the shipment is out!

Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please. I have an announcement: the shipment is done!

For the past 3 months, we've been working our tails off to find a good shiping company, raise thousands of dollars, get sponsors for 200 Christmas presents, collect blankets, shoes, jackets, clothes, toys, hygiene items, craft supplies, scarves, game stuff, beanies and whatever else we could find to put in our shipment. And now we are finally done!

We ended up with 264 blankets, 678 pairs of socks, over 60 pairs of shoes, about 125 jackets, Christmas presents for about 200 orphan kids, 212 pairs of pants, almost 400 shirts, about 100 beanies - and that's just all the clothes!

Last night we put labels on 126 boxes filled with over 2000 pounds of donations, finished taping everything up, and loaded it all into a huge container to float over to Ukraine by December 27th! It was a ton of stuff [literally], a ton of work, took a ton of help, and so many people to donate and contribute in so many different ways! And now it is gone and on it's way to Ukraine! Here's some of the pictures from yesterday!

This is our huge empty container before we started the loading madness.

126 boxes...

A ton of packing...

Lots of loading...

And this is it folks - over 2000 pounds in a container that costs over $4000 to send!





We were really excited when we finished! 3 months solid, crazy work completed! It's beautiful!




Pravda or bust!!



Thanks so much to all of you who donated, helped pack, brought clothes, bought presents, gave us money and encouraged! There is no way we could've done this without all of you! Spasiba! Ochen! Ochen!

We are so glad to be done with working on this aspect of our trip! We still need your prayers though! Somebody told us that shipping to Ukraine is like shipping to the wild wild west! In other words, it's hard and there's no gaurantees. The company we used seems to be really good, but we've never done this before. Please pray that it all gets there safely and on time! It's scheduled to get to Ukraine on December 27th, the day before we get there. We haven't been able to get a hold of our man Vanya, but the [hopefully] plan is to get him to pick it up and get it through customs and all of that stuff because he has experience with that. So pray that we can talk to him and have good communication and that it all works out!

Thanks guys!

buy a bracelet!

Anybody want to help support? We are now selling bracelets! They will look something like this one:

The band may be thinner/lighter/different in some way. They are made out of the old leather belts we've been asking you for! [If you've got some, please donate!] This bracelet says Ukraine... each bracelet will have either that or the name of one of the orphan kids on it, written in their language. We soon will [hopefully] have a little info card with each one with a little picture and some info telling a little bit about the child whose name is on your bracelet so that you can know who they are and pray for them if you want.
We are just beginning to make these, so it may take a little bit before we could get one to you, but it will be soon! So let us know if you want one! $10 - you not only get a sweet bracelet, but you support Open Arms and our work in Ukraine, and it's a great way to tell other people about the kids and their needs and what we're doing!
So let us know if you want one, [or two, or three, or four]... and we'll get them made as soon as we can and figure out how to get them to you! [We'd prefer not to have to ship them, just because that all costs... but if you want to pay more to send it, we could do it!]

jars of clay

Thanks to all of you who came and talked to us at the Jars concert! It was great to talk to all of you! And thanks for buying bracelets! We did pretty good raising money for our trip and our ministry! And we had fun... [:
Just thought I'd put up a couple pictures from Sunday...


Thanks again for your support!

sorting organizing and inventory-ing!

Hey friends! Just a little update... this week has been crazy so far! This last weekend most of the team was up in the bay area working, planning, contacting, brainstorming and bonding for the Christmas trip! We're going to be hopefully sending money to our friends in Ukriane to buy jackets there. We have about 100 already [crazy donations came in over the weekend!] but we still need about 100 more. So if you want to donate to that cause, please do! So the weekend was full of fun and planning and 5:30am bed times.... but it was good! And we got a lot done.
Monday and Tuesday we were at Bethel Grace Baptist Church in the fellowship hall sorting through all the donations we've gotten for Christmas! There was so much stuff... we thought we'd never finish! But we did and it was amazing! I thought I'd share some pictures!
We had a ton of stuff... I mean really... look at it all!

I really wondered if we'd get through it all...


