Headed Back to Ukraine

Thursday, Aug 13- Jackson Airport to Mize, MS

Sat., Aug 15- Mize to Gulfport (USM, Long Beach and Ocean Springs)

Sun., Aug 16- Gpt to Mize

Tue., Aug 18- Mize to Pineville, LA

Wed., Aug 19- Pineville to Wesson, MS

Thur., Aug 20- Wesson to Alcorn State to Wesson to Vicksburg

Sun., Aug 23- Vicksburg to Clinton to Starkville to Aberdeen

Mon., Aug 24- Aberdeen to Amory to Birmingham

Tue., Aug 25- Birmingham to Atlanta to Buford to Mize

Wed., Aug 26- Mize to Magee to Mize to Magee to Mize to Magee to Mize

Thur., Aug 27- Magee to Jackson Airport to Charlotte, NC to NYC

Fri., Aug 28- to Zurich to Kyiv.

Russian Language Classes begin Monday. Fun.

Some of you enquired about my finances. I'm short still. Still not able to come under my Mission Agency umbrella and thus not able to receive tax-deductible support.

If you want to help me directly, send money to my Dad: Clinton White, c/o John White, P.O. Box 601, Mize, MS 39116, He'll deposit to an account I can access in Ukraine.

Lord willing, I'll be back at Christmas and maybe things will be looking up by then.

Mississippi

I'm back!

It was a long day getting home. I didn't sleep hardly at all the night before leaving Kyiv...stayed awake most of the night boxing and sorting stuff I left at my apartment (just in case I don't get to go back as planned).

My driver picked me (and Sam, Angel and Robby) up at 3:30 am. The International Airport in Kyiv is a model of inefficiency! Even though we were there a full 2 hours prior to take-off...it took all of it!

We had a 6 hour layover in Amsterdam so I hightailed it out of the airport and went downtown to the Anne Frank house. It all happened too quick but it was very moving.

I watched the newish Star Trek movie on the flight home. It probably lost something on that massive 6 inch screen! The flight to Memphis was terribly long. However, coming through Customs was a breeze and incident free.

So now I'm home.

Now what?

I'll be in Gpt this weekend. And I need to go there at least once during the week sometime to do some banking. I'll be in Vicksburg next weekend and who knows in-between. I'd like to see friends in Birmingham and maybe Atlanta.

I have a return ticket to Ukraine for Aug 27. What I don't have is funds to live there until Christmas. I have enough Support Money to last for a year and half but I still can't access it yet. (A number of close friends are aware of what the problem is; get in touch with me personally if you want to know more.)

The deal is...for now... either my issue has to be favorably resolved in less than 2 weeks or I need someone to bless me with some support money without the benefit of receiving a tax credit. The other option is to not return for the next semester of language school and work as a surveyor's helper until things are resolved.

Fun Facts & Figures

I've been playing with receipts.
Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, June, Jul, Aug

School $230, $220, $220, $220, $180, 0, 0, 0
Rent 350, 350, 300, 300, 300, 300, 0, 0
Eating Out* 15, 15, 100, 30, 48, 6, 23, 35
Groceries 47, ?, 36, 60, 37, 30, 15, 30
Gloria Jeans** 5, 0, 9, 32, 31, 12, 5, 5
Supplies 102, 250, 100, 0, 0, 200, 300, 0
Travel 0,0,300, 31, 65, 20, 180
Entertainment 0,0,0,0,26, 36,0,
Camp Fees 0,0,0,0,0,900,0,0

* Mostly McDonalds
** Closest thing to Starbucks in Ukraine

Some thoughts: I went to London in March for Spring Break...obviously blew the eating out and travel budget...but worth every penney!

Supplies: Bought a bed in January, a TV in Feb, a Printer in March, a Deep Fryer and ink and stuff in June and replaced my camera in July.

Traveling- March I flew to London, and in August I flew to Lugansk...all other travel expenses were by Train.

Eating out and Coffee expenses jumped in April and May when I was entertaining World Racers I think. Some of my supply cost might have been associated with them as well since I did some printing for them.

I probably spent $12.00 a month to keep my phone and maybe $5.00 on average for subway tokens.

