Cat Model

I have to put up with this camera being stuck in my face again!

Paw Odor! Mmmmm smells good!

I think I'll lick it!
(Warning, do not try the above at home.)

My Favorite Michael Jackson Song

It is sad to me that some of the most artistic and inspirational people who pass through this world can have such tortured souls.

Thank you Michael for your music.......

Ukraine.......Where Life Lives You

Image via Wikipedia

My friend called me today and explained to me how she was walking on Kreshatik and looking at the tourists and thought, "They have no idea what it really is like to live in Ukraine." Then she added, "And we who live here as ex-pats have no idea what it is like to live in Ukraine."

Living in Ukraine can sometimes feel like you are fighting your way out of a sucking vortex that you must fight against so that you are not pulled away to heaven knows where and lost like some kind of retro Soviet Alice in Wonderland.

Living in Ukraine makes the red tape needed for a diploma from a California State University look as easy as eating a few cupcakes.

A great quote that is my particular favorite from the sidebar of another fellow Kyivian ex-pat blog "Turkish Invasion," is "Ukraine.....where life lives you."

Life is definitely living me right now as I grapple with any number of problems of which there are no apparent solutions or answers. I simply must wait and let life live me until I can figure out some kind of decision to make or respond the best I can to what is happening around me.

Iranian Students Protest In Kyiv

The "green" revolution of Iran has made it's way to Kyiv so to speak. Many Iranian students come to Ukraine to study in universities here. Some of them protested outside their own embassy. Kyiv Post has some photos of their protest HERE.

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• Sunday Talk - Not Your Father's Revolution (dailykos.com)

Is It Friday Already?

iIt's been a long and tough week.

To top everything off, yesterday I walked by a homeless person and it was just one too many for me. The young woman was in her twenties, had two plastic bags full of her stuff and a small dog in her arms. From her clothes and the fact she had so much of her personal belongings with her, I surmised she was new to street life.

Since the Ukrainian economy has taken a nose dive, I am seeing more and more younger homeless people on the street and it is heartbreaking.

Who Will Be Ukraine's Next President?

Image via Wikipedia

What's happening in Iran today makes me think back to Ukraine's last Presidential election which resulted in the Orange Revolution, when people from all over Ukraine came to Kyiv and took to the streets to protest an unfair Presidential election. Fortunately for Ukraine, the Orange Revolution was peaceful.

This coming year, Ukraine is supposed to be having another Presidential election. Although the Parliament still hasn't decided on an exact date yet, some of the top leaders are already gearing up for what promises to be a very interesting political year.

Ukraine's Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Yanakovich, who won the last Presidental election but was ousted when it was found that his party falsified votes in the election, already have tried to put together a political coalition which would in essence rid Ukraine of a elected President. The attempt failed.

Whatever will happen next in Ukraine, the political atmosphere will most likely stay highly charged and interesting.

Who do you think will become Ukraine's next President?

Take the poll on my blog's sidebar and vote today!

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• Ukraine Opposition Fails in 'Coup' Attempt (nytimes.com)
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A Little Inspiration

I have a TON of blogs in my google reader that I read regularly and couldn't even begin to list them all on my blogroll. If you don't use a reader, you should because it's a great way to not miss great posts and also, sometimes you can filter through a lot of blogs if you don't have time to read them.

One of the blogs I read regularly is Missionary Scribbler and today I found a great post which was very encouraging to me. You can read this post as well by clicking here........ Testing Part One

Children's Heart Project Reality TV Show

Here's another great plug for an amazing ministry of Samaritan's Purse which is called Children's Heart Project. Children's Heart Project takes children suffering with major heart conditions in countries where they cannot get medical treatment and connects them with doctors and hospitals in the US who then perform life saving surgeries on them.

My friend, Cindy Bonsall is the director of this ministry and she always is sharing amazing stories with me. Now they have put together a reality TV show about their work and you can see up close how this ministry helps children around the world. It very encouraging and worth watching.

To see the pilot, click HERE.

