We had to wear skirts in the Orthodox church
(Esther, Megan, Ashley, and Christina)

Orthodox church

Getting a tour of the "old city" of Belarus

Brushing up on some Belarus history before entering the museum

Using our time wisely inside the museum

Reenactment -- BFA style
(Josh, Ashley, and Christina)

One of these stitched paintings takes 2 years!!

Leaving our "old city" tour

Jacob's turn leading devotions

The girls hard at work creating a speed bump!

The men hard at work "filling in the gaps"

Our tasty, and creative, snack after working!

Christina, Megan, and Isaac at their small group bible study

Christina Foucachon's Journal (4 April 2012)
Well today Megan and I had to wake up super early, and after breakfast we took a Belarusian bus! It was so packed, we could hardly breathe, but it was a funny and memorable experience all the same. When we got to the university, we spoke to an English class that our host sister attends, and it was interesting to see their point of view on Americans. When that was over, Igor, a member of Spasenie, led us to an orthodox church. Us girls had to wrap skirts around our jeans to respect their traditions. The inside was beautiful. Anyway, when the rest of the team arrived, we drove up to "old brest", the fortress and museum. Igor explained that not many Belarusians know the history of Brest, and talked about the wars and how there was freedom of religion back then. We visited the sites, the ruins of Old Brest and witnissed high school teens, marching in uniform. We had a very nice lunch waiting for us at the community center when we got back and we had team time after that. Jacob led us and talked about forgiving people, even if we ourselves have been hurt by people, to just really pray and go to the core of the problem and forgive one another. We then worked outside on the construction site for a few hours and had a good time even though most of us were sore from the day before and very tired. To finish off the day, we all piled into Sergue's car (in Belarus, you do not have to wear a seat belt and you can just squeze as many people into the car as you want); and we each went to a home church. Their home churches are like small groups for us. I had a wonderful time with mine as we all shared our testimonies, our struggles with non-Christian friends and we read a passage and discussed the vanity of humans and material things. It was amazing fellowship and I felt like people here have blessed me so much more then I have blessed them even though I was the one on the mission trip. Thank you Lord for this amazing experience! SPASIBO!

Esther, Ashley, and Christina working on the dirt pile! :-)

The "men" working on manly things

Esther and Ashley all done shoveling!!

 

The women got done first, so they helped the "men"

Meeting with USee, the outreach team

Our two leaders conducting the meeting

Jacob, Christina, and Josh hanging out...

Esther Han's Journal (3 April 2012)
Today we woke up and ate some tasty breakfast and we went to a Belarusian university. Some people from our team went to a class where students learn English and those students asks them some question, and other people went around the university and looked around some classes and met some interesting people. After we went to the university, we had our team time and we talked about what we did with our host families. After we had out team time, we did some construction work even though it was really tiring. While we were doing the construction work we got to know each other more by seeing the crazy(?) side of them. After that we spent time with the USEE leaders and some people shared how they became personal with God. For our devotions, we talked about spiritual battles because we could easily focus in ourselves especially in this kind of situation where we are in a foreign country. In order to win a spiritual battle we could read the Bible several times, pray to God, or even worship him. Also the most important thing is we just need to believe that Jesus is our Lord.

Josh giving his devotion

Jacob, Isaac, and Ashley moving some tiles!

The pile of tiles we had to move...all finished!

Good work team! Show those muscles!

Replenishing after such hard work!

Heading to the Gypsy Village...

Ashley leading devotions:  1 John 4:11-12

Russian currency:  Rubles

Singing at the Spasenie church service 

Tim speaking about our ministry

Some of the gang:  Megan, Isaac, Ashley, Jacob, & Christina

In the community center before our performance

Getting ready for their debut

Jacob, Josh, Isaac, and Esther performing "Clocks"

Ashley Moon's Journal (1 April 2012)

3rd day in Belarus, it was a long day, but a good one. Woke up, had breakfast, and got ready to go to church. Our team was going to perform two songs after being introduced at the church. When all our team got there, we didn't have much time to rehearse, so we panicked a bit. However, during the performance, all of us didn't think about how we would look, but set our focus on God, and the performance was a success (I think I did well for my first time performing on the drums^^). We worshiped God and that was what mattered. The service was of course in Russian, so I didn't understand much, but during worship I was filled with the Holy Spirit whatsoever. I had never felt that before when I couldn't understand the words and didn't know the song. It was amazing how God touched my heart. My nervousness of performing was overcome by peace and joy from God, and that stayed even after the performance. After church, we went back to our host families' homes, ate lunch, and rested for a while. Then, we came to the community center to practice for our second performance, which was for a youth ministry that was going to be happening there during the evening. Before that, we had our team meeting and I had prepared for the devotions. I talked about love, how love is from God, how love is like water and if we don't share it, it just sits there and becomes "dead", and how He is the one that breaks the barrier, the wall between people. I wasn't in the second performance, so I helped the other teens to set the place up and just hanged out with them. I got to know them a little more (they are from the LOGOS middle-school youth group, and USEE high-school youth group) and God did break the wall between us: it wasn't awkward to talk with them and hang out with them although they spoke little English and we didn't speak any Russian at all. It was the same for the host family me and Esther was staying with. After the ministry (the ministry was good: our team performed music, did the skit, other teens from the church did some things as well, and there were activities) we came home and ate dinner, and after dinner, we were able to make a deeper and longer conversations with them more than we have had yet. We got to know them and Belarus more, and they got to know about us too. I've realized that perspective is what's important, not what we are doing. When we set our focus on God, things that might be embarrassing or nerve-wrecking becomes a joyful and a good event.