Musings and Rantings

Ahoy there beloved friends!

It's been a while (again) and I blame motherhood (again), but to be honest there's not a lot to tell you about. Whenever anybody comes over I bang on about nappies, poo and sick. I probably shouldn't do that on a blog.

B update: she likes grinning and shouting and doing some odd sounds that I think is what she believes singing should sound like. Poor little one, learning things off her mummy. She's happiest around lots of people and is generally agreed to be beautiful. She can't handle lactose so my ill fated attempts to chug her full of formula at night - sleep is all I want in life - have not gone well, but she's got some special milk now and I live in the constant hope of decent rest for both of us. She loves her Daddy a LOT and lives for his attention, and that's fine as he lives to lavish attention upon her tiny fluffy head. Here is her fluffy head:

So that's the musings. And here come the rantings.
People keep asking us when we're going back to Ukraine, with a tone of 'well you're going to wait a long time until you're really ready'. As if things are easier here, and that when we go to do missions the hard stuff is going to hit.


On one level, the UK is indeed less daunting. It's easier financially, in that I am allowed to shop a bit. It's easier practically, in that I can easily buy food and get public transport. It's easier to have a baby here, there's feeding drop ins and toddler groups and my friends with babies and my friends without babies who are happy to look after said baby. It's easier to communicate, it's easier to have a hot bath, it's easier to cook and it's just a lot easier.

It's also easier to stagnate, it's easier to get religious, and it's easier to gently slide into Sunday evening Christianity. In this country we have so much money and so much stuff, and after a while we start to believe that we need all the money and all the stuff. 


I've never felt this more than since having a baby - the assumption that we're going to focus exclusively on wrapping our daughter in cotton wool/cash. That despite God's promise to love her, protect her and guide her my responsibility as a mother is ignore him and do a half arsed job in my own strength.

Two things: to 'protect' my daughter and cop out on my calling is the most damaging thing I could do. Why would I want my kid to grow up in this culture? Why would I want her to believe that eating disorders, casual sex and self obsession are normal? In this world that will sexualise her, bombard her with self doubt and generally try to break her cos she's a girl...i'm going to give her a life less ordinary. Because my years of youth work in the UK have led me to believe that our ordinary is failing our children. I don't want to fail my child. I want her to grow up experiencing worship, art, compassion, freedom, service, risk and sometimes not owning the entire contents of New Look. 


Disclaimer: many people raise their kids amazingly well in this culture, but my faith wavers far too quickly and my perspective gets rubbish after a few months in the loveliness that is Lewes. This is because we're called abroad. Specifically, I would be a crap mum in England. 


The other thing: to cop out on my calling and stay in the UK would be the most damaging thing I could do to myself. I would love to own the entire contents of New Look. This is not healthy. Even though things are 'easier' here, my main love is Jesus. He's the point of everything and if I stay here i'm going to slot him into a tidy box - a slightly nice God who doesn't want me to swear or be naughty. I'll believe that 'wisdom' and 'sensible' mean the same thing. 
The Jesus I know and the Jesus I ignore when things are too easy looks like this: a loving, all powerful God who hates sin because he loves us with this burning, rageful, ecstatic passion. He's standing with the poor and the oppressed and he's calling us to come find out what it's like to live selflessly. And injustice gives him rage. And compassion gives him joy. And i'm sitting around in England obsessing over my five a day, because I am ridiculous - I have hugged orphans and looked into the eyes of people who have actually suffered and I come home and complain because I haven't got my own car.


And he has got to be the point of everything, because a life lived not orbiting him has to orbit something and in the UK that tends to be whatever makes life easy. That's usually money.

So no, we won't be staying here now we've had a baby. Because we are not strong enough to love God properly when things are easy - we have got to get out and grow up. To be the best parents we can be, because a life lived with God shapes a person into who they were always meant to be. And my baby girl needs a mum who walks in truth and passion. God loves her too much to give her anything less. 


