Activities News “The story of how we met the Americans” or “We’re always glad to make new friends”
“The story of how we met the Americans” or “We’re always glad to make new friends” |
| Activities - News |
| Written by Friends |
| Friday, 16 July 2010 12:25 |
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First and foremost, they changed the life of “Alpha and Omega” which had long been preparing and waiting for their arrival. The team which consisted of teenagers and their leaders befriended all of us quickly and even the language barrier couldn’t stop them. Their time in Ukraine included a 3-day camp, a few evening social events where everyone could come and get to know each other better. In the mornings, they went to visit orphanages in our region. There, they were able to give of their love and warmth to the orphan children. We also took walks around Dnepropetrovsk and a day trip to Zaporozhe – all of this left them with new impressions and experiences. Below are some comments received from some of the people whom God blessed during this joyful time with our guests: “oy-oy-oy, forgive me please, I’m late, with the article, I mean, it’s late. It just that after 8 days of energetic ‘drive’ everything in my head is all mixed up and has turned into a funny little soup, so that why it took some time to get everything back in order so that I didn’t just give you some chaotic mess of letters but an organized, informative article “The story of how we met the Americans” or “We’re always glad to make new friends.”
And now you’re probably wondering where the other one went, after all we started with 15 Americans, so I’ll tell you, well, he used to be a Ukrainian, so he was just mascarading as an American. Everyone was busy at the camp grounds “Sunny” in order to pull off this whole, not exactly easy, but still doable task, which was given the name “Journey” – the task; to meet and greet each other, make friends, have fun, and make the most of our time together. In order to do this, we needed:
*All portions were measured and rationed with unlimited joy. But it doesn’t stop here. The last 5 days were spent with no less chaos and excitement! Take a look at the attached items (photo and video material) on this site and you’ll understand the meaning of the phrase “You don’t need to go far to have fun.” Katya Ivchenko (program participant) God is using Alpha and Omega to do amazing things! From the second our team arrived at Alpha and Omega, we all felt welcomed and loved. My host family was amazing and I couldn’t have asked for a better group of girls to stay with! They went out of their way to make sure we had everything we wanted. There are no words to describe how wonderful Juja, Ira, and Masha are. We also had a chance to help host a three day camp. The camp allowed us to develop great relationships with the people from Ukraine. We had a chance to play games, listen to great talks, and have small group times to really share our hearts. It was amazing to just hang out with people and listen to how God is impacting their lives.
Marisa Garman – participant of American team The life of Alpha and Omega is always full and the month of June was especially full of God’s blessings for each of us. We had the unique opportunity to meet with friends from the church “Lifepoint” which is situated in the city of Baltimore, Maryland, USA. For me personally, these guys were a huge blessing. It wasn’t important which denomination of church we belonged to, or which language we spoke, what was important was what united us – the love of our God. God blessed us with a trip to camp for 3 days in the fresh air in the city of Orlovshina. Three days of fellowship, edification, and fun with our American Team. At the camp, we had a very full and interesting program. The name of our cam was “Journey”. At the beginning, the youth of Alpha and Omega and the American team were split up into 4 groups; GPS, One Way, Sweet Milk, and Cowboys. This helped us to organize ourselves and make efforts to work together to get points. This meant that each team had to attend all the meetings and each person had the chance to see the unique opportunities the camp could offer.
Immediately after the lecture we spent time in our teams. Here, in these small groups, we discussed the theme of our sermons. We had a great time, when we could share our needs, talk about changes we wanted to make in different spheres in our lives. After all, when you share your treasure with another person, you become even closer to that person. And this is truly what happened. We became one big team. The whole camp was one big family, ready to serve God. But that’s not everything So, all in all, if things didn’t work out for you to attend this camp and you feel like you missed out on a lot of interesting things, then we invite you to our Christian summer camp with “Alpha and Omega” which will be on the shores of the Azov Sea. Hope to see you there! God loves his children and blesses them. Dasha Sherbina (Participant in musical team) |
If you are familiar with “Alpha and Omega”, then you probably know how much we love our guests. And if you still aren’t familiar with us, then we would love to meet each and every one of you!!! Not too long ago we had an amazing team from the U.S.A. come to visit. This was an unforgettable time for everyone at “Alpha” and for the Americans themselves. They were only in Dnepropetrovsk for one week but during this time they were able to change the lives of those who met them.
On June 23rd a friendly visit from a team of Americans, about 15 in all, began at “Alpha and Omega.” We met them all with joy and had a pancake party. On the 24th until the 26th we headed off for an active, funny, and talkative (but only in broken Russian for 14 of them) camp.
After camp, we were able to visit a few different orphanages during the day then hang out with people in the evenings. Everything was just amazing the whole trip. The people of Ukraine stole my heart when I was over and I can’t wait to be able to return.
Each morning we started with prayer and running to the shore of the river in single file full of cheer. After breakfast, we would have a wonderful presentation from the Youth Pastor Lance. Some questions which we had been examining over the course of the camp were; Where are we now at this stage in life? What moves us? What do we concentrate most of our energy on? Do we want our focus to change 180*? One wise quote we heard went like this; “When our focus has moved off of us and onto God, we begin to feel his grace” Believe me, it works!!! Each person on the American Team shared his or her testimony with us, which helped unite us as we got to know each other better. After the presentation everyone received a piece of coloured paper so we could each, individually write something on the page. We didn’t cheat or copy from each other. Everything that was written was a prayer need that each of our leaders prayed about. But the colour of the paper wasn’t just random. At the end of the camp we made a beautiful picture of our “Journey”.
. In our free time we had a lot of interesting things taking place. Events included fun games, obstacle courses, races, wet volleyball and much, much more. In the evenings we gathered together around the fire and spent time in worship.