Letter from my Brother

My Dad and brother are in Ukraine at the moment, with one other guy, on a short term missions trip. Dad is teaching a course at a Bible school, and my brother, Tim, is hanging out with youth from the church, and helping out with worship music, and just generally doing whatever Dad needs help with. I drove them to the airport a week ago today, so by now they've recovered from jet lag, and done lots of interesting things. (My dad always packs his schedule and the schedules of any team members he takes with them as full as possible on these trips, in order to get the maximum benefit out of the month or so that they're away.)

Tim sent out an email to his friends and family today, and I thought I'd stick a couple of paragraphs up for you. They made me laugh. (But you'll have to pardon his general lack of spelling and grammar! He's more concerned about reporting his trip, and making us laugh than writing a stellar piece of material.) Keep in mind that Tim is only 18, is very single, and is a musician in every sense of the word - his biggest regret was that he couldn't take his own guitars with him to Ukraine - too much risk to his "babies" on the planes!

Sunday morning we were up at 5:00 Am for a sunrise service by the Dnepro River(it’s a huge river about a mile wide) It was a lot of fun, I was part of an early morning worship team, and it was funny because they randomly decided to play a bunch of songs that we hadn’t practiced, so I got to sorta pick things up as we went… From there we went to the actual church service. I have begun to meet a bunch of the youth here, and they are a lot of fun, sometimes its hard to have conversations, even when they speak English, but I have a lot of fun saying stuff and throwing in one of the ten Russian words I know into the conversation every once in a while… and they are having fun cause they teach me words that don’t exist and then get me to say them to people…. me being totally clueless. and then the people point and laugh at me… haha kinda sounds like the time my brother and I convinced some American kids that horses were called cows and cows horses in Canada.

anyways, from church the kids took me out for a Ukrainian lunch, and I had this weird rice thing with a huge chicken breast that resembled a fried egg… looked gross but tasted pretty good, and from there they took me to a Christian youth thing called Alpha and Omega… It was a lot of fun, they had unbelievable good musicians as well.. one guy played guitar, bass, and drums better than anyone I have ever met. At the end of the service they had a talent show, and my friends somehow told the people upfront that I played guitar,… so suddenly everyone was saying my name and pointing to the stage… haha so I had to go play a guitar. It’s kind of funny cause everyone still seems to be trying to find me a wife, and I ever got a little “anonymous” note from someone complementing me on my guitar skills… not as good as bowstaff skills… but it’ll do.

So there you have it, life from the eyes of an 18 year old guy spending a month in Ukraine!