I spent about $900.00 total as a contribution to Camp Friendship...to pay for my meals and lodging and Interpreter salary plus sponsoring some kids for the camp.

The list above doesn't include maintaining US Health Insurance (nearly $200.00 a month) and Overseas Insurance (about $60.00 a month Jan-June) or Vehicle Insurance on my Jeep.

This isn't an exhaustive list of what I spent, but it's in the ballpark.

Camp 3

My original plan was to go back to Mississippi 2-weeks ago. Instead, I postponed my flight home and returned to Camp Friendship.

The scene I'm about to describe on the last day of camp- this past Saturday- actually when Camp was officially over and all that was left was for kids to go home- illustrates why I went back. Why I stayed all summer.

Anastasia is a beautiful little 11 year old from nearby Lugansk. She lives with both parents and has an 18-year old brother. She's really bright. Plays Piano, dances, sings, draws, speaks a little English. She's a lot like so many other pre-teen girls. We met the very first day of Camp 1 and we hit it off immediately.
The last night of Camp 2 she got permission from her Dorm Parent to sit with me instead of with the girls from her dorm. She got one of the Interpreters to teach her how to tell me I was her best friend in English. I know I surprised her with I returned for the 3rd Camp.

Anyway, the "scene" I alluded to. This past Saturday morning I was out on the road telling other kids goodbye when I saw Nastya and her mother walking through the center of the Camp. We waved excitedly to one another but I noticed that they kept walking through the center and not up to the road. A few seconds later I thought, "I can't let it go at a wave, I want to hug her goodbye", so I started jogging down the road back toward the center of the camp. When I was about halfway down the road, she came running around the corner towards me, apparently having had the same thought as I. I got to meet her very gracious mother (pretty obvious that Nastya had told her all about me).

Anyway...we never had any terribly deep conversations...with or without interpreters. We threw the frisbee a lot. We played Checkers. During the last week of camp she came to me twice with an interpreter to pray. The last night she prayed one of the sweetest prayers I'ver ever heard for her family to become believers and for her friends to be serious in their faith. It was precious.

And that's why I stayed all summer. My 15-semester hours of RussianLanguage wasn't nearly enough to learn her life-story or explain to her the current tension between the emergent church and the institutional church (like I could, right?). But there was something of value in spending 2-weeks of my life (6 weeks with her and a few others) just loving and caring for her. Just being attentive and available. Hopefully, being Jesus with skin on.

In a quickly fading summer I hope the Nastya's and Natasha's and Dasha's and Tonya's and Lana's, the Dima's and Kolya's and Sasha's and Anton's all felt as much love from me and Jesus as I felt from them and for them.


(Pictured here is Anastasia and Natasha- Natasha was also a 3-camp-kid...at Camp Friendship all summer. She's from one of the local orphanages.)


Oh, and I'd be remiss not to mention the Interpreters. They were a great bunch of mostly 19-25 year olds that Shane (the Camp Director) has discipled and nurtured over the last 4 years. They were all great and I'm proud to call them my Ukrainian Friends.

A little light summer reading....

This is not meant to be an exhaustive review of the books I've read this summer, but in case the three of you that follow my blog care, I thought I'd at least let you peek at my summer bookshelf.

I finally got around to reading John Eldridge's Wild at Heart during the first camp. A lot of my guy friends and mentors hold it in about the same light as our Mormon friends hold Pearl of Great Price. There's a lot about it that I like. The parts about grace and our new heart/new creation and about fogiveness. And I can't deny that I have a little "Knight in Shining Armor" complex that makes me want to do great things and live dangerously and rescue the damsel. That's some of what the book is about. Still...I'm not entirely sure it passes the "universality" test; that is, it seems very "Western", very "American" to me (and he discusses that in the book) and I'm not sure some man Africa that's thinking about if there will be a next meal is really all that concerned about the feminization of his Christianity and about going camping with the guys and letting it all hang out.



