Close your eyes and imagine the deepest predujice you may have. A neighbor? A habit? A culture? A color of skin? That is what our Ukrainian Spero Group team faced today. The minority Gypsy population about a 25 minute drive from downtown put us all on high alert, God loves EVERYONE.
In a deep seated fear and destain for the poor Gypsy population, typical Ukrainians have nothing to do with these "Samaritans" on the outskirts of "their" city. But only as God can do, He forced us to face these feelings and to be His hands and feet to these people; also His creation.
Over the last year, the team has spent countless hours working with local pastors to gain the trust to bring us foreigners along for a VBS-style morning with these 50+ kids. Stories, snacks, Sunday school songs (with hand motions, of course), paper airplane building instructional, water games (in the sweltering heat) and spinning games were all designed and executed to tangibly demonstrate the love of Jesus to these forgotten people.
In a "mission accomplished" moment after the event, one of the Ukrainian team members, Vlad, said, "...and now I love Gypsy kids I don't even know!" If that is not the transformative power of Jesus Christ, I don't know what is...
I can still see the pentatrating eyes, bright smiles and hear the laughter of these four to 15 year olds. I think I now understand better why Jesus would say, "bring the little ones to me."
After lunch (more mall food; surprise, surprise), we made our way back to the hotel to freshen up for our second life plan session with the grads.
The session began with us breaking off into our groups - Kyryl, Shasha, Vlad (our translator) and I met back up in our room.
After a few pleasantries, they each gave a dry run of their testimony to me with Vlad translating. To my expectant surprise, they both had thought through and prepared very thoroughly the night before. After a few points of feedback (as with any public speaking dry run) Kyryl and Sasha were ready to go for tomorrow!
The night ended with more pizza, more laughing and a positive recount of the day's events.
For my observation, I gave kudos about who as a team they had become. It was truly amazing and an honor to see how this group of six orphans (and Tanya) who just two short years previously could not even speak English well, come together to translate, to transform and to effectively tell of Jesus' love to those in their community. AMAZING!
If only we in America could focus on the main message a little more and on HIS love A LOT more how much better our society would be?
More pictures at: https://goo.gl/photos/8eAziBzB5sGFVY9B6
No comments:
Post a Comment