Some photos from our time in Odessa, Ukraine

I’m putting some pics up from our time in Ukraine at the Baptist Youth Congress.

About 3200 young people (and some old folks, too!) were in attendance. It was quite an experience to see this event. The young people dressed up quite nicely. Many - if not most - of the gals wore dresses or skirts and lots of the guys were in slacks and dress shirts - some even in ties. Believe me, I felt under-dressed - which is worse than feeling over-dressed - especially as an older person!

Many of the speakers wore coat and tie and the orchestra - yes, full-on orchestra - was in black & white - either dresses, skirts or black slacks & white dress shirts throughout the week.

It was a nice change from sweats, baggy shorts with underwear name brands hanging out, t-shirts, flip-flops and all. I’m not opposed to shorts, t-shirts & flip-flops - I grew up with them and am very comfortable with them. But sometimes it’s nice to dress up and look sharp and at this congress it was a breath of fresh youth air!

The Congress did - at first - appear to have the flavor of being organized by older folks FOR the younger, but as the week wore on, the music got more lively & on Saturday night, they offered a concert from midnight to 4 am that rocked!

We met lots of young people and several teachers from seminaries & schools. I was disappointed that Slovakia was not represented, but have hopes that at the next congress we’ll have some representation there.

My brain suffered from cramps in listening to 3 hours of Russian each night - for 2 nights we did have translation - and I reminisced about our first days in Slovakia when we’d go to church & try to understand a few words of Slovak during the sermon, announcements, intro to prayer and all. (It felt worse than Neo’s head during his “training” in “The Matrix,” I”m sure!)

All-in-all it was a culturally interesting & educating event. I look forward to future contact with the youth leaders that I met and trust that the Lord will catalyze more rapidly reproducing churches in the former USSR through these young people!