So come on John's arm ops, come on the 63 grand we need to raise, come on stupid road trip across Europe and come on Oh my soul. Ukraine! 
xxx

j + f = b

So this blog entry is a long time coming. There’s a reason for that and it’s shaped like a mini human. 

Not sure where in the last seven weeks to start really, I have to be careful not to just dribble on about baby baby baby until you click BACK. I shall start from the beginning.

Childbirth. These are my observations:
- Gas and Air does nothing. Don’t believe the lies.
- You can go through 40 hours of labour, failed epidurals, SPD inflammation, fully dilating, pushing for two hours and finally an emergency c section, and people will still assume that your caesarean was a cop out. For the record, without the operation we’d both be dead.
- Despite the above situation, I wasn’t scared once. Not when it was all going wrong and the doctors were panicking and John was on his knees in the scrubs cupboard. I felt pissed off and tired but at no point was I scared, and looking back I’m pretty sure this was because of all the prayers people were praying. So thank you, and thank you to Jesus who we know was in charge of it all. Her being born at all was a miracle. She’s our tiny stroppy gurgly miracle. Our miracle that does poo.
- Midwives and surgeons are beautiful humans. Anaesthetists are beautiful verging on supreme being status.

So now we are three, and it’s astounding. She’s seven weeks old and undeniably the most attractive, advanced and alert baby that has ever been born. And yes, that is me speaking objectively. We’re big softies and pretty bad at making her do anything she doesn’t want to do, and as such are wrapped around her tiny little finger but we console ourselves with all the compliments we get about what a happy baby we have. She should be happy, she’s got two full time minions. 

So in other news, John’s had his op to get his plates taken out and is awaiting MRI scans and more operations. It’s horrible having a sad broken hubby and it’s horrible for him to be sad and broken, and it’s not going to get better any time soon really. Poor John. And we’re waiting for the NHS to get on with it so we might be waiting for a while. But on the plus side with him signed off work I have a companion to play with whose vocabulary extends beyond ‘waaaaaaa’ and ‘cooooo’. On a good day.

So life is pretty much baby dominated, with a back drop of ‘when we move to Ukraine’. The current plan is to get a van and drive there, because apparently with a baby we stand a good chance of being allowed across borders without getting all our stuff nicked. Watch this space. 

love. xxx

for angels to fly...

...and yes, I am listening to Ed Sheeran as I type. 

So this is just a quick update because i've got access to the internet and can let people know what's going on. And because it's an excuse to trawl youtube for 'inspiring' tracks. 

Baby is big and she's fun - kicky and wriggly and still firmly ensconced right where she wants to be. I'm due in 5 days but from what I can sift out of the midwife/doctors/family/friends advice deluge is that she probably won't turn up any time soon. We're having a lovely time organising tiny clothes and making vast lists of everything that she 'needs'. Like baby Vans. The hospital bag is packed and my husband is somewhat hyper about the whole thing, he keeps shouting at my belly to 'come out now'. I love him a lot. 

Lewes is a big blessing - our flat is nice and John's bedecked all available space in bunting and fairy lights, to make me feel at home. Apparently he feels I belong in a Christmas Circus Cath Kidson Narnia Mashup. He is correct. 

Every day here is lovely because we're surrounded by people who care deeply about us. Despite our year of comings and goings, and our inability to return borrowed DVDs or remember social engagements accurately, our friends and family are beautiful humans without whom we would be screwed.

At the risk of seeming a little needy, i'm going to write a list of stuff we'd love you to pray for because quite frankly without God's hands on us we fall into tiny pieces.
1) Ahem, CHILDBIRTH. Some help with that would be good.
2) That we'll be able to give baby girl bump human everything she needs.

3) That in all the baby fun we won't forget Ukraine or to make the preparations we have to make. There's a lot to get ready. And I seem to mainly be thinking about pink outfits for a miniature person.  

