KYIV half marathon 2015 - first experience

Automatic pic. that was taken by the sponsors about 2 min. after the start.

OK, finally this has happened!! After about 10 month of preparation I have ran my first even half marathon. It was not only my first official half marathon, but also first time ever in my life when I have run such a distance (21 km)... I have meant to try running at least 18-20 km in my training, but for various reasons it has never happened. The longest run I have had was - 15 km. So, needless to say that to run a 21+ km was quite hard.

Everything went pretty well for me up untill about 16th kilometer. That's when I REALLY started feeling my legs and even had to start walking time aftre time (especially on steep hills) in order to restore some of my strengh. Now, as I think of it I also probably needed to tie my running shoes less, because especially my right foot felt quite stiff on the second part of the run. Conclusion? Pay attention even to how you tie your shoes when running on long distances... :-)

ART Improve conference again this year... YES!!

ART Improve 2013 promo poster

We are glad to let you know that by God's grace we have the opportunity to be involved in planning and organizing the ART Improve conference in Kyiv in 2013. Last year we've seen a HUGE interest from people in being at this conference and this year we want to do it on a whole other level.

The team of volunteers that is involved in organizing the conference this year has grown from 4 people to almost 10, plus we plan to pull more volunteers for the event - about 30 people.

Things have started "rolling" already. We've launched our new web site - www.artimprove.org - stared PROMO and opened the registration one week ago. Now we just need Lord's grace and mercy to finish WELL!!

All details you can also follow at ART Improve Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Art.Improve

UPDATE:

Well, the conference went really well and alltogether we had more then 300 people in attendance (together with guests and musicians). It was really tough to prepare and carry out this "operationally",

Summer vacation 2013. More about Montenegro.

One of the beaches near Petrovac, which we've visited the most

OK, this year we went on a 10 day vacation to Petrovac, Montenegro again. We liked it so much last year that couldn't resist not to come and explore MORE of this beautiful country and its nature. The weather was wonderful (as almost always in Montenegro during the summer) and we had a chance to enjoy pretty much everything there's to enjoy about seashore vacation: sea swimming, snorkling, suntanning, cooking fresh sea food, seeing many ancient cities, exploring Adriatic cusine.

This time, instead of writing too much here in the blog we've decided to record short videos with tales about parts of our trip to Montenegro. So here you go. Enjoy! (appologies for the in/out of focus during the video - out camera needs repair:-)

One of the new things we've done is visiting the ruins of the old town of Stari Bar, which is one the towns that Roman's founded on

ART Improve 2012 conference: new experience

This November we had a chance to partisipate in planning and organizing of Art Improve 2012 - a first conference in Ukraine for Christians of creative professions: artists, musician and actors. Both myself and Katya have always been interested to encourage and work with people of creative backgrounds and this time we've had a chance to unite our efforts with CCX Ukraine (part of IFES) and Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary.

The conference was an experiment and in the very beginnig I was just going to help in the area of web-site creation (blog, ro be more precise) and Internet advertising. Then, unexpectedly it has grown into an involvement of both of us, of about 30-40 hours per week and Katya becoming the director of the conference :-) Well, it was quite a ride, I have to tell you!! :-)

Vacation in Montenegro

In Dubrovnik, Croatia, during our vacation in Montenegro 

Ok, from the very beginning this blog entry name should have sounded as "Summer vacation in Italy". It was up to the point until Katya didn't get her visa (since Italian Embassy is a strange place:-) just 4 days before our flight from Kyiv... and we had to cancel our trip to Italy.

Good thing is that (even though in past 2,5 years Ukraine is getting more and more isolated internationally, which is no surpries with our current President) there are still some countries where Ukrainians can travel without a VISA. One of them is Montenegro, where some of our friends have been already and recommended us to go. So we decided... why not?

Passion 2012: Volunteer experience

So, this year, again, by the grace of God and generous help of one of our very good friends in the States we were able to attend Passion 2012 conference in Atlanta. It was an answer to our prayers and prayers of many friends in Ukraine, the States and around the world. In this post I wanted to write a bit more about the conference and what we've experiences there.

More about trip to Mississippi/Passion 2012

Wanted to share with you some videos we've filmed while going to US to visit Chuck (in his home in Mississippi) and then Passion 2012 conference in Atlanta.

Video interview on the way to U.S. in Amsterdam airport (Schipol):

Christmas in Mississippi...

We've celebrated Christmas at Pinelake church at Starkville, MS

This year we got to celebrate Christmas in America for the first time together as a family (me and Katya) . And it is now NOT a cold and snowy Maine (which would be usuall for us), but rather warm and sunny Mississippi!:-) We were invited to the States by a good friend of ours Chuck, whom we've met at Passion conference in Atlanta back in 2010... eversince, we've become really good friends and we've visited Chuck in US before and he came to visit us in L'viv Ukraine. One other reason we've came to the States is to participate in Passion 2012 conference in Atlanta, Georgia. We are looking forward to that VERY MUCH, cause this year we will be volunteering. Here are some pictures from our trip for now:

Celebrating Christmas with Lovorn's family

2,000 pageviews at our blog

Here we go, it took our blog almost 1,5 years to get first 1,000 views and now, only within some 9 more month we've got another 1,000.

On Dec. 20th 2011 we "celebrated" 2,000 views at this BLOG. It is encouraging. I guess it means that this is interesting at least to some people to read. So, we will continue on doing this... Please stop by anytime, leave your comments and subscribe to the blog by e-mail (it's in the upper right conner, where it says "Follow blog by e-mail") - you will get a notification by e-mail everytime the new post appears.

Finally settled in Kyiv

OK, well, finally, I've got to write in our blog about how we've settled in Kyiv. This is actually the very first weekend (eversince we've moved our stuff to Kyiv from L'viv on Nov. 19th and moved ourselves) that we had at least some free time, which was not consumed in unpacking bozes and visiting with parents/relatives/friends.

How we've moved?
Actually, today it has been exactly ONE MONTH after we've moved to Kyiv!! Amazing, how time really flies! But on a more informative side I wanted to let all of our good friends (and readers of this blog, I hope) know that we are doing really well and grateful to the Lord that He has provided everything needed to "transport" us to this beautiful city (of course, L'viv is beautiful as well:-)!!

The move itself went really smooth and we were able to use a really large truck - big enough to transport BOTH of Katya's piano's!!:-) So, now, we just need to figure out what to do with them both. Our Kyiv friends and my brother Slavik, came to help us unload the truck. We arrived around 20:30pm and by around 22:00pm all our stuff were upstairs and truck unloaded. Thank you, thank you again to everyone who has helped us in L'viv and Kyiv with this move!

Where we live?
We are renting a 2 room appartment on the 21st flooor (yes, no kidding) of a relatively new appartment building near Zhytomyrskaya metro station. Here's the picture of me on the street right near our building, which was taken by Katya from our balcony...


Can't see me? I'm that little gray spot right near the black car...:-)

Anyhow, you probably can tell that we sort of live "on the top of the world"!! However, our windows do not face downtown Kyiv, so we rather see the Zhytomyr highway and nice forests, which are on the suburbs of Kyiv.