our prayer update sent out.
Yep, it feels like Wednesday.
And I suppose that’s a wonderful testament to what it does in fact feel like to have been here here an entire year now: It feels like home. It feels like regular life. And it feels like we’re right where we we belong.
So to those of you who have helped make this happen, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. To those of you who lift us up with your constant prayers, emails, texts, paychecks, cards, phone calls, and packages, thank you. You’ve been the team we’ve needed, and we absolutely love you for that.
Here’s to another amazing year together. And here’s to Thursday, another day full of so much potential!
At the airport in Tulsa last January 31st, beginning our journey here.
A couple weeks ago my teammate David and I were doing some Old Testament study together and discovered something we had always thought was true, but was actually one of those kind-of truths that got oversimplified in Bible class, but was never corrected as we got older. The two of us were surprised to come to this realization, and so I thought it’d be interesting to share with you here.
So with that, let me ask you a question:
Which part of Israel wasn’t allowed to enter the Promised Land?
Now your typical, kid-raised-in-the-church answer would be “All those who were 20 years old and older, besides Joshua and Caleb.” And, if you were into citing verses, you’d probably cite this one from Numbers 14:28-30
Say to them, ‘As I live, declares the LORD, what you have said in my hearing I will do to you: your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and of all your number, listed in the census from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against me, not one shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun.
Seems pretty black and white, doesn’t it? It’s right there: “…all your number, listed in the census from twenty years old and upward…”
Yeah. But.
But what about that little phrase “listed in the census”?
Turns out, what’s being referenced isn’t simply a census of every citizen of Israel. According to Numbers 1:1–4, and also verses 44–46, the purpose of this census was to count and register the number of men who were “able to go to war.” The men were counted for military service and were registered to pay taxes to fund the tabernacle. The text repeats the phrase “who are able to go to war” so much that it makes it obvious that we are only talking about men, and we are only talking about men who could fight.
Right away we’re seeing that it couldn’t have been everyone twenty years old and older that were restricted access to the Promised Land since the referenced census only included able-bodied men. This implies that women along with handicapped and elderly men were excluded from this part of the punishment and were allowed to enter.
So what other exceptions were there?
Numbers 1:47–50 points out that the whole tribe of Levi was also allowed to enter as their job revolved solely around the tabernacle. And the fact that the Levites were allowed to enter would explain three other exceptions we don’t talk about: Moses, Aaron, and Eleazor. Even though Moses and Aaron both eventually missed their opportunity to enter, when God said “every male 20 and older except Caleb and Joshua” Moses was still under the assumption that he would be going as well. Why? Because he was a Levite, and all Levites entered Canaan. This also explains why we see Eleazor the priest at an apparently over-twenty age before the Promised Land, and still a player in the text after they enter. He was a Levite. He was an exception.
Though all this might seem like a fairly trivial piece of information, it’s really made me think about the scope of God’s punishment and how it actually had a big impact on everyone. Usually when we talk about this, we point out how all of those twenty and over were guilty of grumbling and not trusting God. However, when we see that only a certain number of a particular group were condemned to die in the desert, we understand that there were actually different punishments for everyone. Some were condemned to die, others were condemned to lose those loved ones. Israel was forced to lose its mature army and, along with it, the heads of households of thousands of families. Even the children—those who were innocent of their parents’ sins—were still forced to wander the desert for forty years. God punished the whole nation, but everyone paid a different price.
This clarification on a number in the Old Testament certainly isn’t faith-shaking, but I do find it extremely interesting. It’s fascinating to me how the information has been right there this whole time, but all my life I just scanned over the words which laid out the details pretty clearly. We just never stop learning. And I love that.
Most of the time.
My teammates and I share a lot of emails from day to day. Most of the time they’re work-related, but sometimes they’re offers for acting jobs:
Hey I just got a phone call from a representative of a company who is trying to do a professional advertisement. They need someone to play the part of a foreign CEO or business manager for their ad. The shoot will only take one hour, next Wednesday the 25th at 3pm. They will even pay you $50 for your time.
Apparently this Kharkov-based company had found David’s number online from one of our English events. They gave him a call and offered him the part, but since he had plans he couldn’t change he gave them my number and forwarded the rest of us the email. Though it’s illegal for us to earn money with the visas we have, I went ahead and called to find out more information just to see what this whole thing was about.
The lady told me they were shooting a video testimony to put on their business’ website which specializes in search engine optimization. I would come in and play the part of a foreign CEO by reading some dialogue about how happy I was that I chose to go with this company.
Uh huh. I asked her if I could call her back in a few minutes.
I told Katie and we both laughed at how ridiculous this was. They were going to pay me to give a fake testimony about how great they’re service was. The lady on the phone even gave me their website so I could go and see that they were for real. For real? Paying someone to lie about how “real” you are? Classy.
The irony of all of this was how this lady had no idea who she was asking to do this. Even though I’m sure no one would ever be the wiser, paying a missionary to pose as a successful CEO and give a fake testimony for a search engine optimization site is just too funny. I called her back a few minutes later and officially declined the role. “Why? Are you scared?” she asked. I told her I didn’t feel good about it what it was, to which she replied that it wasn’t a big deal. Apparently she thought my credibility was on sale for fifty bucks.
And you know, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened either. Not too long after we arrived to Kharkov we were sitting in a newly-opened Mexican food restaurant. The waitress walked up an asked if we’d like to be in their print ad that was shooting at the bar. All we needed to do was wear sombreros and sit at the bar pretending to enjoy ourselves. We politely declined and enjoyed laughing about the prospect of actually having done it.
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