Perm.

January 20-24, 2010

After 24 hours on a crammed train (where we made friends with Alex and Albert…) with not only our personal luggage, but also our copious amounts of hockey gear all stuffed into tight compartments we arrived to Perm, a city where YWAM hockey has spent a significant amount of time in the past, where we welcomed by Tolik, a big man who you could see was excited to see the return of YWAM hockey, and after a few minutes hauling our gear on our backs we arrived to YWAM Perm’s new bus, and boy were we happy to casually load all gear onto a private bus, rather than the usual throw our stuff onto a public one as fast as we possibly could while throwing apologetic glances to the Russian people who’s space we were entering into…and we drove to the YWAM Perm base where we were to stay for five days

 

We were told that we would have a busy schedule in Perm, but before we had the chance to do anything we got some news from Tolik.  In every city we need to get registered in order to stay, there; after giving YWAM Perm all the necessary documents we were told that some documents were missing and that in order to get our registration we would need to each pay thousands of U.S. dollars to make it happen.   So we said we would just leave, they said no.  We didn’t know what to do, we didn’t want the base to be left with a giant headache after we left, so we gathered to pray.  With heavy hearts we left for our first gig and when we returned they told us that all was well.  Why? How?  Tolik went to higher powers, and whatever he said worked.  Crisis Averted.

On the first day we were promised a day to sleep in, but as it turned out Glen was just kidding, plans changed and we rolled out of bed much earlier than expected and headed off to a care home for individuals with physical and mental disabilities.  I was pretty excited, growing up with my mom who ran a special care home I could imagine how excited these people would be to have us come to visit.  And they were; we suited up in our gear almost as soon as we arrived and walked through the ice and snow to a sunken rink in the bush, it was a perfect circle and had icy stairs of death and concrete walls, but after safely descending into the rink it was all in all a good time.  We had the opportunity to play together with the residents, some of whom I was sure where going to break a limb after falling multiple times with no equipment, but they just jumped right back up and kept playing.  The residents who didn’t play all came out to watch and it was definitely a memorable experience. (Not to mention the HUGE delicious dinner they had prepared for us afterwards.)  Later that day we played a game against a local mens team, and all I remember (ahem..wrote down..)was that we won; 5-2.

The following day we headed out to another town outside of Perm called Zikomps (sp?) where we spent time with local kids on their newly, beautifully, renovated outdoor rink.  It was freezing.  Especially because as a goalie, we always got suited up in our gear, but in times like this where we were playing with kids, there seemed to be a lot of standing around, which made things extra extra cold.  After feeling that I may soon lose my fingers and toes I had to go in early to warm up, and the rest followed shortly afterwards.  We invited everyone that came out to come over to the local church for tea, cookies, and a chit chat…many said they would come, but only a few actually showed up.  But the few that did were epic, there was two kids who had met the YWAM team two years earlier when they had come to their town and now were regularly attending church, in a town where attending anything other than the Russian Orthodox church was looked down upon mightily… but these young kids had decided that’s where they wanted to be, I could see that Brian and Glen (the two who had been here previously) were more than moved to see that there were people who were affected from their time in the city in 2008. 

We got to ‘sleep in’ on our fourth day in Perm, 9 am, that day we were off to an orphanage in a neighbouring town; the YWAM team along with our new bubbly translator Roma headed to the orphanage where we were warmly greeted on arrival.  We didn’t really know what to expect, but the director of the orphanage told us that we could share with the kids whatever was on our hearts, which was huge seeing as though in most cities/places we had to be careful as to what we shared.  On arrival we tried to break the ice by playing some games…which I wouldn’t really call a success…but a few games later, we could see the kids (and by kids I mostly mean teenagers, though some were as young as 10ish) were warming up to us.  After speaking with the kids we arranged to go out to a local rink and play a little hockey and get the chance to teach them some basics; but there was no change room at the outdoor rink so we changed at the orphanage.  It was uber cute because before we could grab our gear from the bus, a group of kids had already gone to take it for us, and even carry my goalie gear up to the top floor where we were changing.  I’m pretty certain this would be the first time they saw real hockey players and you could feel their excitement, they wanted to try on our helmets, our gloves…my gloves; which had been used the night before and I’m sure hadn’t dried yet..poor kid put them on, took out his hands with a confused look on his face and put his hands to his face to smell my sick hockey smelly gloves…ah haha, it was a good look, and made me smile.  At the rink, the kids were so excited to have skates and sticks and pucks that no one was really interested in learning proper skating posture (there were a few who took in every word Brian said..) but we mostly just played around with them until our feet could no longer be felt..and then the team we were playing against arrived so the kids made their way to the stands to cheer us on. 

It was another cold cold game, the men had tea to warm us up in between periods, the fans were excited to have us out; especially Michael Fischer (it’s a good name to cheer apparently ;), and me…a girl. wow-za).  We won the game handily, finished with shoot outs, which is always a crowd pleaser…especially when the other team scores, it was like they had scored the game winner in a championship…i couldn’t help but smile when they scored, because they were so excited to score..cuuteee.  After a photo session, a man who wouldn’t leave me alone until after he got to kiss my hand, cheek and get me to autograph a puck for him in pencil, we headed back to the kids home for some tea, bread and of course pictures.  Hours earlier you could tell these kids were wary  about us, they weren’t sure whether or not they would like us, and by the end of the day, they didn’t want to say goodbye.  I walked hand in hand with my new 11 year old boyfriend Ulah to the bus where the whole lot of kids had gathered to bid us farewell.  If nothing else, we loved on those kids and I’m pretty sure they felt the love.

Where did we go the last day?  It was an over-nighter and the people we spent the night with were amazing, they made us delicious Russian bbq and let us use their banya (typical Russian sauna….:)) The next day we were invited to a high school to speak to the students, most of whom were too shy to ask any questions, but their teachers were curious :)

We met a lot of solid people in Perm, our translators were all amazing people, Roma spent the most time with us, and although the boys complained of his snoring he was definitely a blessing to our crew.  Tolik and his family who run the Perm base were so hospitable, I got to meet Jon Dulin, another YWAM head, who helped me immensely to finally get the proper documents that helped me get my Russian visa. 

Perm was an epic city, most were, we met a lot of people, spoke into a lot of lives, loved into a lot of lives.  It was hard because we just got to see the people we met once, do what we did and then say goodbye.  But knowing that when we went in, I think we made that one time count.  Good memories were made in Perm, both on our out of city excursions and at the base just being with the team.

 

Below are pictures of us with the people we were blessed to meet…

 

 

Roma (left) and Tolik (right) yay. :)