4) John's arm: he's waiting for an operation to remove the plates so they can do an MRI scan. Then they will probably do at least one more operation to potentially re break it. This is all NHS and we're on a deadline so prayer for that to go quickly, smoothly and with minimum trauma would be lovely.
5) Income: with me about to bursty and John signed off and waiting for ops, any way of using our lives constructively would be good. 

right, going now. Love. xxxxxxxx

What life looks like

Howdy y’all,

I’m painfully aware that this blog entry has been a long time coming. Every time I’ve sat down to write anything my mind has gone completely blank because there’s always so much to say and a blog does not do the job of an actual conversation. So when we get back, let’s have a cup of tea. 

Today we went to church. It was even longer than usual; the sermon alone lasted enough time for me to learn the entire Cyrillic alphabet. Lots of people told their testimonies and cried and it was probably all great, but it was all in Russian so we were just bewildered for hours. Oh well, we made some new friends and the worship was still good.

Have any of you got any links to decent online sermons? If so, please facebook us because we’re needing some teaching… 

Life here has finally settled into a bit of a routine – our week generally looks something like this:

Monday: Team meeting where we eat whatever westernized food we can get our hands on, (peanut butter costs $20 a jar! Madness!) and talk about what’s coming up in the week. Then we have a proper old pray about the week and also about the future. Then we do whatever tasks need to be done for the week coming up.
This week, this involved traipsing around Vinnitsa for hours putting up posters for a concert a local church was putting on, that we were helping to organize. The Police shouted at Andrew and Daniel, but John and I got away with it.

Tuesday: This involves me and John panicking in the morning, because in the afternoon we have to lead ‘English Club’. So we google ideas, pick the good ones and then meet with the team to outline the plan. Then we go hang out with Ukrainian students and try to help them learn.
This week we were in the medical school where we thought their English would be good because med students are clever. It wasn’t. We hurriedly adapted the games.

Wednesday: It’s Bible teaching day! Genuinely, this excites us because we’re Jesus geeks. Daniel and Tetyana are amazing teachers who teach on SBS (stupidly intense YWAM Bible course) and they are also Jesus geeks and we get to learn from their brains. For free. And Oksana always makes cakes. This week we looked at Titus, or ‘Teetoo’ in Russian.

Then the team grabs a sandwich and piles into a van, and off to Nemerof orphanage we trot. It’s about an hour away and it’s an orphanage where the director is a little suss and the kids are apparently ‘backwards’. The atmosphere is not the easiest and the children are sometimes a bit violent. This week the boys played football and the girls did painting. 

Thursday: It’s the nice orphanage. Well, I like it anyway. Schmerinca has a much friendlier vibe and the atmosphere is a lot more relaxed. John loves a kid called Sasha who hasn’t got any shoes (trying to work out an appropriate way to fix that) and who loves John so much he thoroughly beats the living daylights out of him whenever they hang out. We think it’s love…it might be hatred… it’s hard to tell…

This week the boys played football and the girls did painting. At this orphanage, everyone painted hearts.

Friday: This day is usually free for whatever needs doing, such as visiting a new orphanage to chat up the director, or go hang out at the methodone centre, or help with a church conference etc etc.
This week we went and handed out flyers for the concert thing, got groceries for the three men staying in our apartment, made up beds, cleaned the apartment, went to the concert, stayed for hours as everyone chatted in Ukrainian, accompanied Oksana on a 10.30pm grocery shop, narrowly avoided being accidentally solicited by a drunk guy (I am a little innocent sometimes)(and apparently he was into fat girls), got a taxi home, fed said house guests and then fell into bed and conked it.

Saturday:  Saturday is usually fun day – we hang out, get food together, have movie nights at someone’s flat or just do whatever comes up.  This week we gave our guests brekkie, said good bye, hung out with Vova and his girlfriend Steph who was visiting from Holland (this was fun. Pictionary in English against people who spoke English as a third language? Steal.) and then went for lunch with Andrew and Oksana. In the evening I made a seriously dodgy vegetarian dish and then we watched the Hurt Locker which is an amazing film and you should go watch it immediately.

