Youth & Children's Service at Perechin--Week #2 Preparing for Special Service With Puppets

We had a very busy day yesterday as we continued to prepare for the special service next Saturday (March 5th), when we will host a time to honor mothers and present the ministry we labor for at Perechin. In the later portion of our time we have been taking some of the youth and children with us to go out into the community to find and invite people to come to the service. Vita had made some very nice invitations that we had printed at a local photo shop on nice, attractive photo paper.
We had told the children to come earlier than usual because we wanted to share a hot dog (they call sausages) picnic with them. So we arrived about noon and Stopia and Tim built a fire on the snowy ground. Soon the youth and children came. We had 14 come, a few less than last week, but we thought it was a good turnout because it is the second week that the public schools have been closed due to a high number of students out sick with the flu. We had a nice picnic--inside! We had hot dogs, bananas, hot tea, and cookies. Because we cannot always read what kind of ingredients are in the food we buy, we had a little humor in our picnic. Some of the boys mistakenly put on huge globs of mustard for their sausages, but did not know (nor did we really) that it was really hot horseradish mustard. Their faces were beet red and tears were streaming! But they were not alone. Tim also was getting a bit red. We knew when we bought that mustard that it contained horseradish, but we did not know how much. We learned!
We continued during the afternoon to build on the wall partition and stage for the puppets. Stopia worked with those youth who will actually perform the puppet drama also.
After we had finished the preparations for next week, we (Stopia, Cheryl, Leah, Tim and 11 youth/children) went out to walk the residential streets in Perechin. Surprisingly, in spite of the cold and snow, we found many people outside, including numerous children. We had so much fun as we had a traveling snowball fight progressing as we went. Some of the boys kept attacking us with those frozen projectiles. Tim got bombarded so much that he warned them that if they did not stop that the next one was going to be licking some snow. They thought it was funny and poor David got to lick some snow. It was all fun and even David was laughing.
We met many kids and even one little, lonely girl was sledding on her steep street. All our kids with us made an instant friend of the little girl and were soon sharing the sled she had. Karolina, one of our youth girls attempted the ride on the sled from the top of the steep street and crashed about middle way in the ditch. But thankfully she was okay. Zhanna is a gifted and natural evangelist in friendship. Soon she had the little girl talking about our services. See the picture below.
Please pray for our special service this next week March. 5. We still must go back in the middle of this week and finish some preparations. But pray this will be an opportunity to touch more lives. The youth and children we labor for have been having a great experience and pray for them that this is a blessing in their lives.

Youth preparations for March 5 special service

Yura, Tim and Stopia building the puppet stage

The traveling snowball fight and inviting in Perechin

Zhana (in the foreground) got beat by 2 boys inviting 2 girls

The best way is experiencing your youth befriending and inviting others. Here is Zhanna at her best. Karolina is the girl pulling the sled and getting ready to go up the hill she came down and crashed.