Hi Friends and Family,

Nothing “update worthy” has happened since I’ve arrived in Ukraine a few days ago, but I want to share about some unique experiences I had in Michigan.

As I prepared to go home, the students at Hollywood Elementary School (in Stevensville) gathered A LOT of stuff for the orphans here in Ukraine. In fact, 280 pounds of blankets, hats and gloves, underwear, toys, deodorant, and other things. We filled four boxes, each to the 70 pound limit. It’s coming by boat through http://www.meest.net/. (For those who later ask for the cheapest way to ship to Ukraine)

The school allowed me to speak to nearly all the students at Hollywood in a series of mini-assemblies. It’s an interesting challenge to talk to kids in public school about your job as a missionary because you can’t speak freely about God.

I wouldn’t violate the law or school rules and I want to honor those who allowed me to speak, and those who collected clothing for “my” kids. But I also wanted to say something valuable to the kids, something they could “take away” after the project was complete. So I took out the “God vocab” and said things like this…

“…I really love my job. I feel like my purpose on the earth is to reach out and help orphans, and bring them hope…”

“…Every kid is special and important, whether they have a family or not, regardless of skin or hair color, or if they have physical or mental difficulties…”

“…If you’re really smart, or good at sports, or popular, or have more than other kids, those are gifts. You don’t have those gifts just for yourself, or so that you can brag about your math score being higher than another kid’s. You have those gifts to help others. If you’re the toughest, strongest kid in your class, it’s not so that you can push smaller kids around. But you should use that gift to protect the weaker ones…”

On driving home, I thought about those words. These values are shared by many people, Christian or not. Nobody will call the school board in opposition to anything I said. But there are some God fingerprints on those concepts.

If the universe and all forms of life are here by blind chance than nobody really has a purpose. Valuing human life is false, contrived, even delusional. Everything and everyone is just here by natural selection - which means genetically and locationally “lucky.” (locationally is not a real word)

But all kids are important and special. This value is not always embraced here in Ukraine. In the atheistic Soviet Union, children with disabilities were looked upon as defective and inferior. Residue of that worldview is still in Ukraine, and we fight that mentality continually. Special needs kids are not given the care and time they could have, and it’s not just about finances. It’s a case of which lives are considered valuable

And the idea of strong children protecting the weak violates that principle of the “survival of the fittest.” Getting rid of the weak and the poor and the mentally ill will mean a better gene pool for future generations. This is ideology in the writings of many social Darwinists.

And that’s what makes our God so great. How many times does the Bible express God’s love for widows and orphans? Most people working here in Ukraine have a share of that love in their heart. Our belief, our love for God, shapes the decisions we make and the things we do.

¶ 5:05 PM

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