Sunday: Urgh, church. I mean, yay for church! It’s good to go because it’s important to honor what people are doing in the city and all that stuff, and it’s good to make friends, but I am very excited about getting some Southover back in my life. Then we have lunch together and then do something fun in the evening.

So yeah. That’s what it looks like at the moment. Pretty relaxed sometimes and sometimes completely mental busy. In the future, add in looking after a tiny baby, running a ‘Winter adventure DTS’ and being house parents of a transition home for teenage boys. Eek.

But in the meantime, we come home next week! The inestimable Marcus and Jenni are putting us up again for 20 days and then we move into a flat that the wonderful Alison Washington has found for us. Please pray that all the paperwork and stuff goes through for that because ‘we’re missionaries with no money or income and we’re having a baby’ doesn’t tend to impress letting agents. But we think they like us so hopefully we’ll be living in Malling. Come see us!

Also, we’re bringing Andrew with us for a week or so ‘cos he’s got Visa stuff to sort out. We are going to feed him Harveys, proper sausages and he shall be taken to the castle. He’s Aussie. He needs culture.

Ok, muchos love and rising excitement about seeing everyone again,

F xxxxxxxxxxx

World Changer

Hello, John here this week.

So, I was not sleeping the other night and many things were running through my head as they tend to when you’re trying hard to sleep. The thoughts ranged from the new set of Vans shoes I want when I get home, to being a dad for the first time to a tiny little girl, to what sort of job I’m going to have to do for 6 months in England, to me in missions and what that means, how that is going to look for the future and how its feeling now. Normally it’s not good to trust these thoughts or even think about them too much again after the event, as they tend to be a little confused with semi sleep and also riddled with panic. Because that’s apparently where the brain goes in the middle of the night. Well that’s where my brain goes anyway! 

But one thought kept running through my brain and I wanted to write it down today.

I’m a world changer.

This has been an ongoing theme for me over the last 5 years, since doing my DTS with Ywam in America. One of the weeks of teaching that I had we had this guy talk to us about pretty much that. That we are world changers. At first I was pretty convinced that this was the most cheesy thing I’ve ever heard. But he kept telling us that this was true. And as I processed it with God I discovered that it was very much true. I’m a world changer. I have the ability to change this world, this broken and beautiful world that we all live in.

So back to the other night as I was thinking thinking panicking thinking. I felt so far from a world changer as I possibly could, I felt useless. It’s hard here. Hard because we can’t speak, read or pretty much do anything. How can I possibly be a world changer if I can’t even communicate? Thinking of moving back here full time made me worried, I know in time we can learn the language and learn to read again but that’s a long way off. Years away. Can I afford to waste years?  Could I be so much more effective where I can communicate? Maybe moving to a totally new county was a bad idea? I think I drifted off now…..

I woke up in the morning.

The thoughts were still fresh in my mind, strange. Have breakfast, spend some time with Jesus. Get reminded that it’s not by my effort not by my strength. 

Christ in Me the Hope of Glory. 

Still some of my worries are real and don’t go away. But that day we went to an orphanage and I got to play with the kids and smile at them and love them, love them, love them and then I felt God speak to me in my heart. ‘John, this is world changing’. And I felt like it was a word to be shared. That we are all world Changers. We all have the ability to shape and re mould this world wherever we are and whatever we are doing. We can change the world for good and for bad but we are always changing the world.

As a Christian I have Jesus with me wherever I go. He will be my strength and my shield. When it’s hard and when it’s fun. And I fully believe that I’m called to be his ambassador, one that changes the world, one that brings love.

I would encourage you that you too are world changers. We are nothing special quite the opposite in fact. I’m trying to get across that it’s just about saying yes to God when he says go even when it doesn’t make worldly sense like the position Fritha and me find ourselves in now.

