Bricks and Vacation Bible School

Monday, September 8, 2008


What a fantastic day of work and fun. This was the first day at the worksite for many of us. Following a cozy ride with people and supplies, we arrived at the site for a quick orientation by Volodyia, our site foreman. We picked up Victor, our interpreter on the way out and he had his job cut out for him. We had more questions and he did a remarkable job of condensing Volodyia’s explanations into a few simple words this bunch could understand.


There were few craftsmen on site today. Our primary job involved helping Volodyia clean up the site fence line, repair the fence and move a lot of brick around in preparation for the craftsmen tomorrow. The latter became the primary focus for the rest of the day between rain showers. Victor, our interpreter, found some gloves and jumped in and helped.


There are several pallets of brick needing to be moved and the bobcat must be busy, but now that I think about it, I haven’t seen one around. They tell me that we moved more than 3500 brick using assembly lines passing bricks from one to the other singing hymns. We got good enough to toss the bricks some 8-10 feet - discovered that wears holes in gloves rather fast.


They served us lunch on site. As you might expect, Stan ordered cabbage rolls and Anna delivered, they were fantastic.


Some of the ladies spent the afternoon making a replica of Jerusalem, preparing name tags and lining the tiny church walls with craft paper, getting ready for VBS. We weren’t sure if we would have any kids today, as the official beginning is Tuesday. Late in the afternoon we were blessed to open our doors to six boys and girls and welcomed them with open arms. We were able to convince Victor, our interpreter that VBS would be a well deserved break from brink moving and we couldn’t have done it without him. He was such a sport to help out with the story of the lepers and how they were quarantined from the town, (or tied together with bright yellow caution tape which was our version). VBS ended with songs sung in both English and Ukraine. Pam Bishop did a terrific job with planning the VBS, even down to the 24 lbs of corn starch which we are still looking for and starting to wonder if this product can even be found here … sorry Pam, probably no walking on water this trip.

Weather was just perfect, cooling down after the showers.
We are all looking forward to another blessed day tomorrow.