I also read Francis Chan's Crazy Love during the first camp. It was a great book. Lots of people back home should read it. But compared to hearing him speak, I'd say the book was "Francis Chan LITE". I suspect going through it with a group and being able to watch the internet video's that go along with each chapter would be an enhancement (that I wasn't able to take advantage of out in the Ukrainian boondocks). Like Wild at Heart, one of the main themes of the book is grace and I can't get enough of that! It's also about living more simply; something I continue to learn more about the more I'm exposed to the world and it's inequalities.











I finally read Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis. I've started it a half-dozen times, recognizing each time that it's not a book I can casually read over a long period of time...a few pages here and there. This time I disciplined myself to read a chapter (most of them are long) each day...to stay with it lest I forget what I read already. I think it's a brilliant book. One of the best I've read in a long time. He's a smart dude. I don't think I agree with him on everything, but for the most part...amazing. He articulates so well a lot of what I feel about being a Christian and about the church...without bashing the church....much. He is a rabbi whose yoke I would gladly take up.




Back during Spring Break in London, there were 2 special exhibits at the Empirial War Museum. One about Children in the War and the other about Anne Frank. The Anne Frank Exhibit picqued my interest. I read part of the diary in high school but I wasn't mature enough to appreciate it back then. A few years ago one of my "student" friends played the role of Anne Frank in a stage production and I cried watching her portrayal. So, during the last camp, I read The Diary of Anne Frank. It is amazing. I have a 6 or 7 hour layover in Amsterdam this Thursday and Lord willing, I'm going to try to get out of the airport, catch the train downtown and the tram to the Secret Annexe and see her hiding place.











Lastly...I downed a Tom Clancy novel The Cardinal of the Kremlin (I really like the Soviet/Eastern Bloc thrillers a lot lately...I wonder why?) and Clive Cusslers Treasure of Khan. Great books for long train rides!

Lana's Song

Lana is an orphan in Ukraine. Not a true orphan I guess; more of a "social orphan". As best as I could learn, she has a Mother and maybe an Aunt that visits her and her younger sibling and older brother who also live at the orphanage. On the one hand, you look at a kid like this and think 'how in the world could a parent give up such a precious child'? But on the other hand...maybe the Mother did the most loving thing she could do.

The fact remains nevertheless, that the kids that grow up in orphanages in Ukraine and in so many other places around the world have the deck stacked against them in so many ways. It may be better than nothing; it may be better than living at home where the mother is apparently unable to care for her. But the chances this kid has in life are slim at best.

Lana became my friend during a Camp here in Ukraine. At times it seemed like she liked playing with my Ipod or my Telephone more than she liked me. She pouted when I said "no". She got jealous when I gave attention to other kids. But time and again she sought me out to hold her hand while walking across campus. She would take me everywhere and tell the other kids "he understands a little Russian" (in Russian, of course!). Sometimes we were able to communicate with my childlike Russian abilities. And then there were times when it was OK not to say anything and we would just stare into one another's eyes.

It was during one of those moments when I was "inspired" to write a song. Understand...I've tried to write songs before and I've never...NEVER...been able to do it. But later that night, this one came to me. It's long and it's probably still a work in progress. The music is still pretty one-dimensional and needs some work. But here it is:

Today we laughed and we played
you were running after me
I wasn't trying to get away.
And as we grew tired
you climbed up on my knees
I was looking down at you
You were looking up at me.

And when I look in your eyes
this is what I see
I see a wounded little heart asking questions of me
Will I leave you like the others?
Will I forget what I see?
Will I remember your name?
Will I remember your needs?

When I look into your eyes
this is what I see
I see sweet little Jesus looking back at me.
I see doubts and fears
I see pain and needs
I see your longing for a family
I see your hopes and your dreams.

And as I stared deep into
the windows of your soul
the thought occurred to me that you were thinking too.

When you look in my eyes
I wonder what you see?
Is it a reflection of Jesus deep inside of me.
Do you see my Father's Heart?
Do you see the emptiness?
Me without you is as lonely as it gets.
Do you know the price I'd pay, to hold you in my arms.
Do you know how much I love you?
Do you know how much I see?

And then I started thinkin'
'bout how we're the same
I was once an orphaned soul
lookin' for my place.

Jesus when you look in my eyes
do you see what I see?
My doubts and fears, my pain and my needs?
Do you see me longing for a family?
Do you know my hopes and dreams?
Will you hold me in your arms and never let me go?

