Odessa Mission

Christmas Program 2005

The KRCC kids performed their final Christmas program on Friday evening (January 6) which actually happened to be the Orthodox Christmas eve in that part of the world. The kids did a fabulous job for the twenty visitors on hand which were mostly new people with half of them being kids who were accompanied by their parents. After the program, the KRCC kids received Christmas presents from the church for all their hard work. All of the kids got different gifts based on their roles in the program with the more difficult roles getting the more expensive gifts. The kids' gifts were creative type toys that they had to assemble themselves. Oleg was the only one who didn't get a gift because he pulled out of the program at the last minute. As you may recall, he was disciplined for his behavior and his mother Rayeesa decided to leave KRCC and take her kids (Oleg and Nastya). However, God is working in Nastya's life and she chose to stay at KRCC against her Mom's wishes. Oleg left temporarily but decided to return the day of the last Christmas program. He says that he'd like to continue going to KRCC despite his mother's attitude. Praise the Lord!

Oxonna deserves honorable mention because she still faithfully fulfilled her obligations in spite of the fact that her Dad died on December 30th. Oxonna shared about the two things that bother her the most: 1) her Dad was an atheist, and 2) they were usually at odds and she never really made a concerted effort to reconcile with him. Please do keep her family in your prayers and maybe this is a good time for each of us to reflect on our earthly relationships and see whether or not we are going the extra mile to reach out to those with whom we may be at odds.

As the pictures show, everybody seemed more than satisfied:

Christmas Eve presents - (Left to Right) Back row: Andre, Elijah, Casha, Nastya, Oleg, and Ira. Front row: Andre's little sister who watched the performance, and Oxonna. Tatyana also participated but couldn't stay for the party.


Casha's gift - A toy that lets him create and paint a variety of his own piggy-banks along with some glittery Crayola markers.


Nastya's gift - A stuffed animal (cow) that she must sew together herself.


Christmas program preparations - Here we see some of our pageant participants decorating the KRCC facility the day before their Christmas Day debut.


Larissa the cook - Larissa's main responsibility this year was preparing lunch for all of us after the program and it was very delicious.


Snow confetti and More confetti - This year we decided to use shredded paper as snow for the program and it worked out pretty well.


Christmas songs - Here is our crew in action during the pageant on Christmas Day.


Christmas lunch - Here is Oxonna and Tatyana helping Larissa put the finishing touches on the food preparations today.


Christmas lunch break - Here is Andre, Oxonna, and Nastya, enjoying their lunch after a great performance.


One funny angel - Ira was the only angel in the program this year but luckily she's a regular riot and kept the watchers attention.


Prayer the pleases God - Most people in this Orthodox culture think that acceptable prayers should only come from an official Orthodox prayer book and be memorized like a mantra. However, Andre did a great job proving otherwise during the Christmas program.