"Minimal hair, maximum muscles," said Anastasia dreamily...giving a hint to her friend who was trying to guess her character as we played "Who am I?" in our English group at iCamp, our Evangelistic English camp. As we all had a good laugh over her dream guy, I realized that our group had finally begun to open up to each other. During the week at camp, we worked on our English, played fun games, talked about serious subjects, hiked 2 hours to the top of a mountain, and were able to build relationships with the campers who came.
We had a total of 35 campers, 11 of whom were unbelievers and we spent the week getting to know them and sharing the gospel. Melissa was able to spend several late evenings with some of the girls in their dorm room discussing life and Christianity and what it looks like practically to follow Christ. Sam also had a group, building a great relationship with one camper, who came with a student from TCI. He was was struggling in his faith and confided in Sam. We also enjoyed the time with our YM students, mentoring them working through the issues of camp. It is always refreshing to minister directly to young people and alongside our students. While there was no one who made a decision to follow Christ at camp, all of the campers went home with their local church youth leader (a student of one of our 5 Youth Ministry programs around Ukraine), who will be able to follow up with them, continuing to build relationships and continually share the Gospel with them. (Incidentally, in case you were wondering, Anastasia is in love with Duane Johnson, not Sam :)
(Pictures: Sam and Mel with their English groups)
Downtime - Planned and Forced
After camp, we spent a few days in the mountains with our longtime friends, now colleagues at YMI, Mike and Melissa Hinton. They came from their home in Romania to help with iCamp. Ask us next time you see us about our adventure with a muddy path and a horse cart with 6 kids, 4 adults and tons of luggage 2 miles away from our cars!
Two weeks after arriving home, Sam caught a flu-type virus. It ended up with Jarrett in the hospital with pneumonia for 6 days getting IV antibiotics and breathing treatments and Sam in the bed next to him with the same thing. Corbyn soon caught the virus which immediately went into pneumonia, although thankfully we were able to catch it early and he did not have spend time in the hospital. Melissa ended up with a double ear infection. Everyone except Evy has been on antibiotics. We are so thankful for the support system of friends God has given us in Ukraine that helped us with family logistics, childcare, bringing us food, running errands for us, and daily calling and texting to see how we were, remind us of their prayers, and see if we needed anything.
We were really excited when Melissa's parents came in. Jarrett and Sam were released from the hospital the day before they flew in, Sam was almost done with treatment and Corbyn and Melissa were starting to feel bad. Everyone seems to be well now and we are enjoying time with them.
As you can see in the picture above :) 
