You love me! You really love me!

I wrote yesterday about the difference in our travel regimen this year as compared to last but today I was thinking that our presence here also seems to have greater affect on our friends over there.

Last year, outside of teams we were visited by only 4 people we knew (and 3 of those were our parents) and had 2 part-summer interns.

This year the numbers are staggering.  As best I can figure we are expecting visits from at least 10 friends and will have no less than 8 (possibly more) interns as varying points during the summer.  4 of those interns will even be here outside of the actual summer camp period - either before or after camps.

We may also end up with 4 groups or individuals who come to work on the camp itself, as compared to 1 last year.

Contrary to the title of the post, I don't really think it's our continued presence that has caused this.  I honestly don't know what the difference is.

I heard once that economic downturns tend to have an effect on charitable giving by the middle class - an INVERSE effect.  Apparently when faced with news or experiences that shake us out of our comfort zone, we tend to actually give more generously.  I don't know if we are seeing an example of this, but hearts have been opened to the ministry here and it's a huge blessing.

Thanks for your efforts and God bless.

I don't usually do this...

....but you have all got to see this.  

I typically avoid throwing up random YouTube clips since I'm usually the last one to see them anyway, but this one is so far beyond awesome that I just had to.

Travel to travel

When we were here in 2008 we did almost no travel.  I could count the number of cities I saw on one hand and only our 36 hour trip to Yalta was for fun.  In fact, our only legitimate attempt at seeing what Europe has to offer resulted in our being banned from re-entry to Ukraine for 4 months.

This year all that is going to change.  Here is the line-up for the next few months:

• Next Tuesday Jenya, Sergey and I are going to see Shakhtar play in Donetsk.  The trip also involves a day in Kharkov (Ukraine's second city), coming AND going, plus almost an entire day in Donetsk itself.  All of these are firsts for me.
• Soon after I return, I will be going to Kiev with Andrey to the embassy of Belarus to work on our visas for.....

.... our missions trip up north!  I call it a missions trip because Belarus is almost as inaccessible as Russia, particularly for Americans and we are taking our staff and volunteers to run a camp.  For many of them it will be the first time outside their own culture (though not that far outside) and it will give them insight on how the internationals feel when they come to the Hope Center.

For those of you who want the practice, Tanya is planning to blog the trip in Russian!  For the rest of you, I'll be doing it in English as well.

For the other trips, you'll just have to wait till I get back to hear updates.

Here we go again

I neglected to post some photos of the Ranger at work which I explicitly promised to some folks, so here you go.

We used it to unload our latest humanitarian aid shipment - the same shipment that ousted the Ranger from it's former garage.  These pallets usually weigh between 250 and nearly 500 lbs so unloading them by hand is a tough task.  The decision was made to slide them out of the truck into the Ranger like so...

....and so......
....and then drive them either into the storage or to the door if it's too tall like this one.

It's a good use of the vehicle and they were all excited to be a part of using it.

I was also able to figure out the wiring problem that the winch was having and get it corrected so we can use the plow.  It turns out that you can push dirt almost as easily as snow.  More to come about how that is utilized.....

I got a new job....

....and in this economy!

Here at the HopeCenter, this type of view is going to be a lot more common.

I have been asked to help fill in as security through the month of February.  The head of security, Igor is heading on vacation so his shifts will be covered by one of either me, Jenya or Andrey.  This is big deal for me because it indicates faith in my competence and capabilities.

Here, being security involves welcoming our guests and discouraging the unwanted.  Strangely I'm more worried about the former as it requires language skills that I don't think I have yet.  It's easier for me to yell at trespassers in the dead of night than cordially invite a guest to speak with some of our staff.  At night I have 2 scary shepherd/rottweilers to help me with the yelling part.

I'll have to let you all know how this experiment goes...  I think my[our] first shift will be Tuesday.