Hello, folks
I’m back with my newsletters, which were intended to show up once a month, but it doesn’t work as regular as I wished. It has been a busy time lately. I guess, I wrote that phrase in almost every newsletter since summer, but that’s ok. Don’t worry I have enough rest. In fact, I had two weeks of holidays recently. Anyway, let the story begin.
LIGHTHOUSE
Lighthouse is doing great. Our mentors (we have 7 of them) are meeting their mentees since the beginning of December. Each pair has a different story and different pace.
I’m back with my newsletters, which were intended to show up once a month, but it doesn’t work as regular as I wished. It has been a busy time lately. I guess, I wrote that phrase in almost every newsletter since summer, but that’s ok. Don’t worry I have enough rest. In fact, I had two weeks of holidays recently. Anyway, let the story begin.
LIGHTHOUSE
Lighthouse is doing great. Our mentors (we have 7 of them) are meeting their mentees since the beginning of December. Each pair has a different story and different pace.
One pair meets very often, and sometimes they even go places like cinema theater. Another mentor invited her mentee to the church, and he showed up on Sunday for the Christmas service.
Almost all mentors have met with their kids from two to five times. There is one with difficulties as well. One pair still haven’t met at all because the mentee doesn’t show up. Mentor is trying hard to fight with frustration and keep taking steps to build up this relationships – calling the mentee, writing her letters. We encourage this mentor to be strong and not to give up on her mentee too fast. If you are praying for Lighthouse pray for this situation.
Many teenagers from the rehab center, with which we work, started to ask our mentors to find them a mentor as well. We are more than happy to see that more kids want to have mentors, but we don’t want to rush and need some time to gather one more group of mentors. We planned to gather about 20 more people and train them by the end of February. Then, we will assign them mentees. We’ve hired a coordinator to support our current and future mentors and mentees. The plan is to add another group of 25 pairs in the end of Spring, and another 25 in the end of August. This will allow as to help more kids and, also, be more cost effective. With every group of children we will hire a new coordinator – one for every 25 pairs, and that will be the only additional expenses that we will need.
Right now we are preparing for the next group, adjusting our program and training. Also, we are working on fundraising and marketing. It is not very expensive to run the whole organization since we don’t provide any material help; supporting mentors don’t require much direct expenses as well. Most of our monthly budget goes to salaries, office rent and expenses related to trainings and marking of the project among potential mentors.
If any of you want to help us in raising funds, please write me a message. It doesn’t need to be your personal contribution, but you still can help us a lot. Contact me, and we can talk about it. I will really appreciate your help with Lighthouse.
Also, if you want to read the December report from Lighthouse, let me know. I posted it on the website at first, but then decided not to (it has some info about our Christian mission, which is not that safe in our country)
MINISTRY
King’s Kids and The art of Being a Man
I attached a picture from our Christmas party. We are more than excited to see how the ministry grows. Right now we are praying with our kids for our mission trip this summer. We are asking God where He wants us to go and what He wants us to do there. Meanwhile, we teach our kids different spiritual disciplines. This journey also have been very excited so far. I’m very thankful to my dear professor Jane Holslag for teaching us about spiritual disciplines and introducing us to Celebrating Disciple by R. Foster at our Spiritual Formation class.
We also, continue to gather with male part of our teenagers every Sunday for The Art of Being a Man. For the last month we have been talking about relationships with girls. It has been a real blessing for all of us. It is very interesting to see how open can guys be when in the right atmosphere and with the right people. I’m so glad that they feel so free to talk about things and ask hard questions.
If you want to receive updates about king’s kids ministry, let me know.
WEDDING PREPARATIONS
This is one exciting part, right? At least for some of you :) It is really amazing how God cares about us. We were a bit worried about our wedding at the beginning, but so many things happened since… First was the wedding dress. We’ve got one for free, about a year ago))) There was one woman at church that got married and was leaving for USA. She wanted to give her wedding dress to someone from the church, and since it fits my mom, she gave it to her. Ulyana tried it, and it fits her as well (which is a bit strange since they are very different)))). Anyway, that is how we’ve got an awesome American dress for free a year before the wedding (and about half a year before we even met each other). Then, there was a brand new suit and coat for me, for about 100EUR, wedding rings for free (at least gold for them), shoes for Ulyana for about 40$ and so on. Wedding will be in the church; food and decorations will be made by our friends. As you can imagine, we are not as worried as we were before.
KYRGYZMADE
As some of you noticed, we opened a store.
If you want to receive updates about king’s kids ministry, let me know.
WEDDING PREPARATIONS
This is one exciting part, right? At least for some of you :) It is really amazing how God cares about us. We were a bit worried about our wedding at the beginning, but so many things happened since… First was the wedding dress. We’ve got one for free, about a year ago))) There was one woman at church that got married and was leaving for USA. She wanted to give her wedding dress to someone from the church, and since it fits my mom, she gave it to her. Ulyana tried it, and it fits her as well (which is a bit strange since they are very different)))). Anyway, that is how we’ve got an awesome American dress for free a year before the wedding (and about half a year before we even met each other). Then, there was a brand new suit and coat for me, for about 100EUR, wedding rings for free (at least gold for them), shoes for Ulyana for about 40$ and so on. Wedding will be in the church; food and decorations will be made by our friends. As you can imagine, we are not as worried as we were before.
KYRGYZMADE
As some of you noticed, we opened a store.
This was a project that I had in mind for more than a year already. Apparently, I just needed Ulyana to make a proper design, and we were ready to launch. In the first night we made our first sale. We hope that this small business will bring our future family some additional income.
Check and like our FB page: www.facebook.com/kyrgyzmade
Check our site: www.kyrgyzmade.storenvy.com
And if you can also share it on FB, VK, Twitter, Pinterest, your blog, we will be very grateful)))
OTHER
In general, it has been a wonderful month and half, even though it was pretty challenging. It has been hard to trust God because of some hardships especially with finances, but it was impossible not to trust Him, because of so many great miracles that He has been doing in my life. As I said in the beginning, I had two weeks of holidays. Some of that time we spent with Ulyana in Almaty visiting our friends. One of them agreed to be our tamada (it is like an MC at the wedding). Christmas and New Year we spent with family which have grown as my new mother and sister joined))) In the end of the holidays, we’ve worked on KyrgyzMade, and I was preparing for the beginning of my work at Lighthouse. This week, I have been working already. We are preparing to have a group gathering with our mentors.
Anyway, there are always more to tell, but I just hope that we can talk more with my friends at least via skype if not in person.
Send this post to my friends to read, please))
Check and like our FB page: www.facebook.com/kyrgyzmade
Check our site: www.kyrgyzmade.storenvy.com
And if you can also share it on FB, VK, Twitter, Pinterest, your blog, we will be very grateful)))
OTHER
In general, it has been a wonderful month and half, even though it was pretty challenging. It has been hard to trust God because of some hardships especially with finances, but it was impossible not to trust Him, because of so many great miracles that He has been doing in my life. As I said in the beginning, I had two weeks of holidays. Some of that time we spent with Ulyana in Almaty visiting our friends. One of them agreed to be our tamada (it is like an MC at the wedding). Christmas and New Year we spent with family which have grown as my new mother and sister joined))) In the end of the holidays, we’ve worked on KyrgyzMade, and I was preparing for the beginning of my work at Lighthouse. This week, I have been working already. We are preparing to have a group gathering with our mentors.
Anyway, there are always more to tell, but I just hope that we can talk more with my friends at least via skype if not in person.
Send this post to my friends to read, please))