Camp Day 3 - at the Beach - Wednesday July 7

I am going to keep going with my posting from the trip in order, even though we are home.
The third day of ministry we went on an outing to the beach. The ride there was about 1 hour and 20 minutes, where as to the facility it was about 40 minutes. The rides to both places were extremely bumpy as a ride to any place in Ukraine would be. :-) The quality of the roads is not there highest priority, and all of the roads have lots of big, deep potholes. It would have a 15 minute ride to the facility if all the roads were smooth, and there were no potholes that we had to slow down and go around. Instead it took us a long and bumpy 40 minutes.

Sunflowers on the side of the road on the way to the beach

The area that we were in (Krivoy Rog) produces a lot of sunflower oil. All of the grease in our food was sunflower oil, so it was a little heathier than some other oils (like butter), but still my stomach did not like it.

Brooke and Josiah being goofy. :-)

This is the beach. :-) Not really much like a beach, but it was a good enough beach for some of these residents who had NEVER been in the the water before we took them in! NEVER in their lives, not even a bath. Can you imagine???

Natasha and some of the other residents sitting on the blankets.

Natasha was so happy when she got in her swimsuit and little hat. She was one on the 15 women at the facility, and there were 309 men.

Everyone loved the water! They liked splashing, and they all had a blast. It was quite interesting trying to get swimtrunks on 50 men who really didn't want to waste time on swimtrunks because they wanted to get in the water.

Olivia had fun playing in the water, and she was soo cute in her little swimsuit and hat (she didn't like wearing the hat though!).

Playing in the water

We also drew pictures while at the beach. We also played games (volleyball) and sang songs. This guy has amazing drawing talent! He says that these pictures look really bad because he has bad eyesight. This picture says America and then it says Save and Preserve, and up in the corner it has a P for preserve, and a $ for save.

This is another picture that the same guy drew.

I was gluing cotton balls on for everyone who wanted them, and this guy kept drawing circles for me to put cotton balls in.

This is Yuri (I think, I'm pretty sure)

Some of the guys liked to show off their mucles and have us take a picture of them.

Buddies!

I liked this picture too. It has a robot watching TV, and in front is a fence so they can't get out (like at the facility). And in the back, the thing that looks like a sun is the guard so they can't get out (like the workers at the facility).

The toilets at the beach... Nice right?? Luckily I only had to use them once.

???? and me. I really don't remember this guy's name, I know he has a name, but there are so many names, and so many repeat names, I really don't remember. I think it's Sasha (that's a very, very common Ukrainian male name).

Max is very popular with all of the residents, he tries to go to the facility we were at at least once a month if not more, so everyone there knows him. He has a lot of patience to get his name called over and over again all day long! Max! Max! Max! Max! (the russian way to prononce it is "Mox")

Olivia did so well with all of the residents. She was a champ! Max said that there are only 3 black people in Krivoy Rog (the city that is 75 miles long!) so of course these people have never seen any of them. Poor Olivia, everyone was in her face, holding her, kissing her, hugging her, one guy even licked her! She had amazing patience, that I don't think many babies would have in her situation. Go Olivia!

I love this picture!! She is soo cute!!