Ben and Kristy Blog

Happy New Year 2010!

We did something we haven’t done in ages – we rang in the new year with an all-nighter with the young people from our church. There were 25 of us. But the festivities started hours earlier. Our church here functions like a family – it is always so evident how Ukrainian believers love being together. New Years is a holiday that is as big as Christmas. So it made sense that our church gathered at 5pm for singing, many, many words of encouragement and reflection on God’s 2009 blessings, a kids’ program, and plenty of food for everyone. That lasted for 3.5 hrs. Here is a 1-min. video from the night. Pastor Misha and Halya singing at New Years Celebration

Prayer and Singing to Ring in the New Year

Afterwards, there was a break until 11pm, when the youth New Years’ party began. Everything about celebrating New Years here and there (US) is different for us – the time of the party (11pm – 8am), the food (a full meal of cabbage salads, chicken, and potatoes), there was a full program, planned by our youth leaders; while the fireworks were sounding from every street in Lviv outside (they don’t do a central 10. min. show – they do 5 sec. shows in most streets/neighborhoods), we stood in a circle and prayed in the New Year. By the time the prayers were over, so were the fireworks. We did sparklers inside. When people started getting really tired, we brought out Nintendo Wii (thanks, Mom W.) and Monopoly. Some time around 6:30am we started our Steal Bingo game. We got home at 8am and slept all day! But it was a really fun night. A highlight for us was that there were a handful of kids who for sure had never spent such a holiday with our church before. We are looking forward to great things in 2010.

Never before have I craved Dad’s appetizers so badly!

It’s about 5am here. It was so fun to play Monopoly with boys who’d never seen the game before. Then Misha did some amazing card tricks, which probably seemed even more amazing, considering how exhausted we were.