Prophets and Poo

Hi. 
So this week we travelled to Lutsk to attend the YWAM Ukraine conference. This was a week of networking, worship and hearing about what the other bases are doing. We got to meet some wonderful people and followed said wonderful people around like needy puppies, because it's nice to make new friends. We're the only Brits and as such get sucked into much banter re Aussies, scones, the royal wedding and the fact that WE INVENTED THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 


So the conference was good. Trilingual worship sessions. Some...interesting food. 


We had an extra day in Lutsk before we had to catch our night train home, so we hung out with a missionary couple and their two adopted kids. John had possibly the best man day of his life thus far - sauna, go karts, beer marinated shashlik (BBQ) and a plunge pool in the garden. He was pink with glee the entire time. It was lovely. 
We left to catch our all night train and by this point I was feeling pretty rough, but didn't think much of it as was pregnant and tired. We got on the train and it was pretty cool - we had our own cabin thing with bunk beds. Like ex soviet harry potter. We sat around and chatted and played card games until we were randomly joined by this guy from south africa who we'd briefly met earlier that day. He just happened to be on the same train as us. I don't know his real name because everyone just refers to him as 'the prophet'. Meaning that he's got a gift of knowing what God wants to say directly to people, and he has the guts and obedience to share it with them. 


So I must confess I was pretty moody about having to make polite conversation with this guy. I was feeling hot, sicky, squashed and my back was hurting something rotten and I just wanted to go to bed. I sulked a bit and then decided to go for a lie down, but as I got up this guy grabbed my hand, looked me in the eye and asked when my baby was due. 
Well, as soon as he touched my hand I knew I wanted to stay and hear what he wanted to say. 
It was fairly epic, and was completely bang on for me. Stuff this guy could not possibly have known about my heart, my fears and my dreams all came out of his mouth and it was saturated in love, love, love. God really loves us. Enough to grab us on a train in Ukraine and prove it. (He also told us a few things about our daughter. Which is nice.)
Then the prophet guy did this to a few other people in the group - tissues got passed around - and by the time he left we all had peace and giggles coming out of our ears. 
So that was pretty epic. I love how God just springs fun stuff on us, stuff we could never have achieved for ourselves. 


We all kind of peeled off to bed, but then Daniel ran to bathroom and threw up. And then I ran to the bathroom and threw up. Then Daniel did again. Then I did again. Then Tanya followed suit. The night pretty much continued like that, with explosions from both ends. 


It's horrible having food poisoning but I would like you to picture this: You're lying in your bed which is moving about a lot because the train appears to have been built by angry monkeys. You are fighting down the yuk because you are so exhausted from running to the bathroom, but it's no good and have to make a dash for it. You make it just in time and when it's passed you realise you are in a metal, unventilated, filthy box and you're in bare feet. Which for some reason are now wet. And you have to find a flush which for some reason is on the floor (?!) and then try to turn taps on without touching anything with your hands. And you left your toothbrush somewhere in the dark. And when you get back from your cabin you are joined by a new passenger who apparently loves beer and ciggies, but not soap. So you have to run to the bathroom again. 


Yeah. Not funsies. But mercifully, John escaped the bug of horrid and was able to get me home, feed me tiny sips of water and stroke my head as I whimpered pitifully. (This is also nice for him just because i'm glad he didn't get ill. Am not completely selfish human. Sometimes.)
Then commenced 24 hours of sleeeeeeep and toilet, but this morning woke up feeling much better. Can handle toast. Nice toast, nice comforting toast with your crusty goodness. Toasty friend. 


So it was the best of times and the worst of times. And you have not truly experienced Dickens until you have heard Vova reading this passage out loud. Complete genius. 


