Faith, Hope, and Love

Days will come when you don’t have the strength;

When all you hear is you’re not worth anything.

Wondering if you ever could be loved;

&& if they truly saw your heart they’d see too much.

You’re beautiful.

You’re beautiful.

You were made for so much more than all of this.

You’re beautiful.

You’re beautiful.

You are treasured, you are sacred, you are His.

You’re beautiful.

--MercyMe

Well, a lot has happened since the last time that we wrote, but it is hard to find time to sit down and devote our attention to reflecting on what has happened. I’ll try my best to say everything that I want to say. Anyway, we left you on Friday before we went to the opera! It was absolutely incredible. Everything about the opera house was beautiful, from the chandelier over our head that weighed 2.5 tons and was surrounded by paintings from Shakespeare plays to the beautiful statues of Greek mythology to the baroque style surroundings, red velvet covered chairs, and gold painted white walls. On Friday night, we watched Rigoletto, a tragedy by Verde. The music was amazing and I even recognized some of the songs. Unfortunately, the opera was done in the original Italian and the subtitles they had overhead were in Ukrainian so I didn’t really understand anything, but Irene bought us an English booklet with a synopsis of Rigoletto. On Saturday, we were kept in by the rain but managed to make a trip to the market and go to see the ballet The Swan Lake, which I loved even more than Rigoletto. To be able to see what these dancers can do put me in absolute awe. Everyone who performed, whether it was in the orchestra or on stage, was amazingly talented. Also, there were no words to the ballet, so I didn’t feel left out of anything.

On Sunday, we cleaned up our apartment and prepared to board the overnight train to L’viv.  While on the train, Irene was nice enough to teach me the Cryllic letters and a few Ukrainian words. Ukrainian and Russian are such guttural languages that it’s hard for me to pronounce them and I often don’t even hear the different sounds that Irene produces—just the English sounds that I know. She had much patience, however, and was willing to repeat a word many times until I got it right or give me all the time I needed to write things in Cryllic.

We arrived in L’viv Monday morning at around 7 a.m. We’re staying at Irene’s mother’s house near the city center. Her mother was an English teacher and she’s been to Egypt 11 times! Their apartment is so big and there are separate rooms for Alex and I. He has the bed this time and I’m sleeping on a cot-like bed. After breakfast, we headed into Dubliany, a village about a half hour away from the city, for our first visit to the family orphanage. The whole situation was surprising. There was a sign pointing towards the “family orphanage,” but it was pointing in the wrong direction just so the asphalt will go that way and go towards the mayor’s house! The mayor is very corrupt and has been stealing the orphanage’s money for the “city,” but really for his own personal use. He made them put the money that they had saved after selling their business in the city fund and has done basically whatever he wants with it since then. Natalia, the mother of this family, visited an orphanage when she was ten years old and decided that she wanted to save as many children as she could after that awakening experience. This family was started by Ivan, who is now 12. Natalia and Uri were friends of his family, and after his mother left he was cared for by his grandparents. When his grandfather passed away, his grandmother asked Natalia and Uri if they would care for him. Since then, they have accepted nine other children into their home as well as their own two sons who are now in their twenties. Each child has horrible stories. Nastya, especially, has a horrible story:  her parents were alcoholics who fed her cigarette butts and alcohol and beat her. When she was brought into this family, she could not speak. Since then, she has started to speak and seems to be adjusting very well. Ivan smaller (10) stutters, probably due to beatings from the state orphanages. Marishka (9) and Pavlo (9) have cerebral palsy. When Marishka was adopted, there were worms living on her back. Zorihanna (9) is hyperactive, which was caused by experiments that the doctors did on her in the orphanage. This requires expensive medicine! However, in the midst of all of this, there are also great talents! Ivan (12) plays the clarinet and piano, and Svitlana (12) sings extremely well and even sang for the opera! Yulia (15) takes art classes. The older children all speak a little English and were excited to be able to practice with us.

I want to clear up a story from before that I misunderstood. It was not the music school who turned students away, but the actual school of Dubliany. Seven of the children could not take being taunted and called an orphan everyday, so they are driven to a special school in L’viv. The other three stayed, proudly saying that they were not orphans but that they had a family.

On Monday, we were greeted by all of the children who seemed genuinely happy to meet us. Since then, it has been a whirlwind of outdoor games, board games (which Alex has a tendency to cheat at by telling me there’s a cat in the kitchen and cleverly stealing my money while I look away :P), building puzzles (the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building), videos about the organization ‘My Family’ which Natalia is the president of, and generally just hanging out with the children. They love teaching us Ukrainian words and learning English words. We brought them candy on the first day and got a tour of their nice three story house, which they built to accommodate everyone. Their bedrooms reminded me of dorm rooms, with four beds and four nice new desks. It’s really nice though, and there is plenty of space and toys for everyone. On Tuesday, the family was overjoyed to receive our donation of $1,000 which will be used to pay for Zorihanna’s medicine and aerobics equipment for Marishka and Pavlo. The children were also very excited and broke into two teams to create thank-you cards for us to bring back! The father was so excited that he went out and bought a barrel of extremely delicious strawberries. On Wednesday, we did a presentation about America and the children seemed really interested. The mother also showed us pictures of the children growing up, as well as pictures of state institutions here. In a few of the pictures, the children were literally tied to the side of cribs like prisoners. It was awful.

I feel so blessed and grateful to have had the chance to meet this family. They are full of so much warmth and kindness. Although they don’t have much, they always try to give us the best of what they have and feed us at least three times a day. The children are so thoughtful and are always giving us the best seats, bringing us water, or putting on the English movies that they have in their game rooms. We are always greeted with a hug and a kiss at the door by the mother and grandmother, and the children who pick us up at the bus station (they take turns) are eager to show us around. It’s incredible to be here and realize that two people have given up their career and a large portion of their life to make sure that ten other people have a good life. J We are also blessed by the fact that one of the older sons of the family, Wasil (23), has studied in America before and knows very good English!

On Monday night, we met with a group of five people in their twenties who provide a summer camp to a state run institution. It is called “Children on Earth” and was started by a Methodist Church. These young people continued it, and go to a state run institution once a month. They’ve also been providing a summer camp at the end of June for three years with their own money and friends’ money. Their goal is to be friends with the children and ensure that the children know there are people who care. They were interesting to eat pizza with and talk to. I don’t know how we can help them in the future, but I hope that we find a way.

Tonight, we leave for a resort in the Carpathian Mountains with “My Family,” so we’ll be able to hang out with the children that we know as well as meet other family orphanages. The resort looks so nice and I’m so excited! Anyway, thanks for reading this very long blog post and keeping up with our adventures. I love you and wish that you were here. <3

For more information about the family orphanage:  http://www.moya-rodyna.org.ua/

Love always,

Alex and Chels :)

I also want to give a shout-out to my mom, whose 51^st birthday was this Tuesday! Happy birthday Mom! I love you. :)