Recent Life Skills training

Last week we held a 4-day training for our life skills curriculum here in Kiev and had 19 volunteers go through the course. This is the training we hold twice a year for people from throughout Ukraine who are already doing work with orphans (or graduated orphans) or who desire to begin work in this area and are looking for more resources and education.

I am always amazed how this course turns out!! Just when we think we don't have enough people signed up to put on the training, the last hour chimes and the phone starts ringing! We had people from 6 different regions of Ukraine in attendance and even one woman from Moldova. As always I was humbled and encouraged by their stories of how timely this training was for their perspective ministries. Several people mentioned how they were getting ready to write such a material and then they learned of our material and training! Such a direct answer to prayer!
Among our group of volunteers we had former drug addicts, those who had served time in prison, foster moms, pastors, and students! Talk about a group with a lot of interesting stories and experiences! It was awesome getting to hear their various stories and hear how they came to know the Lord, how their lives were transformed and how they are now serving others- namely orphans.

This was also the first training where I was able to do some teaching. Usually I'm just in charge of the organizational aspects of these trainings, but this time I was recruited to teach some of the sample lessons. My favorite of course was when I did the lesson on 'bad habits' and was able to demonstrate that smoking a cigarette is like inhaling chemicals for cleaning and finger-nail polish remover! Similar chemicals are used in both. Activities like these are used to give them ideas of creative demonstrations for their youth. They got a kick out of watching me 'smoke'!

We are very excited that 19 more people are now equipped with this training and material to take into the orphanages throughout Ukraine!! To date we have trained nearly 500 people from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Romania, Kazakhstan and Moldova with this curriculum. Our next training will be in Western Ukraine in May.