The Team Has Arrived!!

Latest word from the team, via a text message from son Ben with very little detail. But the main thing is they're all there and having the traditional first evening meeting with the translators.

For those of you who don't know about that, there is a "common room" on the second floor of the kindergarten at the top of the stairs. After arriving and getting settled in to the assigned rooms, catching a much-needed shower, and relaxing for a short time, the translators arrive and everyone meets in the common room. Reunions between team members who have made previous trips and translators who have served previously take place with much screaming and hugging....well, at least the girls scream, the boys are a little more reserved. Then everyone is introduced to everyone, and team members and translators seem to somehow decide who is going to be with whom for the rest of the trip. Any translator will translate for any team member when needed, but there seems to be an informal alliance formed that tends to perpetuate itself during the entire visit.

After that all takes place, there is prayer and maybe some singing. In deference to the semi-comatose condition of most of the team due to jet lag and exhaustion, the meeting doesn't go very late. Depending on what the next day's activities entail, necessary preparation is done and then everyone crashes. The beds (cots, really) are definitely sub par by American standards, and would be soundly denounced as injurious to normal humans by the Association For The Support of Healthy Backs, but nobody seems to have difficulty sleeping in them. Just as Benjamin Franklin said, "Hunger is the best sauce", I'd have to say, "Exhaustion makes a bad bed good."

Ben said the team will be going to Camp Victoria tomorrow morning. That's the summer camp (the Ukrainians are BIG on summer camps) where kids from a bunch of orphanages gather and have fun, so it's a conglomeration of kids from a conglomeration of different facilities. It's walking distance from a beach on the Black Sea where the kids, and inevitabily members of the team, go swimming. The kids are absolutely blown away that Americans will swim with them and play with them in the water, even though sometimes it's so cold they end up with blue lips.

I'm also told that Internet access, spotty at best, will be even more difficult during this trip. In the past the team was able to use the computer in the kindergarten in the evenings, but for some reason that isn't going to be easy this year....I do not know why. At any rate, as I receive email updates I will post them to this blog. Pam may also post, but if the connection is poor it is a very slow, difficult thing to do; much easier to send me emails and I'll post.

There are three photos included with this update. They were all taken during the trip two years ago (the last time I went) but they'll give you some idea of what the places look like. One is of the common area, and two are of the beach at the Black Sea.

That's all for now. Pray for the team.

Bert