As surely as I sit here
you revealed your truth to me.
You opened up my eyes so that I could see.

Jesus, when I look in your eyes
this is what I see.
I see a Father's Heart embracing me.
I see love and forgiveness
I feel your tenderness
I know you're my redeemer, I know the price you paid.
I know you as a Daddy and I know you as a King.
You gave me your heart and your eyes to see.

Jesus when I look in your eyes
this is what I see
I see a Father's Heart embracing me.

Book Review: Scared: a Novel from the Edge of the World

I have an “Author” friend. He just released his 4^th book, his first novel. Tom Davis is his name. He’s a former Youth Minister and was one of the men that helped “steer” the 2007 World Race that I was a part of. I’ve known about his most recent project, SCARED: a Novel on the Edge of the World, since those “Race” days.

I excitedly pre-ordered my copy from Amazon before I left the States for Ukraine. In May, I noticed an opportunity to download the novel in PDF from the publisher so I’ve had the book in digital form for a couple months. I had been putting off reading it just because I don’t like reading 300+ pages on a computer screen. There’s nothing like curling up with a paperback, right? But I stayed in a comfortable hotel last night and with no English Language programs on TV I read SCARED. I’m glad I did. Today I’m ordering 5 copies for my church!

It’s about the plight of orphans and the plague of AIDS in Africa- in the tiny, beautiful country of Swaziland, in particular. Our Western mindset would have us believe AIDS is a homosexual disease. Thinking like that releases most of us from worrying about it because we don’t fall into a behavior category that puts us at risk. AIDS in Africa is no more a homosexual disease than the Potato Famine was a French Fry problem!

It’s complicated. Regardless of where it came from or how it started- there are forces at work in much of Africa that exacerbate the problem to Biblical proportions. Ignorance and lack of Education, lack of adequate healthcare and in more instances- just non-existent healthcare, myriad customs and traditions among myriad people groups that hinder communication, corrupt governments and all-talk-no-walk relief organizations, the kind of extreme poverty that we see on late night infomercials but have become anesthetized to, and then there are spiritual forces that can’t be easily explained to a Western thinker.

This is a biased book review. I admit it. I know Tom and I know his heart. His 2^nd and 3^rd non-fiction books (Confessions of a Good Christian Guy, Red Letters: Living a Faith that Bleeds) were sort of run-of-the-mill to me. His first book however, Fields of the Fatherless, established him as a voice for Orphans. SCARED is Tom’s first novel and I think establishes him as a real-deal writer who makes a difference in the world. With the exception of the main character, photojournalist Stuart Daniels, SCARED reads like the front-page of today’s paper, or maybe more accurately, like the blogs of missionaries I know who are at this moment working in Swaziland.

I was gripped by it the same way I am when I read one of John Grisham’s novels set in Memphis, New Orleans, or all across Mississippi. Part of Grisham’s appeal to me is that I know these places, these names. The same was true for me reading SCARED. It’s set largely in Swaziland and I know these places. I know these names. I know these faces. So does Tom. Intimately. God is using his organization, Children’s Hopechest, to care for and keep alive thousands of orphans in that tiny country, raising them to be God’s answer to the crises in Africa.

I read the novel last night in one sitting. It is fast-paced and heart-breaking. It doesn’t preach; it simply tells a gut wrenching story convincingly. There’s courage and cowardice, humanity at its worst and at its best. There’s redemption and hope and inexplicable, unconsolable loss. I cried. I felt gritty-dirty. I felt anger. I felt like I could be fulfilled if I were in Swazi right now holding and feeding an orphaned child.

Read this book. When you turn the last page-stop and pray. Then immediately do something with your wealth- find a way to give- there are suggestions in the back of the book. Go to my friend Seth Barnes’ blogsite and click on the “Swaziland” tab. If you’re not affected by these stories then please see a doctor. You have a heart problem.

This won’t be a spoiler…another novel is in the works featuring the main character on assignment in Russian exposing the international child-sex trade. Children’s Hopechest has been there many years. Tom know’s whereof he writes about.