Other thoughts:
- Have got some contacts now of people looking after girls trapped in the sex industry, we might be going to Kiev on the way home to do some research into that. It's not an easy thing to get into here because the church are apparently in some denial (translator at the conference wouldn't even translate the word 'prostitute') because of the shame culture here. I like being YWAM. We have no shame/ social boundaries. Bit like Jesus. Hopefully.
- First English club went well, I was at home poorly sick but John said it was great. We didn't have permission (i.e. annoying paper work) to do it so the boys snuck into the uni and did it anyway. The students themselves had requested the club so...
- Orphanages stuff is developing well, and we've got loads of ideas to bring home to church. The problems are overwhelming but with God 'impossible is nothing'. I think I just crowbarred a Nike advert into the Bible. 
- Andrew, having got to know us, for some reason still thinks we'd be good as house parents for the home for graduated orphans so we need to do some serious praying about this. 
K John is home and I must go because he's rather interesting as a human. 
xxxxxxxx
p.s. Oksana just told me that one of the girls at the orphanage is pregnant. She's about 14. 

Bloggit

I wish there was a way to paint with words, to show you everything here in a way you could actually feel/ smell/ taste. But this is quite difficult, so I’ll just tell you as best as I can and you can engage your imagination…if facebook hasn’t killed it…

Where to start? With three hours of church in Russian, because the service got somewhat hijacked by a blind group telling their testimonies and singing Ukrainian songs on the accordian. For an hour. Southover would have had a siezure, collectively. 

Or we could discuss at length the first orphanage we visited – and are going back to tomorrow – where the kids were so excited to just play games for ten minutes before they were called away to do more work. And the director said we can visit every Wednesday, as long as we pay to get some of their windows fixed. Which is kind of normal for getting into state run institutions here, you make it worth their while and they’ll let you do their job for them. 

Hmmm, I think I’ll focus more on the disabled orphanage we went to yesterday. First, some background: Stalin’s perfect society did not have any room for anybody with any kind of disability, so they built ‘orphanages’ miles away from anywhere and put all the ‘unhealthy’ people in them. Twenty years after Ukraine gained it’s independence, these places are still the main destination where people send their disabled family members.

On arriving our OM friends Gert and Ira took us into the new room of the orphanage that their Dutch church had paid for, a space big enough for ten people to play and learn in. When we walked in the children were beside themselves with wanting to hug and play. I just said ‘da’ to everything they said to me, so apparently I have agreed to buy one of the girls a doggy. And they have a ball pit.
The second part we visited was the section that had been rennovated by an American church, for the children who had been rated ‘the best’. They were seen as able to learn and they had their own classroom. Then we went through to the main area where the rest of the 90 children hung out all day.
As a team we just discussed how on earth I’m going to communicate this over a blog, and we’re all bewildered by the weight of it all. So I’m just going to tell you some facts;

-          The ‘kids’ ages range from about 7 to 30 ish years old.

-          There were 3 staff for around 50 disabled ‘children’.

-          They all just mill around all day in the concrete yard.

-          Nobody knows what disablities people have, they’re just classified as ‘unhealthy’ or ‘autistic’.

-          Nobody is separated from anybody else, regardless of age or gender or disablity.

-          One young woman doesn’t like clothes so she wasn’t wearing any.

-          There was a lot of rocking, screaming and shouting. The staff were concerned about me being there because of my bump and the unpredictable violence that can happen there. Many children had bruises and scratches on their faces. (I was fine, they were all very gentle and loving towards me and bump.)

-          At night the staff lock the residents in their bedrooms, which we weren’t shown, and go home. There’s one person around in case anything kicks off. Did I mention this is all age groups together?

So that was the disabled orphanage. They’re not orphans, but they may as well be.
And if we didn’t have a heart for this country, we do now. 

I think we're convinced that this is where we are meant to be based for the forseeable future. Our brains have already adapted into 'when we come back to live here' mode, and i'm sad about having to leave our friends here for six months. But i'm also very excited to come home because I miss everyone and cannot wait to meet our daughter! Hurry up January...

Here are some photos for your eyes

This is a fire upon which we cooked Shashlik (Ukrainian BBQ) at a rehab centre in the country.

 And this is Senya and Vova pretending to kill a chicken. They did not actually kill it. 

ok, lots of love, byeeee xxxxx

So