From Jeff

Saturday was HUGE! We arrived mid-morning to start working with about 12 kids that are part of the Morshansk church where we played games together, and did several crafts together building on our relationship together. The biggest hit with the kids was face painting. At first we started to paint their face and before we realized it... they were painting our faces, arms, and chests :) of which I've given quite a few pictures. I think you will find this quite humorous. We also did quite a few relay races with the winners receiving candy that they were very excited about and it really helped set the tone with their desire to cooperate and work together in a team.




You will find several pictures with Bear being a typical comedian with the kids. Within a couple hours, quite a few kids, if not all, were crawling all over him wanting more of his attention to the point he had gotten a hole in the bottom of his pants that the kids were finding it humorous to watch as the hole continued to grow throughout the day. (I suspect the kids were taking joy in helping the hole grow). We also took the kids to the forest for an hour as most of the team realized walking into the forest wasn't the safest as hordes of mosquitos enjoyed the company, so we spent our time on a small dirt soccer field playing kick ball. We took a group photo and included it within the zip file. After returning from the forest, we made it in time before the orphans arrived to spend time playing games and doing crafts with them in addition to the other twelve children.









Also, you will see a few other peoples that is showing a man getting water from a pipe that was on the side of the road outside of the church. I know the church and the buildings associated with the church didn't have running water, or inside toilets. I saw him throughout the day going out to get water for people to cook with, and for the children to drink. One of the interesting things was the bathroom... we all considered it an experience. I can't describe the stench or what I saw other than... I consider it quite fortunate that I only had to go to it once in the three days I was there. Vicki went there a couple times over the three days... and it was difficult for her since... well, lets just say the conditioned didn't allow her to sit. I have another picture of the cooks who were wearing solid light blue garments, and several other pictures with the team getting a quick and dirty lesson on Russian. We also learned Bear (Greg Morton's nickname) didn't translate very well to the children because the letter "R" sound doesn't exist in their language so saying it in English caused them to laugh. There is another picture with Bear practicing his make shift Russian with one of the local girls who kept giggling especially when he said his name as the Russian word "Bear" in Russian. She had a confused look a couple times where we were all laughing and having a great time. Several of the other pictures with us around the picnic table writing on paper without any kids was our Russian lessons from Anaya and Misha. One small note - Anaya and Misha are doing an excellent job being every where at all times helping to translate doing crafts with the kids, running at a whim to translate something for a child or someone else for the team. My hat is off to them.