June Graduations

June is the traditional time for graduation ceremonies both in the US and here in Ukraine. This last weekend I went to my friend Dasha's ceremony. It was my first graduation ceremony in Ukraine and it was pretty interesting compared to what I am used to! Let's just say there was a lot of happy mayhem! Congrats Dasha on getting your hard earned MASTER'S degree!

Tomato Salad

Every summer I seem to have one special salad that I make over and over. The salad varies each year. This year the winner is pretty simple. Tomato and green onion salad. I add a little salt, pepper and a drizzle of olive oil. (Half olive and regular oil for you Kyivites if you want to save money.)

It's yummy!

My Favorite Non-Profit

..Zemanta, a fancy little gadget you can add to your blog to find non-copyrighted photos, links and tag lines, has a special campaign going on to help bloggers raise financial support for their favorite charities. The blogger writes about his favorite non-profit and ads a tag at the end of the blog post so that Zemanta can keep track of how many bloggers are writing about a specific organization. You can get the tag HERE and vote for your favorite today. The five non-profits with the most blog posts will receive the donation money.

So here it goes:

I might be accused of being a little biased, but CrossRoads Foundation is my favorite non-profit. I'm not saying this just because I am working with them, but because I get to see first hand how this organization is helping Ukrainian street children and children who come from "At-Risk" families and situations.

I have been working with street children in Ukraine for six years and have seen and learned a lot about the good, bad and ugly in regards to helping street children change their lives. This organization is working with and supporting Ukrainian nationals to help get children off the streets and back into normal society and families.......and we don't just talk about doing it.

This blog post is part of Zemanta's "Blogging For a Cause" campaign to raise awareness and funds for worthy causes that bloggers care about.

June Starts In Kyiv

The following is an excerpt from my June newsletter:

Since I have arrived back in Ukraine, I have been thinking a lot about obedience.

Has God ever asked you to be obedient to something he has placed on your heart? What happened? Did you do what he asked or did you put it off?

There have been a couple of things that the Lord put on my heart a year ago and to be honest, I have just put them off and went on about my life. It was easy to put them off because I had a lot of good reasons. I was busy, people around me were trying to convince me not to do them or I just didn’t see that there was a way that these things could happen. So, I just dismissed these things that I was feeling God wanted me to do and put them out of my mind. It was easy to do.

But this last week, this verse in the Bible really convicted me:

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land”……2 Chronicles 7:14 (KJV)

I wanted to really seek God’s direction on these things through prayer, but when I read this verse, I realized I need to come before him humbly and that part of being humble is to realize who he is and to be obedient in what he asks me to do.

I realized that my heart had been hard regarding these things I had put off doing and that I needed to change my attitude and DO the things I felt he was asking me to do. (Please note, I’m not sharing WHAT these things are because they are personal and they do not involve any major life changing things such as leaving ministry work or suddenly running away to China. So please, nobody freak out. I am just talking about normal life things here.)

When I returned to Ukraine, I was shown some photos of the little boy I wrote about last March who had been adopted. The photos showed him in his new home with his parents and they are just amazing pictures of a very happy family. (I am asking them permission to post them on our blog, Scenes From The Sidewalk, so hopefully I can share them with everyone.)

This little boy is now doing so well in school that he was put up a grade, from 3rd to 4th and is first in his class in mathematics.

Recently we had some visitors at one of our centers and they asked, “Why are these children here? Why are they not out living on the streets?” They had chosen the average, standard, acceptable, cultural viewpoint of how these abandoned children should be living. They could not understand why anyone would want to house and care for these children. They don’t understand that we are caring for them because God put the desire to do so in a group of Christian’s hearts, and out of that desire, we choose to be obedient to his command in the Bible, which asks us to take care of orphans and fatherless children.

When we obey God’s word to help street children or social orphans, then we are helping to give these children a hope and a future. When I look at the photo at the top of this newsletter, I know that these children could just as easily be living on the street with no future as sitting on that couch commandeering their own photo shoot. (They really were! It was so cute! They were posing themselves.)

Obeying God can seem hard or overwhelming if you are not used to it at first, but he really does want to work good things in all our lives, and he does this by asking us to be obedient. If God has put something on your heart to do, don’t put it off like I did, pray and take the step to humble you heart towards him, he will help you do the rest.