Me with Vika and Marina
At the train station in Krasnoarmeysk
On the elektrichka(a cheap, slow trainish form of transportation) into Donetsk
Back in November when I went to a class in Yalta with the training center students, I made a comment to one of the girls about how pretty one of the trainer's eyes were. She thought it was hilarious and explained to me that he was probably a coal miner. She comes from the Donbas region of Ukraine, which is the region with the highest productivity of coal in all of Ukraine. Since January, I have traveled to Dimitrov(where she is from) and to neighboring Krasnoarmeysk(where she is serving) three times, and have learned that she was indeed correct. Almost all of the men there work in the mines and almost all of them look like they wear a lot of eye makeup. The Donbas region has 193 working mines and employs around 450,000 people. The average monthly salary for a miner is $280 and they work under terrible conditions, which have resulted in Ukraine having the world's highest death rate for mining incidents. Their equipment is very old and outdated and there is a great lack of safety precautions. This is a hardworking region of the country, but with that hard work comes a great lack of hope for the people there. They don't see a better way of life for themselves. Many have dreams, but very little hope that they will ever achieve them.
This is the area where two of our training center students(from last Fall) have chosen to serve their internship. Vika and Marina are from a neighboring mining town of Dimitrov. Both have grown up in unbelieving mining families and have a great concern for those families and the lives of those all around them. It has been my great pleasure to be able to spend time with them every other month; to go to bible studies, help with their English club, draw people in simply by being an American, encourage them through conversations, cooking, and just time there in general.It has been an unexpected, but wonderful part of my service here. Please pray:
* for these two young women as they serve their own people
*for their unbelieving families
*for the support that they need to raise to continue to serve there
*for their encouragement and strength
4 comments:
"cheap, slow trainish form of transportation" - I love it! :-) I've always explained them as commuter trains, but I think that draws up a different picture in most people's minds.
I'm so glad that you can make these trips to encourage them!
=-D I was trying to think of how best to explain it and that's what I came up with- haha.
So why do the coal miners wear eye make up? I'm not understanding the connection. Pretty interesting!
Taps, you're the best!! =-D They don't wear eye makeup. They're wearing coal and when they don't do a very thorough clean-up job, it leaves them looking like they're wearing a lot of eye liner around their entire eye. Really, I had no idea that I would ever think that eye liner looked good on men, but it does wonders for their eyes! =-) haha
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