9News Story on 2010 Camp

See the 9News video below. It’s a very well done story filmed when we took the kids flying at the Ft Collins-Loveland airport.  See the blog entry by clicking here.

Scrapbooking and Gerrek’s reflections

After a few days of not seeing the kids, I finally got to meet up with them and spend just a little more time with them before they left.  The kids were finishing up with breakfast, and  the moment Vlad saw me, he grabbed my hand and ran me downstairs to the scrapbooking basement.  Each of the kids had an area all to themselves with an empty scrapbook, their name, a ton of pictures, and three hours to make a perfect scrapbook.  There was a frenzy for the colorful pages, stickers, scissors, and glue for the first hour.  All the kids and their helpers got down to business filling their book with memories from the past three weeks.  After the kids got the hang of how to do the work, they were flying around the room getting all their things in line.  I saw kids pulling their helpers, helpers pulling their kids, kids showing the other kids, and pictures being exchanged for keepsakes.  Vlad loved the Spiderman, car, and animal stickers.  He cut out photos, pasted them all over the page, and covered it with stickers.  All the kids let their artistic juices flow and kept busy for hours.  At the one hour mark, books were started, and memories were being cherished.  At the two hour mark, the kids were about ready to be finished with their books (Vlad was counting pages and putting only one or two pictures to a page as opposed to the seven or ten on the first half of the book) and running amok in the Roge house.  As the kids began to finish their books, they showed everybody how well they had done; They all were such proud kiddos!  Anna looked like a professional scrapbooker as she was working!  The kids got all fed and pushed into cars that would be soon en route to the airport.  I gave my last good byes, hugs, and high fives as I wasn’t going to the airport to see them off.  The fact that I wouldn’t see some of those children again didn’t hit me until I saw the pictures of their last stop in Colorado, DIA.  These kids made great friendships, made some families realize their calling to adopt, and most importantly, they truly found God during their trip with the help of all the people who donated their time, money, and resources.  As sad as I was to say good bye to these kids, I was happy that they accepted Jesus as their Savior, and I am already asking how I can help for next year and a whole new set of lives to change.  I took away more than just friendships, pictures, and memories from this camp.  I found a whole new way to show God’s love, a new serving heart, and a realization that the world is harsh and needs as much help as anybody can give.

-Gerrek Zwickle

Updates from Julia

I love you too! God is GOOD! We are safely home. Everything is good, we were exactly on time on the second plane. Children miss you all!!!!!! I saw tears in Sasha’s eyes when he was telling Good bye to Jim. He told me that he misses people.

On the plane me and Alyona were talking and she wanted to except Jesus, so we prayed. And SHE WAS A REALLY GOOD GIRL during the trip. And for me was very nice to talk to her about God and to find out what she is thinking about Him. She asked: so God is daddy to everybody, to you, to Natasha, to Sasha and other, right? And when we were going through the bumping zone some people were really scary, and she asked: everything will be fine? I said: yes, God is holding us. She said: is he under the plane holding us, I said: no, He sent His Angels, who are caring this plane, so everything will be Ok. And she started smile and was excited about our jumps. I love to see children’s faith. Sometimes it looks naive, but I am sure that God wants from us that we will trust His word so sincerely like children do. When I said God is in control she easy believed it and didn’t try to check.
– Julia Sergienko

Goodbye

The dreaded airport.  This is a very hard day for everyone involved.  Many of us say goodbye then go about our normal lives.  These kids say goodbye and fly back to an orphanage in a country where the outlook for orphans is bleak.  Thankfully, there are those who are so moved by this camp and God’s leading that they take action.  This ranges from praying, to getting more involved with our camp or other adoption ministries, to actually starting down the road to adoption.
We picked up the campers from the Roge’s house at 12:15 and slowly got them all loaded into the vans.  Last minute photos needed to be taken, and everyone had to say goodbye to Heidi and Felix and Oksana and Vlad (who are staying in Colorado with the Frontier Horizons hosting program until August).  We (the Volfs, Houghtons, Christoffersons, and Vicki) met Kris and the Stoesz kids at the airport, lined up the bags and got everyone checked in for their flights.   The agent informed us that we were only allowed one checked bag per person (we had two 50 pound suitcases each), and that it would be $55 for each extra bag.  After a short talk with the manager, all but 4 bag fees were waived, and then when the agent ran our credit card, it only charged us for three.  The agent was kind enough to just let that go.  Now it was time to go to security, so the hugs and tears started flowing.   We slowly made our way to security for another round of hugs, goodbyes, tears, and more hugs.  Eventually we made it into security where all the kids became Junior TSA Officers.  Alyona’s bag was pulled aside to be searched, and they found some lotion that couldn’t go through.  I asked the guard to hide it so she wouldn’t know he took anything, but some of the boys saw him trying to sneak it past them and soon Alyona was in tears (but only for a minute).  Next we saw the crowd of supporters in their places above the escalators that go down to the train.  This is where we all get to wave our final goodbyes and blow kisses from behind a glass wall.  Everyone was holding their hands in the shape of a heart to let the kids know how much we all love them.  It was an impressive sight and the kids really loved it, as did many other travelers – one even took their picture, and then took a picture of the kids.  I was able to see it from the kids’ perspective this year since I went with the group to the gate.
We had two hours before their flight so we settled in the food court and Julia pulled out the snacks while I got water for everyone.  This was a nice time for me to have all of the kids to myself so I managed to sit next to each of them for a little while and share their snacks, joke around, or whatever.  Sasha T was looking through his pictures and I pointed out that he didn’t have any of me in his stack.  He had a notebook with him so I told him to draw my picture.  He drew this hideous creature with horns and got a good laugh out of that.  I told him that looked more like Austin and he and Sasha V laughed and obviously agreed since he wrote Austin in Russian next to it.  Then I borrowed the notebook and wrote in it, “Sasha,  You are Awesome!”, and signed my name.  He read it out loud and proudly showed it to Julia and Anya.  After a while I bribed the kids with french fries.  One large order for each two kids so they quickly paired up and took their fries to different tables.  This was my chance to spend time with Sasha V as we shared our snack.
I checked the flight status again and they moved the departure time ahead from 4:39 to 4:20, so we headed for the gate.  The moving walkway was fun.  The boys wanted to see how fast they could go, while the girls walked backwards to see how slow they could go.  By the time we got to the gate they were allowing anyone on who needs special assistance.  I told Julia I think they qualify for that so she went to check them in while I started hugging everyone once (sometimes twice) more.   Several waves goodbye as they walked onto the jetway and then they were gone.   As I waited for their plane to depart I prayed for their safety and their futures.  As with every camp, there are high hopes that some of the kids will end up back here soon.  Our goal with UOO is geared toward raising awareness about all the orphans in Ukraine and not so much about these specific children, but it sure is nice when some of them come back forever like Joshua, Anastasia, Rimma, and soon to be Zina.

– Jim Volf

Click here to see more Scrapbook and airport pictures.