We got over 250 blankets! Thank you Starbucks for doing the drive! Each kid at the orphanage will have a nice warm blanket!

We got about 60 pairs of shoes [we still need a ton more!]

Christmas presents! We've got almost all of them! For every kid at the orphanage! Thanks to all of you who helped with that!


We had some amazing help! Thanks fam!


Mom even indulged us in our silly photo making while sorting through some random stuff we got!


Even the kids helped out!


And we just had some fun... I mean, when you get donations this cool, you just have to take pictures!


...and the gansta version

Those are some sweet purple hats!



Purple wonder man. 'Nough said.

And by the way, the fellowship hall needs mopping Larry.


Eventually, we finished! And we were happy! Yay for an empty room!

Again, thanks so much for helping family! And Megyn! And Donnie... for the laughs and the pizza! Spasiba! Ya loobloo vas!
God is working to pull this all together! It's exciting! Keep praying! Thanks guys!

pray.

These are some basic things you can be praying for!

Winter trip:

Shipping: enough money, a good company, safe and speedy arrival in Ukraine.

Finances: we still need money for food, travel, the Ukrainian team, living and other expenses while we're there.

Translators: we've had some difficulties in the past. Pray for helpful, willing translators.

Communication with the Ukrainians: there are some things we need to get settled with them before we leave, and communication is hard.

Program: our organization and planning of Bible lessons, crafts, games Christmas/New Years' day activities.

The kids:

Winter: no heat at the orphanage, below zero weather, less food… pray for the kids to be encouraged, cared for and comforted in this hard time.

Graduates: the kids that have graduated, no longer living at the orphanage – safety, health, knowing God's love.

Salvation: most of these kids don't know God's incredible love for them. Pray that they can come to know Jesus as their Savior and know the grace that comes when you are a child of God.

Long term:

Organization: we're still learning how to actually organize and work all on our own.

Non-profit application: it can be a really long process – pray it all gets done quickly.

The blue house: a house is going to cost us about $50,000 and it's probably going to need a lot of work. Pray that we can have the money by spring, ideally, and that we can find and purchase exactly the amazing house God wants us to have.

Humility: we never want to take credit for the way that God is allowing us to be used by Him to do what we're doing.

Our heart: we never want to lose sight of God and His purpose in all of this, our focus needs to stay the same for as long as we are serving God in this. We never want to change our focus from being on the gospel and sharing God's love with the kids. There are way too many ministries that become a lot like businesses in the long run – we never want to become that.

Thanks for your prayers. We need them.

some basics to get us going...

For now, I'm just stealing stuff off of our myspace. Partially because it's almost 2 in the morning, and partially because that's all of our basic info stuff anyway. [: So here it is folks... (or at least some of it.)

OUR NEEDS:

Money: always, we will be needing money. Long term, we need $50, 000 to buy a house. Also, we're still in need of money for general items for the trip: stuff we need to buy there [like food and stuff for the kids that we can't buy and ship]. If you'd like to help with that, please let us know!

Leather belts: we're making sweet bracelets out of old leather belts. If you have any you'd like to donate to help with this fundraiser, let us know!

Prayer: please, please, always keep us in your prayers!

Anything else you think might be sweet for us to have or know about or bring or try, please let us know! We love ideas! We love encouragement! Please, subscribe to our blog - that's where all the latest updates are going to be. And tell all your friends about us and to add us! [PS. there is a blog on pretty much all of the things we need, so check the blogs for more info! (those would be the myspace blogs at this point... I'll add them here soon/eventually.)]

SOME STATS ON ORPHANS IN UKRAINE:

--->20% of adolescents in Ukraine have 2 or more socially transmitted diseases [HIV/AIDS, TB, STDs]

--->Of the 15 to 18 year old orphan kids:

...About 10% of them will commit suicide after leaving the orphanage before their 18th birthday.

...60% of the girls will end up in prostitution.

...70% of the boys will enter a life of crime

...Only 27% of these youth will find work.

[This is why we're doing what we're doing]

BUY A BRACELET
It's a fun and easy way to help if you want to support! Check out the "bracelets" blog on our myspace! Send us a message if you would like to buy one!