Crimea Trip

Crimea seems to be the place where everyone in the Former Soviet Union goes “to relax” on vacation. It is the southernmost peninsula in Ukraine, and is an “autonomous republic.” I am not sure what that means exactly, but I have heard it has to do with the fact that many residents are ethnic Russians and would rather not be associated with Ukraine. I won’t get into politics—that isn’t something I know much about—but after having been to Crimea, I can understand why the land has been fought over by so many nations and peoples in the past. Crimea is incredibly beautiful.

I traveled there on July second for a meeting with partners at a correctional facility where MCC has financed the construction of a greenhouse. After the meeting, I met up with two educators and 10 kids from Good Shepherd for a week of relaxing and seeing some of the Crimean sites. We traveled to Laspi, a small resort community between the cities of Sevastopol and Yalta. It is situated on a sliver of pebble beaches sandwiched between some mountains and the sea. I have heard it referred to as the “most beautiful place in Crimea” and, from my limited exposure to the area, I would not argue.

We set up our four tents on the beach and slept there six nights. During the days, we spent some time at the beach; the water was clear, blue and very deep in places quite near shore. There was nice variety, a couple of days there were some strong waves to play in and a couple of days it was almost completely calm. It was a pebble beach, which meant it was sometimes painful to bare feet, but there were a lot of boulders not far from shore that a sand beach probably wouldn’t have. We swam out to these boulders and had great fun jumping/diving into the sea.

We also tried to take at least one excursion each day to different interesting places in the area. Sometimes getting the kids to travel to these places was like pulling teeth, but they were usually glad they came. These places seemed like a different world when compared with industrial Makeevka.

As the pictures indicate, we visited the ancient cave cities of Mangup and Eski-Kermen, which supposedly date back over 6,000 years. There were over 200 caves in each of these communities and we made it a point to enter as many as possible. It was fun to speculate who lived there, when and what each room was for. There were oftentimes great views from the windows; the cities were situated on some pretty tall cliffs.

We climbed a 1,600-foot mountain—called Kush-Kaya—that was directly behind our campsite on the beach. There, as the last picture suggests, we experienced some unbelievable views. Some of us could have stayed up there for hours, but a couple of the teenaged boys have attention spans similar to my own when I was that age… we were there about 15 minutes.

Our daily devotions were taken from Galatians 5 and Colossians 3 and the topic was “building and strengthening (the Christian) community.” We talked about how much emphasis Paul placed on ththis topic and how sometimes we get caught up in individualism and forget those around us. These times of discussion and reflection were a highlight for me and, by the end of the week, many of the kids opened up enough to participate in some community-building activities.

The combination of the location, the devotional sessions, and some great conversations with the kids made the week in Crimea one of the highlights of my time in Ukraine. I was hoping this would be the case, as it was kind of the last big hurrah before starting to do the end-of-term stuff here. I am very thankful for the time, it was a real blessing.

Dave