More Changes!

Our first day of ministry in St. Petersburg brought more changes. Why should I be surprised? It’s a mission trip and you are supposed to be flexible!

We all went to Children’s Hospital #15 this morning ready to meet kids and do ministry. After several delays, we were finally in the activity room to begin a craft at 11:45am, however we would only be given until 12pm and then we would need to leave. Our team was able to minister to 8 kids with a craft project that took most of the time. However, as we were making plans for the next day, we were told that Americans need to have a ten day quarantine! They were afraid that some of us would be carriers of the swine flu and they wanted to make sure their children didn’t catch it. It seems that the hospital had a bad experience a couple of weeks ago that caused them to make this new rule in the past few days. So, since none of us have been here for 10 days yet, we are ineligible to come back. Again, it seemed that we were knocked out of our planned morning activity. Two weeks ago the Crimson Sail Shelter canceled due to government activities with the kids, and now our back-up plan to minister at the Children’s Hospital has been thwarted. Change and flexibility… that’s the essence of a mission trip!

Later that afternoon, we all ended up at Child in Danger. There were 13 children waiting on us to do activities. They were a great group! We were able to do a craft together, play some games, and lead an age appropriate Bible Story with the kids. We attempted to get them to memorize the focus Bible verse, but only one child was able to memorize the Russian verse from a small poster. Of course, more kids became much more attentive once I gave two Dum Dum pops to the one boy! We explained that we would be there all week and ended our time together in prayer.

During our craft, I was able to talk to the director and found out that 7 of the younger kids are at an age where they don’t go to school. So, with that we decided to come to the Child in Danger Shelter in the morning, play with the younger kids, go to lunch, and then go back and minister to all the kids with crafts, stories, and Bible Stories. So, now all is well and we will be spending all our time with the kids from Child In Danger. That a change I can do!

The other major change is the weather. Today it began snowing as we arrived at the Children’s Hospital. As we came in the snow came down harder and harder. By the time we had to leave, the snow was almost blowing sideways and was beginning to stick on the grassy areas. The sidewalks were full of slush and our coats were getting wet. It snowed for more than 5 hours! It was the big thick flakes that are great for making snowballs. Of course, you know what happened next!

Certainly there are lots of changes here. I’m sure there are more to come!